Creative Direction

I am now offering styling/creative direction service to clients and photographers. YAY!

Hey DAD! Finally, my years of art school pay off!!!

Creative direction for events is kind of a grey area, and I think many people aren’t certain what this means exactly. So, in an effort to shed some light on the whole process, I thought I would share a few design boards from a recent Indian wedding we did. Without revealing everything we do, I feel these simplified versions give a nice glimpse into what a creative and inspiring path each event can lead the mind on. In this case, that meant doing the unexpected thing. Avoiding bold red and bright oranges. Embracing color in a way that celebrated the culture without doing the customary bright, super bold tones.

It’s kind of a weird thing to explain, and a strange thing to tout yourself as creative and stylish. The latter I am most certainly not… I guess everything is debatable. Still, I know what’s good… I’m a fine editor of things, materials, designs, strategies. Some people love to throw more stuff on top of more stuff hoping to eventually find the beauty in it all. But my approach is simpler. Peel back the layers, get to the core, repeat what is beautiful to you as a visual mantra, stay on course, too many distractions and ingredients dilute the intentions and are unnecessary.

The truth is, you can only plan and design so much – the rest you have to let fall into place and if you are really, really good at collecting, gathering, assembling materials, and are able to stay loosely tied to a thought or vision then it will work. The puzzle will almost effortlessly put itself together. And your wedding day will be memorable, timeless, beautiful. Something that really resonates as a celebration of two people finding each other.

I have various processes for finding these mantras for my clients. Playfulness and exploration are my best friends in this process….

Here, I centered everything around various subtle patterns, beautiful textiles, mingled in traditional spices and teas, hinted at ancient Indian love stories; all crafted around these lovely and somewhat unexpected saffron/amber tones, contrasting with the deepest indigo.
Not every idea is visual. Some if it comes from hours spent researching traditions, Indian literature, various culinary traditions, and so forth.

All images in these boards are borrowed from various sources…which I no longer have credits for. Sorry! If you see something here of yours and would like a credit please send me a message and I will gladly add it. The gorgeous indigo calligraphy and art in the final board is by the abundantly talented Chelsea Petja. This is a piece of the actual artwork she created for this wedding. AMAZING artist.
(Guess I’ll have to get better at this part!)

Sharing my process and how these things grow from a speck of a thought into an entire day or series of days or a wedding, is something I’m looking forward to doing more of here.

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