In society, there are leaders (sometimes known as ‘trendsetters’ or ‘influencers’), and there are followers (sometimes known as ‘fans’).
Leaders are the people who swim against the current.
When someone says, ‘minimalism is going to be big again this year’, they start filling every available space on the canvas. When someone says, ‘Pink is out this year’, it becomes their colour for the year.
You might also refer to this person as an ‘anarchist’.
On the other hand, followers don’t like to overthink their decisions. And this isn’t necessarily wrong, particularly if someone else knows more about a subject than you do (in which case it’s wise to listen to what they have to say) or they have a counter-cultural opinion (we also call these people ‘artists’).
Trends do have value, and things often are trendy for a reason. Some trends are common sense (a white room feels spacious; vertical lines are slimming).
However, trends have a limit. They ARE a limit. Trends say, “you may exercise creativity this far and no further”.
“In the particular lies the universal”, writes James Victore
If something is significant to you, you can be confident that it’s significant to others too. What you might THINK is so specific that only you find comfort in it almost certainly resonates with other people (that’s actually what a trend is).
So don’t be afraid to show your weirdness. All of history’s great artists expressed something weirdly specific about themselves.
You could be one of them.
