Good morning! For those of you who traveled over from my post at The Knight Agency blog, or from The City Sage, thanks for visiting! I’m happy to introduce stylist extraordinaire Anne Sage, who has a wonderful post on putting together your own Inspiration Board.
She’s also graciously volunteered to create an inspiration board for the world of the SOME GIRLS BITE, and you can see that image below. I’ll post tomorrow (Tuesday) on the details I gave her regarding the inspiration board.
And don’t forget about our fabulous CONTESTS! THREE chances to win today!
Contest No. 1: One lucky commenter on will have the opportunity to work with Anne, who will create an (electronic) inspiration board just for him or her. What a great way to conceptualize a new manuscript, a new room, or a tricky scene. To enter the contest, leave a comment on this blog letting us know how, if at all, you organize your visual library! Contest closes at midnight CST on Wednesday, April 15!
Contest No. 2: Head back to Anne’s blog for a chance to win a signed copy of SOME GIRLS BITE!
Contest No. 3: Visit the original blog post at The Knight Agency to win a signed copy of SOME GIRLS BITE!
Take it away, Anne!
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Inspiration boards are an incredibly effective tool for communicating the look and feel of a project. I create inspiration boards every chance I get, whether I’m planning a party, redecorating a room in my house, or just fantasizing about my favourite color combination du jour. This is the first board I’ve every composed based on work of literature, and it proved to be every bit as fun as I thought it would be! The process for making inspiration boards can be as flexible as you like, but here are some tips I’ve learned the hard way!
1. Create an Image Library. It’s much easier to construct a board by picking and choosing from amongst images that you already have on your computer, rather than by searching the internet one image at a time. I organize images on my hard drive using a program called Yojimbo; it allows me to drag and drop straight from my web browser window, and it saves the source URL of the image. Photographers’ and artists’ management websites are a terrific place to find a wealth of images; I like Cameralink and Art Department for fashion imagery, and Re:Fresh Agency or Sarah Kaye Represents for interiors and still life. As well, when I happen across an image that I love in a magazine, I not only scan it but I also take note of the photographer’s name and check to see if he has an online portfolio. Feel free to explore the list of my favourite photographers in the sidebar of my blog.
2. Choose a starting point and set your guidelines. Putting together a board is quite an adventure; you never know exactly how it will end! But I always select one image as my foundation and refer back to it as I bring in other photos. This foundational image should capture all or most of the qualities that you’d like the finished board to have. In this instance, Chloe felt that the photo of three lounging women (second row, far left) perfectly summed up her vision of the novel’s aesthetic. I let that image dictate the color palette (blacks and greys with blue undertones, punctuated by warm splashes of coral and red), its textural notes (lots of glossy finishes and fluid draperies), as well as its overall mood (a louche yet pensive opulence). As the board came together, I always referred back to that original photo and used that criteria of palette, texture and mood as my filter for selecting additional images.
3. Keep an open mind. As with any narrative, surprises often pop up as a board evolves. For example, no chandelier appears in the image I used as my starting point, but several others of the photos I loved happened to have striking baroque chandeliers. I pushed farther with that recurring device and brought in not only more chandeliers but also shimmering glassware to mirror a chandelier’s reflective glow. The result? An unexpected complementary motif that enhances the luxurious tone of the board.
4. A Few Technical Details: I design my inspiration boards using InDesign, a publishing software in the Adobe Creative Suite. It takes a bit of getting used to but allows for great precision when cropping and aligning images. Another popular (free!) platform for making inspiration boards is Polyvore. It’s fairly straightforward to use, and people are creating some amazing collages with it. Of course you can’t go wrong with good old paper, scissors and glue! No matter how you create your board, be sure to take note of your sources–that way if you ever share your board in a public forum, you can give proper credit where credit is due.
Image Credits: Row 1: Katya de Grunwald, Elle Decoration October 2008, Domino Magazine, Christine RudolphRow 2: High Society: The History of America’s Upper Class by Nick Foulkes, Abbey Goes Design Scouting, Source Unknown, Sandra Lane Row 3: Sarah Kaye Represents, Kate French, Phil Poynter, James MerrellRow 4: Elle Decoration April 2009, James Merrell, Katya de Grunwald, Ditte Isager
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Thanks so much, Anne! And don’t forget to COMMENT! Good luck!
This is an awesome post! Thanks for sharing.
~Lindsey S
I really love this idea. I google search for images when I want to see something before I try to describe it in my scenes, but never thought of putting together a visual board.
And when I recently updated my Adobe Photoshop I opted to get InDesign as well, so this will give me a chance to learn how to use it.
Thanks for the great advice!
Thanks for introducing me to Yojimbo. It looks really easy to use, and effective. I’ve been using Curio, which lets you create multiple idea boards under one project, plus a lot of other functions I’ve barely scratched at yet.
So I’ve got individual boards for each setting, character, and so forth, but I’ve never taken the time to pull key images together. I’m like MeganRebekah, I think, using images as reference and research rather than inspiration or as something to pull me into the story world when I sit down to write. Definitely going to give it a try! Thanks!
Love the tips and links anne! I’ll have to give this a try. I’m in a bit of a rut so I think this will give me a good kick in the pants.
I’m here via the Knight blog. I just wanted to thank you for sharing such a neat idea, along with the resources for the technologically defunct like me. 🙂 Thanks!
Most of my images are one of 3 things: work from Deviant-art (which I save by creator name, genre, type–watercolor/cgi/etc), doujinshi fanart from my favorite circles (separated by doujinshi circle, then fandom, then pairing) and then photographs (which are really just a mishmash depending on which camera they came from).
This gave me ideas though! I’ll definitely have to look into Yojimbo since it can be a pain to open a the Word document to list the credit for each image.
The closest thing I have to an inspiration board is a manila envelope stuffed with pages torn out of magazines – things I fully intended to trim and glue to paper in classic collage fashion. I do, however, have my screen saver set to randomly display images saved in my pictures file and it’s surprised me the number of times I’ve somewhat half-heartedly looked over at my computer and been suddenly inspired by the random progression. I can really appreciate the process you go through, Anne, just as much as the completed project. Thanks for sharing and inspiring! 🙂
I’m only just starting to play around with inspiration boards, so these tips are so useful!
So far I’ve been storing all images I find in one folder on Picasa (my photo editing / storing program) but I’m taking Anne’s advice and finding something more professional like Yojimbo soon!
I am so technically challenged but this is an idea I have wanted to implement for awhile now. Inspiration boards are amazing.
I collect cool photos from around the web and stick them in files but had not figured out how to collage them none of my programs want to work with me but like I mentioned I am technically challenged.
I also am a big time magazine ripper.
Sometimes I still do it the old fashioned way, cardboard, magazine pages, glue. It works for me and I don’t have any programs to fight with.