How to build your secret repertoire

by Tobias van Schneider
Published Jul 2, 2024

As a creative, your repertoire is your secret weapon.

Think of your repertoire as the accumulation of everything you've ever seen or experienced, distilled down to its essence, ready to draw on whenever you need inspiration.

In one way, our minds are already a big part of this repertoire. The more experience you have and the more you've seen, the better you'll be at your work.

Creatives are expected to come up with ideas, but not just any ideas – original, refreshing ideas. A good creative has the unique skill of pulling good ideas "out of thin air." That's not a given for most people, so we have the luxury of making it our day job.

But the only way we can create something out of thin air is because we've built our own system (even if it's just in our minds) that allows us to capture material and references over a lifetime. We then connect these fragments and "milk" them for unexpected connections, which ultimately leads us to truly original ideas.

And this leads me to the personal repertoire. If you don't have one yet, you should build one. It's the ultimate "bicycle for your mind" to make the most of your already amazing brain.

Nr.1 — The tool

The tool or system doesn't matter really, it's all up to YOU and how your mind works the best. Anything I will write below could apply to any system you might have. You could be using a digital tool, you could be using folders on your computer, or you could be using a shoe box where you collect printouts. Or a combination of all these.

I use mymind for building my repertoire. I am involved with building mymind, which is probably why I find it to be MY personal best solution. Yours might be different.

Nr.2 — The most important part

Your repertoire should be private. Yes, entirely private. The moment you have it open to other people, you're now trying to impress. It changes the entire dynamic of your personal library. Imagine you have your bookshelf exposed at home, for every guest to see. And you make a point of only putting beautiful books on the shelf. Agreeable books. Books that fit the narrative you want to tell about yourself. Books that everyone else reads too.

I'd call this a bad bookshelf. Or at least, it isn't you.

Keep your repertoire private. Secret to only yourself. Don't share it, don't collaborate on it. It's your own garden.

I guess can't show you my repertoire because it is indeed private (:

The moment you start collecting JUST for yourself, everything changes. There's no pressure to perform for anybody. There's no pressure to appear likable, on-trend or agreeable amongst your peers. There's no need to curate for superficial reasons like "aesthetic consistency." You are only curating for yourself.

It's a beautiful feeling. Once you fully surrender yourself to it you'll find all kinds of weird things in your repertoire. Real, interesting references that push you outside the agreeable box. You're now free.

In addition, nobody should be able to trace your steps when it comes to inspiration. You're the magician, keep your secrets to yourself and let others uncover them — If they can (:

In my case, since I use mymind it's all private by default. There's no collaboration, no social features, nothing.

Nr.3 — Do not force a garden, give it time and let it grow.

You can't just create your own repertoire within hours, or days, or even weeks. This is a lifelong commitment. A gift that you are giving to yourself.

I know all this might sound a bit philosophical here, but hear me out. You can't just download a million images from some website, or someone else's Pinterest board and then call this your own repertoire. You can't skip the magic.

Keeping images or other references in your repertoire that have no particular meaning to yourself only adds clutter and is completely meaningless in the process of ideation. The entire point of your OWN repertoire is that every piece in it evokes some sort of emotion in yourself. It's the primary deciding factor on WHY you save something into it in the first place. You can't cheat yourself to the top and skip the entire process, you have to climb the mountain.

Only once I have given a reference my own "stamp of approval" does it land in my collection. There will always be millions of kitchen interior references online, but the 100+ I have in my repertoire are by far the best, according to my taste.

So how do I decide if something goes in mymind (my repertoire) or not?

Nr.4 — Collect ambivalently and passively. Not indifferently.

I have to have a strong feeling about something. Ambivalent means having strong but perhaps opposing feelings towards something. If I have this feeling, it's already enough for me to save it to my repertoire, because I know it will be useful in the future. I felt something. But if I feel indifferent about something, that's a clear sign that I will not save it because it's entirely useless to me.

The second part of this is making it a passive habit to find meaning in something, without a clear purpose or an immediate payoff.

Usually, when we are building a little collection of references, we do it as part of the research of a particular project. But this means we're looking at the vast resources of the internet when we want something very specific, to add to an even more specific collection. We're automatically limiting ourselves in the process, as we're only trying to find references that match a certain vibe for a particular project.

But when building your own repertoire, you want your "funnel" open at all times. You want to passively build it up, every single day so it will in itself become a more specific resource in the future.

For example: Every time I browse the internet, every time I see an image that makes me FEEL something, I immediately save it. Even though this image has no immediate purpose. It's not for a current project. The reference truly has no purpose other than one I imagine exists in the future. And this is where the secret is at.

The same way your real mind works is how your own repertoire works. It's a sponge of references, ideas, stories and things you care about. Everything you don't care about (feel indifferent about) doesn't get soaked up by the sponge and slowly fades into oblivion.

This is another reason I love mymind as my repertoire. There are no folders or categories because I find them completely useless and they disrupt my natural flow of saving references for the future. Because if a particular reference has no immediate purpose, there is also no folder or category for it. And I do not want the process of organizing or categorizing to add friction to my saving process.

You simply want to save something, and then move on. Let your collection grow passively over time. One drop at a time.

Nr.5 — Examples of what I save

I save almost everything that makes me feel something. Most of what I save are images of course. But there are also countless quotes, articles, highlights, snippets, products and many random websites as well.

Here are some examples:

I saved this necklace a while ago because I liked the material and overall vibe of it. I knew that I would be working on my own HOVS necklace at some point. All I did was save it with one click, and mymind automatically tagged it for me with chain, necklace and silver. In the future I just have to search for "necklace" and then this and many other references will come up, even though I never even created a folder or category just for "necklaces." I know it sounds almost too simple, but that's what I love about it.

