Jack Brenfoerder is a Design Director at Landor Associates who specializes in color strategy, trends and forecasting. In a recent blog post he discussed creating your own color inspiration book.
“Think of using colors like spices and the final color combination as the delicious dish. Using this principle, I have created a simple way that anyone can generate color combinations and palettes that are more natural, intuitive, and emotionally based. Rather than just starting with individual colors that you like and using your own color sense to create a final color combination, how about collecting color recipes in advance to create your own color cook book?”
What I found most interesting was his description of taking three color inspirations (in the illustration he used three photographs) – two that “contrast” and one that “harmonizes” and identifying the most important bridge colors between the images and the accent (spice) colors.
Forty of his favorite color inspirations (along with a swatch notation to the color combination) are available for you to download.