On Finding Your Voice Before Your Style

Why your ideas matter more than your moodboard

Jun 11, 2025

Hi everyone,

This is something I’ve been meaning to write for a while, because it’s a topic that comes up all the time, especially when you're just starting out. Everyone says “find your style,” or wondering what their aesthetic is, making their feed look good and Pinterest coherent, but no one really talks about what that actually means. I’ve been thinking about how long I tried to do just that: scrolling, pinning, putting together moodboards, scrapbooking, trying to make sure everything looked like me, even when I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

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Back then, it was mostly about aesthetics. I'd build references that matched in colour and mood, and tried to create work that aligned with those. But it felt a bit hollow. I didn’t know what the images meant not just visually, but emotionally. I thought that if I just kept creating enough, or found the right niche, or picked the perfect reference, I would eventually land on a signature style.

But instead, I kept running in circles. I'd get bored. I’d start over. I’d see someone else’s work do well and think maybe I should try something like that instead. It looked like progress on the outside, but it wasn’t really building anything. There was no core to it yet.

Things didn’t start shifting until I stopped chasing style, and started asking what I actually wanted to say. I went deeper into my image research, why I was drawn to certain visuals. I studied history, brands, subcultures, visual theory. I journaled about the types of stories and emotions I wanted to express. And slowly, I realised: your voice comes before your style. It’s all about building your point of view, way of working and what you want to present, and aesthetics will follow.

Voice is the thing that holds everything together

Style is surface. It’s how something looks. Your voice is what it says. It’s how you see the world, what you value, what you find interesting or funny or important. You can borrow style, but your voice is the thing that makes it yours.

It’s what makes one person’s minimalist shoot feel warm and human, and another’s feel cold and distant, even if they’re using the same lighting and colour palette. It’s why two people can reference the same film, or use the same camera, and still create completely different results. Voice is what gives your work depth, consistency, and meaning.

I wrote about this in the Studio 54 newsletter too. Both Tom Ford and Alessandro Michele used Studio 54 as a reference for Gucci, but their executions were completely different.
Tom Ford’s was slick, seductive, and refined. Michele’s version was layered, nostalgic, and maximalist. The reference didn’t define the work, neither did the brand, the voice of the creative director shaped what it became. That’s what makes the difference.

If you're still trying to find your style, try this instead

Start with your voice. Ask yourself questions that aren’t about aesthetics at all:

What do I care about deeply, even outside of design/photography/fashion?
What themes keep showing up in my references or saved folders?
What do I notice that others don’t?
What types of stories do I naturally gravitate toward?
What’s missing in the creative work I see around me?
What things have stuck with me recently and didn’t go unnoticed? This could be an IG post or TikTok you scrolled by, someone you noticed on the streets, a new innovation or food you tried, a destination you want to visit. Literally anything.

Try these as a weekly creative habit:

Reverse search your favourite references: find out who made them, why, when and what else they’ve done.
Make a list of recurring feelings in your favourite images: tense, calm, lonely, strange, soft, surreal.
Journal once a week answering: What do I want people to feel when they see my work?
Group your favourite visuals and write down everything they have in common. Look at casting, setting, texture, scale, posture, tone. Be as detailed as possible.
Name 5 visual things you love but wouldn’t use and ask yourself why not. That contrast reveals your taste and priorities.
Revisit old work you’ve done and try to trace the why behind your decisions. What felt like you? What didn’t?

The more you focus on the deeper layer, the easier it gets to make strong, specific choices. That’s how voice becomes visible, through consistency, not through matching colours or picking one niche.

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Now ask yourself: how can this become your style?

Once you start understanding the deeper layers, your voice, values, emotional tone. The next step is to experiment with how that could visually take shape.

If your work is about duality, maybe contrast becomes a key technique:
Like Juergen Teller shooting lo-fi flash photography in banal locations but styling it with full glam, luxury fashion, or surreal makeup. It’s a visual expression of contradiction, humour, or commentary on status. Not only his aesthetic, but it became his over the years.

