The very first step to creating successful designs is finding inspiration so researching and finding inspiration for your pattern designs is really important.

Why finding inspiration for your pattern designs is important.

Have you ever sat down to start being creative and you just don’t know where to begin?

You’re drawing a mental blank and you just don’t know where to start? Then you end up feeling frustrated because you’ve allocated time to be creative yet you’re not using it wisely?

This is where your research and inspiration comes in.

Finding inspiration is really important and it will really help you kickstart your creative process. When it comes to designing a lot of people ask me where to begin and finding inspiration is the first step of the design process. Finding inspiration is simply coming up with some ideas that you can use to start developing your ideas. And your inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere. It could be as simple as going for a walk and just observing your surroundings, taking some photos, observing the changing of seasons, looking at nature, or whatever it is that you see and your eye is drawn to.

Once you are open and aware of this process, you’ll find that you just naturally do it all the time. For example, you’ll be out on a walk, you’ll see something interesting, you’ll take a photo and you’ll save it for next time that you are stuck.

You can also use more formal methods of triggering your ideas by creating mind maps or having a brainstorming session. For example, you could think about holiday experiences or an exciting memory or idea that you can potentially use and do a brainstorm or mind map on that idea.

Either way, you want to be consistently thinking about different ways and ideas that you can use for your next potential design. And if you keep your mind open and just naturally start collecting things, you’ll be able to create yourself a bank or library of ideas so make sure that when you do collect your ideas that you don’t just store them randomly. Make sure you set up some systems so you can file your inspiration so next time you’re stuck, you can go through this inspiration and see what triggers an idea to start developing something and being creative.

Remember that finding is inspiration is the very first step in the design process and it is an important one because it’s where you’re going to start and trigger all those wonderful, developmental ideas that will form part of your beautiful patterns.