“Look out the window. One day you’ll look back and wonder where it all went.”

—Alan Shuptrine

My childhood was pretty cool. Every morning, I woke up to the sound of my father clanging his paintbrush against a giant water vase as he dipped and cleaned his sable watercolor brush in the room across from mine. I would see him look deeply into all the details of a picture, and then translate that exact image onto a giant canvas. My dad would always say, “I want my viewer to smell the air coming off my painting…I want them to know where I was that day in the mountains and feel like they were there with me.”

That stuck in my 8-year-old brain. Living with my world-renowned watercolor artist father and master apparel designer mother came with both creative knowledge and big creative shoes to fill, but all my parents wanted me to do was what I loved most–and that was being outside.

As a kid, the natural landscapes surrounding me served as my playground and my classroom and gave me space to think. Hours would evaporate as I meandered through forests, waded in swift rivers, and lay in dry hay fields under a cloud-covered sky. 

Each time I stepped outside, it was a step of discovery, where the marks made by the dew dripping off the tip of a fern’s leaf or the different colors of the distant Blue Ridge Mountain peaks sparked my imagination. These experiences fed my creativity and attuned my mind to the fine details only the wild could offer. This close engagement with the environment was more than just child's play; it was the keystone of my design thinking, teaching me to see the world through a different perspective.

As a graphic designer, the great outdoors has significantly shaped my design approach. Nature's influence on my work is unmistakable and can be seen in my daily design thinking. It’s instinctual; most of the time, I don’t even realize I’m designing something I have witnessed in nature.

Here are a few ways nature influences graphic design:

• Color: Nature's massive color range inspires my design palettes and helps me understand how color works. From the analogous blues of the ocean to the fiery reds of the Tennessee autumn leaves, colors from nature can translate into designs that can instantly resonate with the audience.
• Texture and patterns: The natural world is a treasure trove of textures and patterns that give my designs visual meaning and emotion. A good designer is one who goes the extra mile by considering not only their design’s visual appeal, but also its physical feel. 
• Shapes: There’s an endless library of organic shapes and forms that designers can use in their designs to bring a unique energy, create timeless appeal, and convey specific messages.
• Natural change: Changes in the environment and our lives (an evening sunset, the pearlescent feathers on a wild turkey in the spring) are constant and inspiring. Nature is always in motion, and changing moment by moment, and so does design. For design and brands to stay exciting and current, they must change, and so must our thinking as designers. 

Nature’s palette offers an endless range of colors, textures, shapes, and gradients, as well as changes that influence design's visual and emotional impact. The next time you step outside, take a closer look at the nature around you—and use it to inspire how you think, feel, and create.