How building a 'secret repertoire' helps you generate original ideas

As creatives, we're expected to pull original ideas out of thin air. But here's the thing: we're not actually coming up with something from nothing.

In truth, our ideas stem from our personal experiences – the visuals, moments, cultural references, music, movies, architecture, designs and other inspiration we mentally collect over our lifetime. Those fragments accumulate and grow, and we later draw upon them and find connections among them. This is what leads us to truly original ideas.

As a creative, this personal repertoire of resources and references is your secret weapon.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you have your own – it may be all in your head, in screenshots scattered around your desktop and phone, or collected in a shoebox under your bed. But these kinds of haphazard methods will only get you so far. A more intentional approach will quite simply help you generate better ideas.

Many creatives today are now using a tool called mymind for this purpose, and we couldn't recommend it more.

In our previous article, we introduced you to this game-changing platform. Now, let's dive deeper into how you can use mymind to build your own secret repertoire of visual inspiration, keep your creative thoughts organised and, most importantly, private.

The importance of privacy

First things first: Your repertoire should be completely private. And this is not just a 'nice to have' thing: it's actually crucial if it's going to be effective.

That might not sound obvious, but think about it. Ultimately your creative process is deeply personal, and the sources that inspire you are unique to your artistic journey. So the moment you have it open to other people, you'll be altering your behaviour to meet their expectations or trying to impress.

This changes the entire dynamic of your creative relationship with yourself. Only when you're free from the pressure of social validation or the fear of judgment can you find your voice and unique point of view.

This is why we love mymind: it's a completely private space for everything that inspires you. It's your own digital garden, hidden from prying eyes and free from the pressures of curating for an audience.

How to build your repertoire organically

So how do you go about building your repertoire? The key is to save anything and everything that sparks your interest, even if you don't have an immediate use for it. It's all about saving things that evoke strong feelings in you – positive or negative – without worrying about their immediate relevance.

mymind makes this process effortless with its browser extension and mobile app. See an inspiring image while browsing? One click and it's saved. The AI-powered system takes care of organising everything you save, so you don't have to worry about doing it yourself.

And here's something else that's very important. You want to collect ambivalently and passively – but not indifferently.

In other words, don't save every single thing you see or dump someone else's entire moodboard into mymind. You won't have any personal connection to it that way. Save only those things that make you stop in your tracks for a moment.

Finally, be patient: building a valuable repertoire takes time. It's not about bulk-saving thousands of images in one go; it's about consistently adding pieces that resonate with you over time. That's why mymind allows your collection to grow organically, mirroring the natural way your mind accumulates experiences and inspirations.

How to find inspiration when you need it

Here's another thing that's great about mymind. When you need something later, it's easy to just search for it.

Say you're working on a branding project and quickly need references for certain materials or print techniques. Head to mymind, type in what you're looking for and you'll likely find it.

Despite the fact that you never created a folder or collection with "branding" or "print inspiration", you wanted to reference this special packaging or material you remember seeing. And by simply typing it in, you found it.

You know that poster you saw last year and saved to mymind? Now you need typography inspiration for a project, so you just search "poster" or "typography," or even the colour of the poster, and you'll find that, too.

mymind can even read handwriting or text that appears within an image, so you can search any word you remember seeing on the poster to find it that way.

Remember too that a repertoire isn't just images. That's why mymind allows you to save and search through text content as well. You can save quotes, articles, videos, music and more to create a rich, multi-dimensional library of inspiration.

This is all a world away from what most of us have done at some point: collect hundreds of references but then never look at them again. They got buried somewhere on a hard drive, or deep in a Pinterest board somewhere.

The lesson we learned then was the way you collect inspiration influences the way you internalise it. If you're mindlessly saving things without feeling something about it, you're just creating a heap of random visuals you'll likely forget about a week later.

With mymind, in contrast, your repertoire becomes a living, breathing extension of your real mind. Here are a few cool features that can further help you explore your secret repertoire of information.

1. Embrace randomness with Serendipity

One of mymind's unique features, Serendipity, presents you with random items from your collection. This feature helps you rediscover forgotten inspirations and make unexpected connections. It's like stumbling upon an old sketchbook and finding ideas you'd forgotten about – but in a digital, easily accessible format.

2. Create moodboards variations on the fly

With other moodboarding platforms, you build a static board and give that platform the reins on what you may or may not see from there (often, it will be a sponsored ad). With mymind, your moodboards are dynamic and viewable from many different angles.

When you need to find specific inspiration, mymind's smart search feature uses AI to understand the content of your saves. This means you can search by keyword, brand, colour or even abstract concepts, and mymind will unearth relevant results from your collection.

For searches or collections you return to often, try Smart Spaces – dynamic collections that automatically sort your saves based on criteria you set. This allows you to sort your content without the hassle of manual organisation.

3. Find connections with Same Vibe

With the Same Vibe feature, mymind can curate images you've saved that match the visual mood, lighting, style or content of your selected image. This helps you explore themes and styles more deeply, often leading to unexpected creative directions.

Conclusion

In today's digital age, our minds constantly process vast amounts of visual information. mymind offers a way to extend your cognitive capacity, creating a private, organised space for all the visual thoughts that inspire you.

By building your secret repertoire with mymind, you're not just collecting pretty pictures – you're creating a powerful tool that enhances your creative process. It's a personal, evolving library of inspiration that grows with you, always ready to spark your next big idea.

​​ Remember, your visual repertoire is a reflection of your unique creative journey. Keep it private, let it grow organically, and trust in the power of your curated visual thoughts. With mymind, you have the perfect tool to gather, organise and leverage your visual inspiration, in a way that's as unique as your creative vision.

Start building your secret repertoire today and watch your creative potential unfold in ways you never imagined.