Design Boards

I am very excited about the Material Girls / Swank Lighting Design Contest and am really looking forward to seeing some of the design boards to be entered in the contest. I loved Lauren’s design board & loved the blog post she wrote for, “Speidi’s Love Nest.” It has encouraged me to come up with something as well – hopefully soon!For the time being, I thought I’d write about design boards in general and share a few of my own to inspire the readers to contribute some of their own.

As most of us interior design educated designer’s know – design boards go back to the days of our training, in school, pulling late night deadlines for class projects. I think every project I ever did in school required a design board. It was a method of making a presentation to the class about the project, a way to convey and discuss our ideas. Even in the real world of design, design boards are used when making presentations to clients. So to this day – I still find myself pulling together a design board or more loosely a “concept board” or “inspiration board.”

Typically, I will use a matte/cardboard board, a canvas board, or even inexpensive frames. However, in the quest to be environmentally sound I am scraping cardboard from shipping material & other materials – anything I can find to be reused as a design board. As far as the materials, any images whether from books, catalogs, magazines, and online sources can be used for the images on design boards. Finding finish materials – a small knob, pull, fabric/wallcovering samples, paint swatches, and many other “found” materials can all be used to simulate a color, pattern, or finish selection. Just thought I’d provide these ideas to encourage the readers to source for their own design boards.

Here are some more concept boards from my own design projects:






And of course, all boards cannot go unexplained – so providing a written description about your ideas & concepts completes your presentation!


Blog contibution by Jill Seidner Interior Design