The Analog Renaissance, Episode 5: Inside My Process

My crew was ready, the cameras were rolling, and someone said, okay, Bonnie, whenever you're ready, go ahead and start recording. And I literally froze. Not like a cute little pause. I'm talking deer in the headlights. I want to run away. I want to crawl out of my skin and go live under a rock. This was day number one of filming the brand new Surface Design Immersion course. For the first time ever, I had no real notes and no teleprompter. Just me, a camera, and four people that I love dearly staring back at me. I felt so incredibly awkward. I felt exposed and wildly underprepared. I had been thinking about this forever, but these people looking back at me have never seen this part of the process. I'm usually alone doing all of the recording, and so they see a polished final version and. And I just felt like they're expecting brilliance to come out of me, and I had none. Like, I'd somehow shown up to give a speech and forgotten the entire English language. And honestly, like, I wasn't up for it. I wasn't enough for it. Who did I think I was? What are we doing here? It was the pressure cooker of everything, coming down to the moment that we finally begin months and months of preparing, hiring a professional film crew, and all of a sudden, it was time. And I was just like, wait, what? So I did what any totally rational person would do. I kicked them all out kindly and lovingly. But I said, you guys, I think I need you to leave. I gotta work this out all alone. So what happened next was that they left laughing, and I had a little cry all by myself in front of the camera. And Henry, our videographer, would slip in and press record and then tiptoe out. I filmed lessons alone. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Lessons in with no audience and no pressure, just one take at a time. And I worked out the weirdness, I worked out the awkwardness. And eventually I let them back in. But not all at once, one by one. And it was okay. It was more than okay. But this course was different because it needed to be different. It needed to show me off the cuff. It needed to show me more conversational, needed to show my process and where I gather inspiration. And it needed to be real and raw and messy. And that meant vulnerable, too. And that, my friends, is not my favorite place to be. I long to feel more comfortable being messy and raw and vulnerable with you. But I just. It's hard. It's not my favorite. It's like I almost don't know how to do it. It's not my favorite place to live and so I have to try really hard to just show up. Like, what a concept. So hands on learning, my whole creative process is the number one goal that we set out to capture. Welcome back to the Analog Renaissance. This is a nine part series and we're in episode number four where I'm sharing the eight ways that we're leaning into this analog moment as creatives and entrepreneurs. Each episode focuses on one shift that we've made over the last 18 months. What it's done for us, what we've learned, how we've applied it inside our business, and how you can begin to apply it in yours as well. In the last episode, we talked about physical proof. So creating things that people can hold that deepen their belief today builds directly on that. And if you want more context, you'll want to listen to the first episode of this series called the Wake Up Call. This episode is all about hands on learning and why designing education that gets people off of their screens, even in an online education system, him is the most powerful decision that you can make right now. Now, this is the setting. I hired a video team, I flew out my crew. I got my best friend and photographer Callie to come too. And we stepped into my garden to film and teach. Hands on. It was 70 degrees, sunny, low humidity was such a gift to my hair. It was absolute perfection. Nobody was sweating, nobody was frizzing up and nobody was freezing. Truly, the Lord gave us that day. What we captured was color and inspiration, gathering and creative practice and storytelling. And golden sunlight pouring through the leaves. And birds chirping like they knew they were part of the soundtrack. And dahlias brushing against my hand and chickens running about like feathered supervisors. And the first time ever I filmed surface design immersion in my own garden. I've taught this course since 2018. Since then, I've gathered all of my inspiration from my own garden. I've re recorded it every two years. And somehow I'd never thought to bring students here to the place where almost all of my work actually begins. So we stepped into my studio to film and teach. Hands on. This time we're done in the garden. The scene is my studio. The wallpaper I designed covering the walls, massive patterned panel across books and florals. Color and textured, layered literally everywhere the textiles hung, we had fabric stacked. Everything was swatched. Every inch of that room was filled with pattern and story and history. And it's mirroring our world right now. There is absolutely a print and pattern resurgence happening. Patterned accessories are up by 3,000% on Etsy. The wallpaper market is projected to grow by 28% by 2030. Digital textile printing is up by 100%. You're seeing it everywhere. Vogue and Martha Stewart. It's called pattern drenching. Color has arrived. The world is hungry for pattern after years of kind of beige and bland. And what we're hearing over and over and over again is that brands are actively looking for designers with a fresh perspective. This is why I'm teaching this free workshop that I told you about in the last episode. It's called the Print and Pattern Pattern Revival. Because my friends, we are literally in a revival. It is happening February 11th through the 16th, and I'll link the sign up in the show notes or you can join@bonniecristine.com Revival Pattern is having a moment. From bold wallpaper to checkered mugs to stripy pajamas and floral notebooks, the world is embracing color and texture and personality again. We are officially living in the era of pattern drenching. And honestly, I'm so here for it. If you've been noticing it too, and thinking, I wonder if I could make patterns? You absolutely can. And the best way to do it is by using Adobe Illustrator. It's where I created my very first repeating pattern over a decade ago, and it's still the tool that I use and teach today. Because it's designed for this kind of creative work and it's trusted across the entire industry on a global basis, Illustrator makes designing seamless repeating patterns feel intuitive. You can easily tweak colors, scale your artwork, and move things around without starting over. Everything stays crisp because it's all vector based. And when you're ready to put your pattern onto a real product, well, Illustrator