So what’s your version of contrast? Where does it come from for example childhood? youth culture of your hometown? The clash between how you feel and how you present yourself? Your different cultural backgrounds?
What’s the emotional reason behind it?

Try this:

List out 3 emotional truths or tensions you carry and explore how that could show up visually (e.g. feeling stuck but dreaming big = tight spaces + expansive light)
Take one strong visual theme (like softness, mess, perfection, awkwardness) and brainstorm 10 ways to express it across different styles, materials, or locations. Force yourself to come up with as many as you can, you could combine some to feel new but it’s good to press everything you have out of your brain, even if it’s shit. It’s just your working file.
If you love honesty in images, go outside and shoot something real, maybe a friend in their own clothes, no set, no lighting. What made it feel honest? How can you bring a twist in this next time or create a series?
Choose one element you’re drawn to (like religious iconography, matchy-matchy outfits, or digital grain) and push it in a new direction. What’s one unexpected way to use it?

Your style isn’t something you find by copying what’s trending. It’s something you build by giving form to the things you think, feel, and notice over and over again.

Let yourself follow the tangents. Go down rabbit holes. Put things next to each other that don’t “match” but make sense to you. Your aesthetic will come together through experimentation, but it’ll only mean something if it starts with voice.

And once you know how to turn voice into visuals with purpose? That’s where art direction becomes magnetic.

This is exactly why I built the Strategic Art Direction course

So many people are doing everything right: they’re creating, posting, tweaking their portfolios, applying to jobs, but still feel like they’re stuck on the outside. Like there’s this invisible wall between them and the work they actually want to do.

And it’s because there is.

This industry is notoriously closed off. The best jobs, the dream brands, the creative direction roles, most of them never even get posted. You’re expected to just know how things work. How to talk about your ideas, how to respond to a brief, how to lead a visual direction, how to build the kind of presence that gets remembered.

But no one really teaches you that. Not in uni, not on YouTube, and definitely not on Pinterest.

That’s why I created the Strategic Art Direction course.
To give you the inside knowledge I had to learn the hard way, through years of freelancing, testing, failing, and figuring out what actually works behind the scenes.

It’s not just about making things look good. It’s about understanding how to:

Stand out in a competitive industry where everyone is creative, but few are clear
How I managed to always have paid work even during challenging times
Build a portfolio that reflects your voice, not just what’s trending
Think like an art director and make decisions with confidence and clarity
Pitch ideas that resonate, because they’re rooted in strategy, timing, and cultural insight
Position yourself in a way that makes you visible to the brands, teams, and editors you want to work with
And ofcourse learn everything about presenting concepts, yourself, portfolio building and a lot more.

This is the stuff people usually gatekeep. The conversations that happen behind closed doors. I built this course so you don’t have to guess, hustle endlessly, or wait for permission.

If you’ve been hitting a wall or trying to find your lane: this is for you.

48 lessons, 8 weeks. It’s launching July 1st. The early bird was sold out within 3 days, but there are still 27 spots left for the tickets with 200 euro discount.

Secure your spot!

See the entire program

Some gentle reminders

If your work feels inconsistent right now, that’s okay. You’re not behind. You’re just at the part where you’re still collecting puzzle pieces. Voice takes time to form, and no one finds it by copying what’s trending.

Let yourself question things. Let yourself care deeply about weird details. Let your work feel too subtle, too messy, too you, that’s where the voice starts to show up.

And if you’re in that early phase where everything feels a bit like a mix of other people’s work: that’s a completely normal part of the process. Keep digging, keep creating, and be patient with it. You’re building something that lasts. Keep creating, be intentional but put creating with intention forward. Create for NOW and not for the aesthetic you don’t have yet, let it evolve naturally as you learn more and more.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve been in this phase too. I’d love to know what patterns you’ve noticed in your own work or what you're learning to say.

Love,
Zoë