Becoming a Certified Floral Designer (CFD)

Let’s talk about the credential process for florists. I know that in other fields, like people get credentials, right? Well, florists can get credentials too. And it might not take like a four year degree or master's program or something like that, but it takes a lot of experience and self-education because there’s not really a thing as flower school in the traditional sense. So you definitely need to be passionate about it to be able to advance. It's got to be your world. You've got to be willing to like put in the time to study and learn about all there is to learn about the world of floral and design. But there are some great opportunities out there. One that I've actually taken myself is through the American Institute of Floral Design (AIFD). I am a certified floral designer. CFD for short. You might have noticed my little credentials after my name on my podcast graphic or Instagram handle.

But yeah, back in 2020, I went and got that done. And it was a really rad experience and I'm going to tell you all about it. But first I have to kind of back up and explain kind of the umbrella that this CFD certification lives under. There is an organization and it's here in America so, but it's world known, it's known worldwide. It's called AIFD or the American Institute of Floral Designers. This is like an organization that the top designers in America are a part of and they're like the leaders in the industry essentially. They are like Let me see if I can explain this. So they're just hella passionate about flowers, hella talented, not saying there aren't florists that are not AIFD that are amazing and incredible and brilliant minds and brilliant artists. You do not have to be AIFD certified or CFD certified to be an incredible designer. This is just an opportunity for people who want the credentials and want additional resources in their career to rub shoulders with other people that are like-minded. Does that make sense? For example, there's a symposium hosted by AIFD every July and it's like this big networking opportunity. You get to see the newest floral supply stuff, the new flower varieties. It's a big convention that gets hosted once a year by people involved in AIFD. It's a super great opportunity if you're into that kind of thing, if you like you know, continuing your education and just trying to become a master in your field. It's a great opportunity to do that, but you can also become a master in your field without doing it. So there's kind of like... Some people think it's not necessary. Some people think it's very necessary. It's just all opinion-based. For the everyday person in the world, they kind of don't even know that this exists. And so I don't know if it will necessarily get you more cred with the everyday person, but it definitely gets you cred within the industry itself.

Now I had mentioned before that I've toured farms in Colombia, flower farms, back in 2019 and on my trip I actually got to rub shoulders with some AIFD people and that's what kind of like inspired me to want to like start on this journey to get certified is because I saw what these other people were doing in the floral industry and I just thought it was like a great community and like another networking opportunity and like, why not? You know, it's kind of like back in the day when I was a fine dining server, it wasn't required to become a sommelier, but I wanted to, cause I just like, there was a thing that I could do to get certified in something and I just went for it. Like that's just my personality. And after hearing about AIFD and CFD, I'm like, why not? I just want to go for it. So I have plans someday to try for my AIFD certification. It's not in the books this summer. Justin's sister's wedding is the weekend of symposium, and I'd much rather be with the family celebrating and having a good time at the wedding than testing for AIFD. But someday I will go and do it and get certified, or at least try to. I'll explain kind of how you become AIFD. It's pretty intense honestly, but first I will explain my CFD journey and what I had to do to become a certified floral designer.

So to become CFD, you have to take a test. It's a written test online, and you also have to be tested out on design. So to be able to do that, you have to go to a school, like a CFD school, and be taught by someone who is AIFD. So you can't just like get the test online and take it. It doesn't work that way. So there's actually a huge textbook that you want to study up on and kind of familiarize yourself with before attending class. Because in class, we are going to be taught design by the instructor. But we also like want to know what the terminology is before going so we can kind of like put things together. So we are going to be tested in class and on the online test on the principles of design as well as the elements of design. I'll just read them off for you just for fun.

So the principles of design are balance, dominance, contrast, rhythm, proportion, and scale. The elements of design are light, space, line, form, size, pattern, texture, and color. So we're going to want to know our color wheel, we're going to know want to know you know what balance is in a design and asymmetry and Texture and all these things that we designers have to think of when we're putting flowers together so Um, I actually flew down to Houston to attend school at the Houston School of Flowers. There wasn't a local like AIFD person here in Utah hosting CFD education. So I knew I had to travel somewhere and Keith White with the Houston School of Flowers was hosting like a weekend class, like long weekend class. In other states they would do like two nights a week for five weeks and that just didn't work for my schedule since I had to travel. So I went to the Houston School of Flowers, and I was taught under Keith White. He is still teaching, so if this interests you, I highly, highly recommend going down there. He is a brilliant, brilliant floral designer. So kind, such a big heart, and just really cares about his students and wants everyone to succeed. It was super cool to meet him.

So yeah, I went down, we spent the days like learning about the different designs and then also like in school, right? We had like PowerPoint time where we were going over the different terminology and then I would go home to my Airbnb every night and like study and it was a really cool experience. So Keith or your instructor at the school will like judge you on the design portion. At the end of the course, you know, you're making all these different designs to show the elements and principles of design. And then he will test you out on that and submit that for you. And then following the class, um, you have X amount of days to do like the online test. So this is like all the information from the book that you then take your online test. And if you pass both the like design portion and the online test portion, you become CFD.

So then the other credential is AIFD, and that is more intense, as you can imagine. So the symposium that I was talking about earlier that AIFD hosts every year in July is where you go test out. So this is like a design test, essentially. You have four hours to complete five designs. and you're like in a room with everybody else and people are watching you and I've never seen it. I've never been to symposium but I can imagine it's like pretty stressful and could feel almost like you're on a game show or something because you're like there with all the other contestants and it's like you're trying to beat the clock because you have to do five designs in four hours and it just like I don't know, it feels exciting. I can imagine the energy there is really like a mix of feelings, right? Like exciting and cool, but stressful and just like competitive, even though you're only competing against yourself. Yeah, it seems super rad. So someday I'm going to go do this. This is me like putting it out into the universe. Um, but yeah, you are asked to design something from like the following categories. So a wedding design, a flower to wear design, so like boots corsages or body work, like necklaces, whatever, um, a flower arrangement, a sympathy design and a designer's choice. So they kind of leave it up in the air of what design in each of those categories you want to design in, but they are going to be judging you on creativity, scale, unity, balance, focal emphasis, line, depth, color, your mechanics if they're professional, what you interpreted from the category, proportion, physical balance, visual balance, movement, rhythm, harmony, texture, like the list goes on. You have to show the elements and principles of design that you were tested out on CFD here in your designs on AFD, but you have more creative freedom. Like Keith kind of told us exactly what to design and we designed it together as a group as like more of a learning kind of a thing. But here it's like you have creative freedom. But you're given like a specific set of flowers. So like everyone's given the same set of flowers and the same materials. Materials being like wire and foam and you know all these different materials used to design the container for your arrangement. And you have to come up with the design showcasing those elements and principles. Um, so yeah, that's how you become AIFD. It's like exciting and scary to me. I think it could be super rad and I know a few AIFD designers, like I mentioned before, and they're super rad people and yeah, that's kind of a continue your education as a floral designer and getting your credentials. at least here in America. I don't know what it's like in other places, but these like CFD, AIFD are known like worldwide. I just feel like it was important for me to become CFD. And now there's like this challenge of becoming AIFD and I just like want to go for it someday. So anyways, I hope you guys are having a beautiful day and I will catch you next time. Bye.