Kerri Brock, a client and a very great friend, approached me about creating a journal that guided the reader towards their purest, most genuine version of self. The journal also leveraged her knowledge of VIA Character Strengths, but when I started reviewing the Virtues and Traits, I felt having images for all 30 would be overwhelming and that there was no commonality between the icons used in the VIA Character Strengths, so I suggested focusing on just the 6 Virtues. We kept the assigned colours, but I muted them to pastels. Next, I did symbolism research and confirmed that animals represent character strengths in many cultures, so I assigned an animal to each Virtue: Owl (wisdom), Lion (courage), Dove (humanity), Butterfly (transcendence), Eagle (justice) and Wolf (temperance). Based on the watercolour droplets of the cover design, I custom designed each Virtue.
After reading the first draft, I was inspired by the phrase, “health and flourishing of humanity”. It brought to mind the trend of adult colouring books and how Albert Einstein used both his left and right brain to increase his creativity.
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” ~ Albert Einstein
So I dropped the colour in the animals and added black outline florals for a meditative and soothing aspect to the book. I just love the final result!
