What is your design Persona?

This was one question I couldn’t wrap my head around while I was in design school and for the most part of my early experiences as a designer. Was I meant to choose just one or two styles and stick with them forever and ever? What if I liked more than a couple of styles? or in most cases more than a handful of styles. Of course there are no specific rules or laws that regulate your preferences and influences. Although, somewhere deep down I had always known that those amazing spaces that I adored by iconic designers that I was inspired by, were based on much more than luck or a random combination of trendy objects and statements.

Most of us would settle for the "I have an eclectic style "card and quite frankly, being eclectic is safe; you are neither there, nor here as long as you can harness the confidence it takes to pull it off in a cohesive manner. In any case, the whole anything goes, slap it on and render it nicely trick was just not my idea of how spaces should be designed. I didn't want to be like everyone else, I wanted to be different and for what its worth, I didn't leave my village behind to be just like everybody else. A point that my father never hesitated to make whenever I told him I was struggling with school projects, "I didn't pay school fees for you to be painting colours, your mates are studying architecture" Oh the pressure! I genuinely used to have serious doubts about choosing design school over a "proper" masters degree (

which I later did). What would have been even worse than not having a clear direction or confidence in my choices as a creative was to use eclectism as an excuse to obscure my indecisions. Although at that stage, my design process was chaotic, and rightfully so ( I was a fresher) , I aspired to do better than settle for Eclectic. My personal taste, eye for details , good spatial awareness, can - do - attitude and potential to deliver a “good looking” scheme (all those prospects that got me into design school in the first place) could only get me so far.

So there I was , first year in design school, ready to fail, ready to be put down by my tutors for being different and unsure, ready to make mistakes, but most importantly , ready to unlearn and relearn everything I thought I knew about design. (No more copy and pasting from magazines) . I was finally ready to discover my identity.

So what is the ideal way to design, you may ask? I still don't think I've figured that out yet, probably because there's no one- size- fits-all formula in design. One thing is for sure though, no matter what your style, fashion, personal taste, religion, culture or nationality is , what makes a good design are the principles you follow and how you choose to apply them to solve the brief / design problem.

Of course, it is still possible to create functional everyday spaces to solve any design brief by simply following a step by step design process; like understanding a brief, having an original concept, creating a mood board from your inspirations (P.S: It's okay to be inspired, but please never ever copy), following a cohesive design direction and selecting materials that are appropriate for your context. This design process "approach" worked for me, and got me through the first few projects in design school just fine and to be honest it still does, but there's more to design than a linear process . There are certain tools used to implement design, called the principles or elements of design (which I would elaborate on in my next post), but lets get back to the main question, lest I digress again.

How do you determine your personal style?

Style to me must feel personal, tell a story and be as comfortable to you as possible.

It is your ideology , your code of practice, your own version of design, the ethics you live by or mantra as it were , it is the way you approach problems , not only spatially, but in life generally. This only became apparent when I finally accepted, after many failed attempts, that no matter what principle, movement, style or trends I decided to follow, Individuality , Curiousity and Intuition were the keys to great or at least good design.

1) Individuality. Design is a journey of self discovery. You need to channel your background, heritage and culture, be inspired by those simple things in life ( friends, family, pain, loss, joy, disappointments, faith e.t.c) ; those things that make you unique, life lessons you can only learn from your experiences with and from people and most certainly by yourself.

2) Curiousity. Wanting to know about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people. You have to invest time in the search for knowledge; experiment, get out of your comfort zone, make mistakes, explore new cultures, break rules, invent, expand genres, and have fun while you are at it. From experience comes understanding and with understanding comes growth, that is why there is something called an “acquired taste”.

3) Intuition. The moment I was confident enough to rely on intuition, that was the turning point for me, and this has really struck me as a very productive way to approach design. Selecting furniture and art for a space should feel collected, from travels, gifted by people you love, from memories shared over time, transcending place, time and space. From this point, there were no more rigid processes, no more describing major decorative decisions as a momentary trends or themes (Modern, Postmodern, Scandinavian /Mid Century/Industrial chic and so on) or reaching for a new paint chart on an annual basis. I was no longer settling for eclectic, instead I couldn't help but be eclectic in my choices . Trust me, it won’t just be good for your finances; it’ll do wonders for your sanity.

Permit me to quote Jay-Z 's line in Swagger Like Us ( Yep, I get inspired by pretty much anything these days lol.) "You can pay for school , but you can't buy class". In the context of design, you can't buy style and they don't teach intuition, acquired taste or self discovery in School, you've got to earn it.

So what is my design persona? I love French minimal style, it is distinct, effortless, warm and collected. I’ve got a dash of rural - industrial going on at the side, from growing up in a cosy town and I can't do without my African references anyway (it's in the blood), add a pinch of whimsical with a subtle undertone of environmental consciousness and we are in business. I don’t leave amazing materials, culture or classical elements out of the equation, either, but those choices come later on and vary every once in a while as I discover new interests. Then again, that's the recipe for my personal cup of tea, you will need to discover yours.

Finally, whatever the brief, budget, location, concept, approach or ideology, style should simply be a personal practice in curation, an intentional practice in letting each piece, every element in the space matter to you or in the case of a project, the people who will eventually use the space. After all said and done, good design will always be about everyday life, people and living. At the end of the day, design is for everyday people, by everyday people.

Be Inspired.