Many people cannot articulate what makes a good or bad design — they just know when they see it. For Rebekah Fessenden, honing that vision has been a lifelong learning process and her passion.

“I knew as a kid that I liked interior design,” said Fessenden, owner of Seed Design Company. “And here I am, still hanging twinkly lights,” she quipped.

“Definitely in hindsight I can see the thread of one thing leading to another. A lot of people don’t see things this way. It is a special gift. I was imaginative and creative, always putting on plays with my siblings, creating backdrops and scenes.”

Fessenden described what she does as creating design space for an event or a retailer.

“That can involve anything from lighting, draping, floral work, candles, creating an entire interior or exterior space that has some kind of resonance for the couples, as well as hiding certain things that they don’t want to highlight that day,” she said.

Fessenden likens her work to that of a photo filter, a visual acuity with each filter imparting personality to a scene. It’s a skill she nourished as a fine arts major, focusing her efforts on creativity. When she graduated, Fessenden saw herself working in the corporate world.

“That’s what my vision of success was,” she said. “The hard part is, I learned my creativity gets stifled when too many parameters are put upon it. That’s quite often the case in the corporate atmosphere. When I became happiest in my work was when I accepted the fact that I would be self-employed, and I embraced that and trusted in my own talents, rather than trying to fit into someone else’s vision.”

She soon discovered she was good at creating window displays for retailers and creating in-store designs to help with marketing. When Fessenden moved to Port Townsend from the San Francisco Bay area, she introduced herself to local retailers, offering her consulting services.

“Someone approached me and asked me if I could do wedding design,” she said. “There was no one around who was willing to get up on a ladder to hang draperies and twinkly lights, and I had been working in retail stores with 20-foot ceilings so I had no fear of that.”

The joy of the work, she confessed, comes from helping with peoples’ most personal moments.

“It is special to work with them and create a vision and manifest that vision, then move on to the next project,” she said. “That fits me so well and I can continue this cycle of creation.”

She said the seeds of this career were planted by her father and paternal grandmother.

“My grandmother was a wildlife photographer and she would take amazing photographs of, like, a leaf on the ground,” Fessenden explained. “My dad was a woodworker and carpenter with incredible design sense. They are the two people who most strongly grounded my appreciation for visual design.”