Developing moodboards and weaving colour stories

Here I am, finally getting to write about one of my favourite activities from my fashion class; developing moodboards and colourboards! I have looked at various "aesthetic" moodboards while scrolling through Pinterest for the 100th time in a day but I never truly understood what a moodboard stands for or what it comprises until I was taught about it in class. Moodboards, apart from serving aesthetics have another purpose, which is to collect various pictures which records the vibe of the project or even a fashion collection.

It gives us a sense of direction which will help us travel in the right path and not deviate from the core idea.

Now what is one main aspect of a moodboard? It is the colour palette. Our surroundings are made up of colours thus making it look lively. Imagine how lifeless the world will be without colours. Choosing colour stories is vital, just random colours would not do the job. Communicating one's emotions and stories is possible by selecting a suitable colour scheme. Colour schemes are largely derived from the moodboard itself.

This post will be divided into 4 sections:

1. Making your moodboard

2. Familiarising yourself with Adobe Color

3. Selecting certain pictures to form colour palette

4. Using the moodboard as a whole to form a range of colours

Now let's get started!

1) Making your moodboard

The very first step to creating a moodboard is identifying our concept and the concept could be anything, be it nature, space or anything that talks to you on a personal level. One thing which is important is to choose something which is specific and not too general. For example, if I choose nature, what is it that I like about nature or what inspires me from nature is what I would keep in mind while choosing an idea. We can also choose words like euphoria or love and brainstorm ideas on what that word communicates to us. While brainstorming ideas it is better when we can attach personal meanings to it because the word euphoria can convey different things to different people. Nevertheless, the question that has to be answered is what does it convey to you.

Moving forward with my process on creating moodboards, my moodboard was inspired from the word "HOPE". This is because it is by far one of my most favourite words and I intended to capture the very same through my moodboard. Once the concept was chosen, I went ahead and brainstormed ideas based off of what that word imparted to me and put it down in the form of a mind map.

The picture above is a snippet of my mind map in which I have put down all the ideas that sparked in my head when I thought of the word hope. Some ideas are general while some are personal. Adding personal ideas is significant because that will make the moodboard truly yours, something built on your emotions and thoughts.

After framing a mind map it is time to go ahead and find relevant pictures to the ideas we put down on the mind map. For my moodboard for example, I went ahead and decided to use certain specific ideas like butterflies and sunflowers so finding relevant pictures is not that taxing. I also chose to use words like positive radiation or optimism, which took me time to find relevant pictures.

For the same concept "HOPE", I tried juxtaposing various images and coming up with different boards. Even the same images, if arranged differently induces a huge difference, so try playing with different layouts and pictures.

#1

I chose to keep this layout very clean and simple yet letting the pictures communicate my core concept. Although the arrangement of the pictures could be worked on, I wanted to keep it as a process of moodboard building and how sometimes not everything will happen in the first go.

When I look at the pictures, I can clearly think of why it belongs to this moodboard. For example, let us take the sunrise picture (bottom right corner). I chose to include it because the sunrise depicts the start of a new day, a new beginning which to me says that I have another day to accomplish things which gives me hope. All in all, it is important to analyse the pictures you choose to include and think about how it actually relates to the core idea.

#2

The above moodboard is a slightly different variant of the first one as most of the pictures remain the same. Couple new pictures have been added like the sun rays peeking and a tiny plant growing on the tree, both of which to me symbolise hope. The feeling of warmth the sun rays offer, restores hope that it's yet another beautiful day with a lot of new opportunities flooding in. A tiny sapling growing amidst nowhere shows that faith in yourself will make the impossible possible. Just a little hope!

#3

This is my third and final moodboard which also turns out to be my personal favourite for I love the ways the pictures are juxtaposed and all the pictures precisely convey my concept. The colour theme of this board is centred around warmer tones and except for the sudden pop of the serene blue and sprightly green. Here again the sunflower and the sun are pertinent and have been carried forward from my previous moodboard. The imagery of light peeking through the dark conveys that even in the darkest of days, something good will happen. Just hang on to the last strand of hope.

2) Familiarising yourself with Adobe Color

Since the moodboard is done, it brings us to the next part which is choosing our colours. For this, we can use the Adobe Color software which will help us with choosing our palette. Instead of using a colour picker to pick each colour, Adobe Color makes our job easy by picking 5 colours at once which again can be changed by moving the pointers on the picture. Without much ado, let us understand how to work with Color:

Step 1: open Adobe Color and click on create option

Step 2: Go to extract theme option

step 3: Now either drag and drop and fashion image, photography, artwork etc. or open the downloaded image by clicking on it

Step 4: Now you will be able to see 5 different colour swatches with their hex codes mentioned below them

That is it! That is how simple picking colours from the moodboard is, so go ahead and try dropping in a few images and see the variety of colour swatches you can create!

