TVRRINI explores visual journals for creative practice and personal preflection.
What helps spark your next creative idea? Journals—whether filled with photos, colour swatches, or thoughts—are playgrounds for design lovers and curious minds alike.
Think of it as a safe container of your thoughts or feelings, a tool for self-discovery through processing your inner universe more deeply. Engaging with a journal can improve your focus on information. It might let you unwind through mindful activity. And from this original creative practice, we can notice the elements that stand out personally and develop new perspectives.
Let us explore how visual journalling can support creative flow.
The art of looking
Katerina of TVRRINI photographing natural scenes in Nafplio, Greece.
Just as journals can be a personal outlet, your creative self-expression can manifest through visual diaries. It invites you to actively process your observations, incorporating photos, drawings, and words that you resonate with.
A sub-category of visual diaries, colour journals emphasise the palettes that emerge from selected images.
You can choose a physical form, such as a hardback notebook or sketch pad. Alternatively, you might prefer to keep a digital journal where you can readily upload your images and add notes under them.
Mindful journalling for creative souls
Allow yourself to layer your journal pages with different materials, such as leaves found on an outdoor walk.
People tend to gravitate towards colours that are within their comfort zone. Keeping a visual journal can evoke inspiration and connection with different environments, by bridging moments in the world and stillness on the page.
Many of us begin a new journal full of expectations, either about its contents or layout. This can be daunting, sometimes so that enthusiasm chips away and we stifle the urge to write on the page.
While researching how other creatives use colour in their practice, I came across a piece featuring designers at Nike sharing their thoughts on keeping a colour journal. Their insight prompted me to turn my own photography into a springboard for deeper visual exploration.
Anyone working in visual art and design can benefit from the introspection that a journal offers. While focusing on some form of image, you will write notes about what you are interested in as you encounter them. You may start to see unexpected connections that could be the impetus for a higher-level idea: a first draft, a project that has stalled and needs a boost of colour inspiration, or a remake of a finished piece.
That being said, you do not need a formulated reason to keep a visual diary. It does not matter if you are spurred to explore this for fun—it is a personal practice that you can still learn and grow from.
Using photographs creatively
A visual journal page with pasted photos, select colours, and handwritten notes.
Journalling looks different for everyone, but simple prompts and techniques can help guide your imagination across the page. Try the following activity alone or with a small group—in a public space or at home. Stay curious about the details around you.
Prepare gear
Start simple—your mobile phone is often all you need to capture fleeting moments of inspiration.
Walking around your neighbourhood can be a fun activity that encourages you to source interesting materials. You may want to bring zip-lock bags to store leaf cuttings, or small found items that you end up taping to the pages of your journal later.
Take photographs
In the moment, pay attention to details. Do you see something exciting, odd, or funny? Stay observant of anything that catches your eye: a bold neon sign against deep shadows. Rust on a weathered metal post. A bright pink flower punctuating the earthy green beneath it. Your photos don’t have to make a grand statement, as the documentation is an exercise for you to be mindful of.
Print and paste
The next step is transferring photos to your journal. If you’re keeping a physical book, you could arrange the images in editing software such as Canva or Photoshop to print them out. You can then cut and stick them into your journal.
Reflect
Inspiration meets the page -- Bibi sketching in a journal.
Explore colour palettes drawn from your original images, using traditional tools like pencil, brush pens, or watercolour (if you have the appropriate paper).
To streamline the process, open a design tool and use an eyedropper tool to pull colours directly from the images. You could be creative, assigning names to the colours, perhaps referencing the subjects: Pharmacy Green, Dusk Pink, Blinker Red.
Words can help you reflect on the visuals. Jot down your thoughts and observations in handwriting, with notes about texture, shadows, or lighting. Another way to be expressive is by making strokes to capture the mood of things. You could draw the shapes you see. Let the process mirror your creativity and humour if you feel inclined.
Explore different environments and times
A busy intersection in Hanoi, Vietnam at night with the remains of rainfall.
Variety keeps things interesting. Besides the journal itself, consider ways to mix up where and when you take photos for original source material.
You may have a structured agenda with work duties that occupy most of your time, so plan your free time realistically. Set aside an allotted time—a few minutes or an hour—or plan a day to deviate from your typical route for your photography session. The shift in environment lets you observe nuances, whether that’s the palette or atmosphere.
To develop your creative practice, you cannot expect to shoot only when conditions are favourable, particularly while living somewhere that is prone to wet or overcast climates (this is true for me, being in London). While you may feel tempted to avoid going outside on a rainy day, consider also that documenting a variety of weather conditions can bring an interesting mix to your journal. Embrace the unexpected.
Instead, see this as a challenge to venture beyond your comfort zone, and prepare accordingly — protect your phone from getting showered by taking photos under an umbrella or find a sheltered spot under which you can document your surroundings.
Allow the pages to unfold
An open sketchbook with pasted magazine cuttings.
As mentioned before, a journal is highly individual. You can have images and sketches taking up the page with as little writing as you want. You can be very specific in naming the colours if that suits you. And you get to decide what format it takes, whether that’s a physical book you can hold or digital.
Remember that rough notes, layering, or unfinished pages are part of the process. Essentially, the journal is for searching and testing different ideas—whatever feels pleasant, captivating, or relevant to you.
Creative journalling begins when you pause, look closer, and let your lens turn the everyday into inspiration.
Whether you’re building a colour archive, experimenting with layout, or simply soaking in your surroundings, your journal becomes a quiet collaborator in your creative practice.