It is quiet and snowy in the Berkshires today, a perfect day for listening to Red House Painters on repeat — something I indulged in too frequently as a moody high-schooler — and beginning design work on my latest project.

Before I begin the design phase of any new website, I like to make a digital sort of inspiration collage to help me focus on tone and palette. So, I poke around the web, leaf through my print materials, and start cutting and pasting in Photoshop. My latest project’s inspiration board looks like this:

In the collage is some stock photo (mostly from Veer), illustrations and a book cover from Jessica Hische, more covers from the company’s line, an awesome kitchen (from Blueprint, I think), fabrics from Amy Butler, images of local landscapes, and various textures and patterns found around the web.

Picking up on an idea from the wonderful Kris’s Color Stripes, I’ve laid out a few color bars:

Now, the hard part — translating all of this into a website that looks great.