Exploring colours through fashion images and artworks

#1

This fashion image is from Pyer Moss's summer spring 2020 collection and I feel like these exuberant and lively colours go very well with this season since the colours are much brighter during summer and spring. Crazy and bold prints can be seen much during this season around.

#2

This fashion image is from the YSL Fall 2020 collection and the colours appear rather subdued and deep compared to the first image. The colours according to me are mature than playful in comparison to the previous image. The blue also seems to dominate the pink and I loved the crossover of blue and darker pink.

#3

This is an artwork by Nicholas Roerich called Krishna (spring in Kulu) and also one of his best artworks. The play of the cooler tones and warmer tones makes it interesting. Even though the blue is dominating, the subtle traces of warm yellow and brown adds an interesting touch to the art.

#4

The colour scheme for the image above seems to be rather monochromatic because of the shades of red. I grew to like this colour swatch and decided to use these colours in my next work which led me to creating more Rorschach inkblot painting.

The purpose of learning will only be fulfilled when you utilise it in other areas so as and when you create new colour swatches make sure to utilise it in your work. Since colours play a predominant role, choosing the right colour story becomes important to convey the right emotions.

3) Selecting certain images to form a colour palette

Once you get familiar with Adobe Colour, we can go ahead and choose 1 or 2 interesting pictures from the moodboard and draw colours from them. I prefer making moodboards and colourboards in Photoshop. Once we get a colour palette for the selected image in Adobe Color, we can add that to the swatch library in photoshop. Now that that's done, Just go ahead use the colour picker and drop in your swatches beside the chosen image.

The first picture I chose was a direct reference to the word hope, but the different colours on the stone is what made it interesting. The colour palette ended up being a blue monochromatic themed one. We have an array of deeper and mature blues on the top to more younger and softer blues at the bottom.

Another picture I decided to make a colour story for was this bewitching sunrise picture. The colours which I chose to develop from this picture was a series of browns, pinks and a mix of both. From the grounded brown on the top to the playful pink at the bottom, the colour swatches remind me of lipstick shades. This is exactly the reason for making moodboards and developing colours from them, it fizzes various ideas on product development which could also be the successive stage.

This particular picture to me is very pertinent to convey the concept of "HOPE". The beautiful rainbow blesses our eyes with its presence after a downpour, yet again symbolising how beautiful things will happen but it just takes some time. The colours of the rainbow and the sky as well look extremely alluring in the above picture which is why I chose the same to extract colours. The shades from the swatches are mostly shades of purple and pink. The pop of the beige with a hint of green is quite muted and looks reserved but still stands out from the rest of the colours.

4) Using the mood board as a whole to form colour swatches

Just like how we used select pictures from the board to weave our own colour stories, the exact same thing can be done by using the entire moodboard. Just drop a picture of the full moodboard and go haywire! Play around with different colour palettes by moving the pointers around and just witness how many new colour stories come up within a matter of 30 minutes! Take it to the next level by pulling out few colours from all the swatches which you had created and make a colour board comprising of 7 to 8 swatches.

#1

I played around with the pointers on the moodboard and ended up having nearly 24 colour palettes! You could try even more but personally I already had few recurring colours which looked alluring and which I felt would go with the overall vibe of the board.

Final colour swatches

And here we go, the final range of colours after exploring different colour swatches. I personally love this colour palette because it does justice to my core idea. Overall, the colours can be paired with one another to create even more exciting colour narratives.

I wanted to try to weave another colour story and so used my 3rd moodboard to pick colours and create swatches

#2

click on the sidebar to see the colour swatches

Now it is time to make a separate colour swatch board and group together shades of the same colour. This will then help us to filter down to a final line of 7 to 8 colours which will become the core colours of the product ( in my case garments) one will be designing.

The final range of colours had a nice range of warmer shades which does justice to the moodboard as the predominant palette was a warm one. The cooler colours are also more pastel which makes them look young and cheerful. Overall this palette gives me summer/spring vibes because of the brighter and pastel tones. A lot of different colour combos could be worked out and interesting range of products can be made thereafter.

From the first mind map where we had to brainstorm ideas to finalising a colour story, it is quite undeniable how engrossing and intriguing it was. The final moodboard and even Colourboard transforms into something personal. Working on this activity got me believing how important it is to build moodboards. Moodboards apart from setting the vibe of your work will also help you get back on track when you feel lost. Colour itself translates to vigour and trying to communicate through colour swatches is something gripping to me atleast.

Here we are, at the end of a flamboyant post. Continue working on newer concepts and concepts that make your heart mellow. Don't forget, keep associating meanings to every idea or picture on your moodboard along with experimenting with various colour stories.

Narrate YOUR story through the moodboard and colourboard you make! Meet you in my next "messy" post, until then

Diksha

(a.k.a the fashion student you vicariously live through :))