I will admit I am a mood board junkie. I love to make them myself and I love to look at those of others.  The mood board phase of my process is where I come up with some of the references, textures and trends I will use for my collection. This is also the time that I develop my color palette. Semi-side note- one of my favorite ways to create a color palette for a pattern is to take some beautiful photos from my destination inspiration and pull colors directly from the photo using the eyedropper tool in Adobe Illustrator. This probably sounds odd, but I feel that process lends some authenticity to my work- like somehow I’m being true to my inspiration by using the actual color captured there.

I also want to share two amazing resources for creating beautiful mood boards: http://www.unsplash.com and http://www.jaymantri.com. These two websites create and curate gorgeous high resolution photos that are under the Creative Commons Zero license which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer. I always like to attribute though, when I can. Artist honor code.

As you can see from this mood board, I have addressed the first two anchors of my design process:

• Destination Inspiration: Santorini in the Greek Isles
• Trend: Using a bright pop of citron
• Ideal Customer: Coming up in my next post

Attributions as promised! The photos in the mood board are courtesy of:

• Jay Mantri at http://www.jaymantri.com (washed textures and patterns from the sea)
• Mykonos by scott1723 on Flickr (door)
• Mykonos Town by DarkB4Dawn- modified on Flickr (boat and beach)
• Blue Dome @ Santorini Oia by Kevin Poh Flickr
• Santorini by Margaret Barley on http://www.unsplash.com

-Robin