Once you’ve set your photo book goal for the year, it’s time to start gathering inspiration to define the vision for your photo book. To help define your vision, you’ll want to look for layouts, covers, fonts, colors, and an overall tone for your book.
There are several places I frequently turn to when I start my inspiration gathering for photo book projects. I’m sharing three of my favorite sources of inspiration with you plus an action step to get you started.
Pinterest is the first and most obvious place to go to for inspiration and to gather all of your favorite ideas in one place.
Some of my favorite search terms for Pinterest when looking for photo book inspiration are:
- photo book or photo book design
- magazine layouts
- editorial design
- color palette
- font or font combinations
To gather your ideas in one place, I want you to create a specific pin board for each photo book project. If you have 2-3 ideas you’re working through, you need a pin board for each one (unless you want to have a similar vision for all of the books). This will help consolidate your vision for one photo book instead of having to sift through and remember the ideas you originally had for your book.
This also means you can go through pins you’ve already collected on your standard boards and collect the ideas that relate to your current specific project.
Flipping through magazines is one of my favorite ways to feel inspired and more importantly motivated to get working on my photo book. Often when I go through magazines, it’s not about seeing a specific layout but more about seeing the design come together that makes me want to see my own photos come together on the page.
Another way magazines inspire my photo book vision is to see how more avant garde design comes together. Now, I realize magazine design is not the most experimental form of editorial design. However, it is the most accessible form I come across on a daily basis. This helps push some of the design concepts and things I want to try.
Two of my favorite magazines I go to for inspiration are Bon Appetit and Living.
Finally, I love visiting websites to feel inspired by design principles. While the composition of the elements are slightly different in web versus printed form, I glean a lot of ideas from seeing how the various fonts, colors, and blocks of photos come together on websites.
Here are a few items I pay attention to when visiting websites for inpsiration:
- What is the color palette and how are the colors used?
- How are titles incorporated on the page?
- What are the text style heirarchies established and how were they used?
- Are there design elements that make design more interesting?
- How does the organization help you move through the site?
- What is the overall feeling you experience when visisting the website?
- What design elements contributed to that feeling?
Now it’s your turn. Find your inspiration and gather them in a specific pin board on pinterest. This will collect all of your potential ideas and things that inspire you – all in one place.
Now, it’s important to title your board with your specific book project idea. You don’t want to use this board for any and every photo book idea.
Instead, you want to specifically gather ideas from pinterest, magazine and websites that speak directly to what you may want to use for your 2018 book project.
In the end, you may not use everything, however, it’s important to have a good place to start from. So create your board today and find at least 10 ideas to pin to your board to get started.
Want to follow along with my board? Click here to sign up.
