Creating a Digital Storyboard / Wedding Inspiration Board

Following many questions that I received from scholarship entrants, I am primarily writing this post as a supplement to the "Fabulous + Graceful" Backstage Bridal Pro Scholarship Contest, however this information will be useful to anyone who is interested in using digital storyboard to visually articulate your proposal for a client's vision. I call them storyboards, but you may have heard them called inspiration boards because they inspire ideas. However, I like the word storyboard because I when I work on design for my clients, I pair it with a written description that works alongside the visual to paint a story in their minds of the fabulous idea I have pulled together to articulate their wedding day vision.

You do not have to own Photoshop or be a tech savvy graphic designer to create them for your clients or for this Scholarship Contest. The internet is an endless source of inspiration. Everything you need to create a beautiful storyboard is at your fingertips... literally! There are many online board makers and tools to choose from but to keep it simple, I'm going to share my favorite and what I find to be the absolute easiest around.

I {puffy heart} Style Me Pretty!
As the largest and most visited wedding blog around, if SMP were a corporation, it would be among the conglomerates of this world. It is a behemoth of gorgeous images and all things pretty. The best of the best wedding photography and the most stylish weddings can be found here, ready to be used in your storyboard. Their inspiration board maker not only has the most beautiful content, but it also the most user-friendly. Here is a step by step with screen shots on using Style Me Pretty's Inspiration Board Maker:

1. You will need to either create a login or login using Facebook. Once you do, you can to enter the Board Maker by clicking "Build A Board", which can be found on any of their pages.

2. This will take to the next page which will display a grouping of photos. You will need to select "Board Builder" on the right hand side.

3. Choose your template.


4. You can now choose to search for images using popular "tags" or

by "color" or

by "categories".

5. To get started I chose to use color and when a color I chose was selected, I was then given a broader range of choices within that color family.

6. You then end up with a selection of images that are tagged with the choice you made. There is an arrow near the bottom of the images so you can scroll through the many images within that selection.

7. When you find an image you love, you simply drag it over to the template. (Drag and drop feature does not work using Explorer, but does work with Chrome, Firefox and Safari). You can then resize and reposition the images in the board or remove and replace images for others.

I chose to go with a soft pink and creamy caramel vintage feel to create this storyboard:

If you choose to use SMP's Inspiration Board Maker to create your storyboard for the Scholarship Contest, they also provide you with an embed code. Please feel free to copy and paste this code and send to us to use for the blog post of your entry along with the names and links to each photographer's image used so we may provide links and credits such as I've done below.

{Image credits clockwise: Lane Dittoe | Erin Hearts Court | Garrett Nudd Photography | Float Away Studios | Caroline Tran}

Color Palette Generator
This color palette generator by Big Huge Labs is really one of the easiet color palette generators out there. Here are the step by step instructions with screenshots to show you how to use this for submitting your color palette.

1. You can upload a photo from your computer files, from Facebook or from Flickr. I chose to save my storyboard that I created above to my desktop and uploaded it to the color palette generator from there.

2. Once your photos is uploaded you simply press the "Create" button...

3. TA-DA! You have a color palette. The number and letter combinations you see are for CSS or website development. But look again... there are color names there! YAY!

4. Now you need to select the colors that best fit the storyboard you are submitting and send the color palette our way. Let's say in this case I choose: Calico, Buttered Rum, Swiss Coffee, Dust Storm and Contessa to tell my story. Simply type those out in your submission just as I did.

5. Next you will need to send us this palette. You do this by taking a screen shot and saving it to your computer as a .jpg. If you aren't sure how to do that, I will tell you now.

6. You will need to have your color palette up on your screen. Then you will need to hold down the CTRL (control) button on your keyboard and the PRTSC (print screen button) on your keyboard at the same time. Got it?

7. Next you open up a simple program in Windows called Paint or on Mac called Paintbrush and you paste your screenshot directly into the program.

8. You can then select and crop your color palette and save it as a JPG or if that confuses you, don't crop it at all and save it as a JPG as is and we can take care of pulling the color palette out for you.

And your done! How easy was that? The hardest part of creating a storyboard is selecting the photos from the hundreds of thousands of images out there to convey the message and vibe that you want. Plus let's face it... it is stinking addictive!

Hope that this was easy enough for you to understand. Please let me know if this helped you at all or if you have any questions!

And don't forget the deadline to submit your entry for the scholarship is March 15! So what are you waiting for create, create, create! I can't wait to see your amazing ideas!