Knowing who you are is the first step to figuring out where you want to go.

Review your likes for critical insight

Last week, I recommended using the month of January to recover and renew before making a plan for 2025. But there are some preplanning activities you can do that won’t feel like work yet will be beneficial and essential even when you get to the goals-setting process.

Knowing who you are is the first step to figuring out where you want to go. For visual artists, especially those of us who make things, learning about our personal preferences and inspirations gives a foundation for the next round of designing. Because we are constantly making choices, most of them effortlessly, you might think we obviously know our minds and understand our preferences. However, the summary of our actions provides information that is not always the same. Reviewing many automatically triggered selections shows evidence of shapes, motifs, colors, textures, themes, and concepts that are the core of our authentic design styles. Even if the revelations are not surprising to you, even if you look at the summary and say, of course, this is what I liked, this review creates a visual lexicon to aid your future design work.

I use Instagram to see lots of everything, not just jewelry. The record of things that caught my attention - that I “liked” - provides an objective view of what I find intriguing, inspirational, and aspirational. Looking at countless successive images, like we do when scrolling IG, will lull you into a semi-conscious state. This might be beneficial for exposing one’s core tendencies. Our attention flow is pulled by things that have a particular personal appeal, perhaps one we don’t consciously recognize.

There are lots of reasons why you slow down when scrolling IG. The first level of attraction is visual; you are interested in the image.

· It is related to your design aesthetic

· It is from an artist you admire

· It is an attractive image – color, composition, the nature of the object

· It could be the data you need, like a technique or announcement that interests you. Often, the photo contains enough information to serve as a reminder of the content.

Reviewing a year’s worth of things that attracted your attention provides an objective overview of your true aesthetic. This information helps you acknowledge your actual preferences, a necessary step if you want to set goals that will be fulfilling when you achieve them.

here’s how to do it

Form and texture samples from my collection efforts