works beautifully with printers, manufacturers and licensing partners. So whether you're creating patterns for your notebooks, your living room walls, or dreaming of turning your creativity into a career, Illustrator helps your ideas go from sketch to look at what I made. Head on over to our show notes, Open Adobe Illustrator and have some fun. Pattern is having a moment, and Illustrator is how you join it. Now, this is the math that takes my breath away. Every industry in every country in every aisle in the entire world is touched by print and pattern. Every piece of wrapping paper at Target, every bolt of fabric at at your local quilt store, every notebook at Anthropologie, every wallpaper swatch at Spoonflower. Someone designs them and they get paid for it. Our favorite way is through licensing deals, royalty checks, contract work, and print on demand. This is a multi Billion dollar industry with a proven path and most people still don't even know that it exists. The timing is really impeccable as well. You're not too late. You're not early either, but you're not late right now. You'd be right on time. There is a window of opportunity. The industry is calling you, but windows are not going to stay wide open forever. Here's what we know. Students are exhausted. Studies show that 65% of online students report higher stress due to video fatigue. And people are overwhelmed by endless watching, scrolling and consuming. And yet, most online education still asks one thing. Can you watch just one more video? So this is the opportunity that we saw. When you design learning that intentionally gets people off of their screens, you immediately stand out. You become the thing that feels different, the thing people remember, the thing that they actually finish. In a world full of talking heads and endless tabs, hands on learning is the differentiator. So the shift that we made was to learning by doing this is the shift that we have built into every module in Surface Design Immersion. We stopped assigning lessons that end with, okay, I'll see you in the next video, and we started designing learning that looks like this instead. It goes from screen time followed by analog action in their garden or in their studio. Gathering inspiration. Learning paired with doing, laying out color swatches and gathering ephemera information paired with implementation. So sketching and mapping out their collection, pencil in hand and ideas paired with proof. Holding something in your hand that you made with your own pattern on it. This became our new rule. Every module ends with an off screen action and creates proof of work, an artifact of your progress, something that you can hold. What this looks like in practice is for us, in our course, a physical mood board created by hand by the student and then printed. Color stories and motif explorations, an art print that they design and print themselves. And then finally a product that they've created using print on demand with their pattern on it. And finally a physical portfolio by the end. So instead of asking, did you watch the lesson? We can ask, did you make that thing? And that's when learning stopped living in our heads and started living in our hands. Nowhere did this shift come to life more clearly than that day in the garden. Because surface pattern design has never been just about, you know, keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Illustrator. It is so much more than that. It is about noticing and living your life and gathering and paying attention. Surface design is about claiming a way of living a creative life that's full and present and made by hand. So for the first time, we redesigned the 2026 course to fully embody that. We filmed where the work actually begins and takes place. The process for me looks like this. Picking flowers from the garden actually starts way before that. I pick them out of a catalog, a paper catalog first. Then I order them, then I plant them and watch them grow. Then I pick them in the garden. I study their shapes and their details, and I doodle and sketch them by hand, pressing petals and stems in a flower press and arranging them and scanning them. And then I translate them into patterns for fabric and wallpaper and notebooks. I am not a grandiose artist or a prodigy painter. I need you to hear this. I don't have an art degree. I don't make fine art. Honestly, I. I can hold a brush and a pencil and pick out paints that I like. And that's about it. Surface pattern design. You don't have to be a fine artist in the traditional sense. You do have to enjoy being creative. You'll notice things, gather things, curate things, direct things. I notice flowers in the garden. I scoop them up, trace, press them, scan them, paint them, arrange them into patterns, and then direct them like a dance, onto fabrics and gift wrap and wallpaper and greeting cards. We are deeply in the joy of creating. And when learning happens this way, hands on, tactile, super immersed. Something shifts and the noise just kind of begins to quiet. Things fall away, the doubt loses its grip and the pressure to perform or, or meet up to some standard begins to fade away. Because you can see your progress come to life. And that is when momentum takes over. And instead of wondering if you're good enough, people start saying, look at what I made. That's it. That's the whole secret. So this is your takeaway. I want you to include screen time paired with action that takes people off of the screen. That provides proof of work, artifacts. Here's my question for you. What could your student or your audience hold that proves their progress? It doesn't have to be elaborate either. It could be a printed checklist or a handwritten reflection, or a letter that they write to themselves, or a sketch or a one page plan taped above their desk. Even the simplest physical creation is deeply satisfying. And when learning leaves the screen and enters into the real world, people will linger, they stay longer, and they tend to finish more. And they believe in themselves faster. So we spent eight hours that day filming in my garden, and then we spent days in my pattern filled studio capturing the simple, grounded magic that is surface pattern design. The noticing the gathering, the quiet joy of turning something real into something beautiful. Now, in the next episode, I'm sharing with you what might be the most intentional, analog, and delightfully low tech part of the entire course. No software, no screens. Just your hands. And a magical moment that made everyone on my team stop and say, wait. Are we really doing this? I can't wait to show you why we believe the future of online education just might begin with a box arriving at your doorstep. My friends. Create the beauty that you want to see. Come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.