I saved this logo to mymind because I just loved the vibe of it and I know that I will eventually come back to it, either because of the illustration inside, the entire composition, or the wonderful custom condensed typeface. I'll surely reference this later when I am working on a logo for one of my many projects.

Or let's talk about quotes. I save tons of them to my repertoire all the time. Each of them makes me think, they make me reflect. Sometimes I stumble upon a quote randomly while browsing my repertoire and it makes me smile. That's already a win for me. Sometimes a quote inspires me to write an article, like this one here. Sometimes a quote helps me make a point while I'm in a conversation with a friend. I love collecting quotes, and even more so, reflecting back on them on a regular basis.

I also collect random snippets from books, magazines, posters, or other things that could be interesting to me in the future. Some of these are inspiring to me because of their layout, and some of them because of their contents. Many of these have inspired me to write articles, create advertisements for my business or helped me understand the world a little bit better. And again, the beauty is that each of those I have manually collected myself over the past years. I'm not just looking at a random Google search or Pinterest board, but MY OWN repertoire that I've curated. Each of those pieces is valuable to me personally, and I could explain exactly why for each of them.

The examples above are just some of the hundreds of things I collect in my repertoire.

I also save products I like and want to revisit later. A new headset. A motorcycle I like. A car that I've been dreaming about.

I save articles that interest me and then take "Mind Notes" next to those articles to help me reflect on them. I do the same with YouTube videos, but only special ones, ones that I want to revisit and come back to (there are a lot of "trashy" videos I watch on YouTube that don't need to go into my repertoire).

And then I save colors to my repertoire. All the time. I see a nice green, I save it straight to mymind. Whenever I work on a new project and look for nice colors, I come straight back to my repertoire to see what I collected there over the years.

It really could be anything.

Nr.6 — My recall methods

The random inspirational browse

The beauty of having your own curated repertoire is that you can browse through it whenever you feel uninspired and need a little kick in your ass.

I know it sounds almost too basic to write about, but people often collect hundreds of references but then never look at them again. They're buried somewhere on a hard drive or they have Pinterest boards with thousands of images all of which the have no real connection to. I truly believe that the way you collect also influences the way you then re-experience it. As mentioned above, if you are just saving things for the sake if it, you're just building a pile of uninteresting things.

I browse through mymind all the time. When I feel down, I just go there, have a little browse and immediately feel inspired by some of the things I saved, and know exactly what I want to work on next.

Searching for specific references

This is my main use case. Let's say I'm working on a specific print/branding project and I quickly need references for certain materials or print techniques. I just head to mymind, type in what I am looking for and I will likely immediately find it. I never created a folder or collection with "print inspiration" because that would be too broad for me. In my case, I was looking for an example that shows a beautiful "debossing effect" and that's what I searched for, and boom, there it is.

Some other times I might search for a foil stamp example, paper materials or whatever it might be. My repertoire is full of these references which I collected over the years and they serve me every single day.

Serendipity

There's a feature in mymind that is called "Serendipity" and you can already imagine what it is. Instead of showing you a grid of things, it just presents you with ONE item from your repertoire, and only ONE at a time.

It sort of slows down the way you look at things because instead of staring at a big grid of things with divided attention, you only look at ONE item and you make a conscious decision of either KEEPING it or DELETING it. But the real beauty is that it pulls things from my repertoire that I perhaps saved even years ago and didn't even know existed anymore. There are some surprising, serendipitous moments and I absolutely love it. Of course this is very specific feature to mymind, but I am sure you can apply this to any other system as well. You're just trying to break the linear access you usually have with your own database.

Same Vibe

There's a particular feature in mymind that I use all the time. It's called SAME VIBE and it basically finds more images with a "similar vibe" based on one reference image.

If I'm looking for a particular reference but want to find more like it, I just click the "Same Vibe" button. The beauty of Same Vibe is that it's not very literal in a sense that it won't find images that are EXACTLY the same, but it finds references that fit the same mood.

So for example, if I start from the necklace I posted above, I might find more references that have a similar art direction which sort of leads me down more rabbit holes of my own repertoire. Again, it's important to mention here that every image I see, is something I saved personally over the last years. Otherwise I could just go to Google Images or Pinterest, but that's not the point of my own repertoire.

Or another example. Here I'm just clicking "Same Vibe" on a car (an old Mercedes) I saved. I immediately get to see other cars from that era. I never tagged any of these images, I never created a collection or board, none of it.

The beauty of having your own repertoire is that I have all these references immediately available to me, and the beauty of mymind is that it gives me the tools to browse my own repertoire in ways I could've not imagined before.

Conclusion

I could keep talking and talking about this topic because it's very dear to me, but we have to end it somewhere.

To summarize:

1.) Keep your repertoire private. It changes everything.

2.) Build your repertoire today, and keep doing it forever. The longer you do it, the better it becomes. It's like investing, just that here you're investing in your own idea bank. Your own digital garden.

3.) Collect with intention, but find the perfect balance. Don't throw everything you see into your repertoire, but also don't be so picky that you never save anything. You're not here to impress anyone. Find a healthy balance.

4.) Keep your repertoire clean. Come back often, delete things if necessary and build a relationship with your repertoire. Don't let it turn into a graveyard or a collection of trash you don't care about.

5.) Most importantly: Give it time. Don't rush it. Use it a bit most days, and on some days don't use it at all. There's no pressure involved, and since it's entirely private, nobody will see what you're doing.

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