When starting a new design project, laying out a clear creative direction is key. Moodboards are an essential part of this process—pulling together images, colors, typography, and other references to visualize the path forward. But the process of gathering inspiration is often clunky. Copying and pasting visuals into folders or design tools strips away valuable context and eats up time better spent creating. At Dropmark, we believe designers should spend less time managing assets and more time building a cohesive vision, which includes staying connected to where your ideas came from.

No downloads, no problems. Build killer (and smart) mood boards straight from the web. One of our favorite ways to collect inspiration is by using the Dropmark web extension. Grab an image, take a screenshot, or save the entire page itself as a reference for later. In most instances, Dropmark will display the site right in your collection, further reducing the friction of jumping in between tasks and minimizing distractions.

You can also rest assured that your mood boards will be beautiful. Dropmark’s minimal UI lets your vision shine. With a variety of views available, you can choose a display to match the mood.

Having a reference of data-rich material means that you can go back to those particularly inspiring pieces and discover new directions from proven resources by going back straight to the source.

And finally, when it’s time to share, collaboration options with Dropmark are super simple to use. Choose collaborators to join and add to your collection and change who has access to view the collection all in one place.

Now go out there and make something beautiful 🥲

Not too long ago, we came across Visual.Supply, a Dropmark collection turned microsite. Its contents are a vast collection of visual inspiration, everything from web design to alluring workspace setups. After perusing their findings, we reached out to Visual.Supply’s creator and lifelong learner, Karl Fernandes, to discover more about their role as a product designer and how they find inspiration on and offline.

What inspires you?

Oh, plenty of things! As a designer, there’s no dearth of inspiration.

I admire well-designed magazine covers, film posters and illustrated childrens’ books. I watched Shogun last year and was blown away by the cinematography and title design (for which it won an Emmy). I love everything Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve create. Although I enjoy CRPGs, I’ve been playing Dredge these days, and it’s clear to me that a lot of love and care went into making a video game like that.

I live very close to the beach in a tiny village in Goa, so almost every weekend, I take walks with my wife or build sandcastles with our three daughters. There’s just something about the gentle sea breeze on my face and the sand in my toes that resets my brain and prepares me for the coming week!

I also had the privilege of visiting Copenhagen in mid-2023 and immediately fell in love! It’s such a beautiful city that inspired me for weeks. Copenhagen also reignited my interest in Scandinavian industrial and interior design.

You’ve identified as a specialized generalist that is “…still just getting started.” Can you tell me about your approach to design?

I’ve realized that the more I’ve grown as a designer, the more there is to learn—in design and in life. So, I strive to be a generalist as much as I can while aiming for mastery of a few skills that help make me and my work unique.

The “still just getting started” line comes from a beginner’s mind perspective. I try to set aside all preconceived notions and biases when I begin each new project. I’m also an evangelist for thinking and synthesizing from first principles. Together, these two philosophies help ensure I not only design the thing right but also that I’m designing the right thing.

As far as the actual process goes, there’s no secret sauce. My go-to framework for product design within tech is the Zendesk Triple Diamond.

What’s one thing you wish people understood more about product design?

I design products primarily within the enterprise space, so much of my product design practice involves understanding the domain, problem space, and customer needs.

…the more I’ve grown as a designer, the more there is to learn—in design and in life.

Product design isn’t about Figma, Sketch, or your tool of choice. It isn’t about creating prototypes or polished mockups of apps or websites—those are all means to an end. Product design is problem-solving: figuring out what needs to be built or improved, making assumptions for solutions grounded in data, validating those assumptions, and thus de-risking the final solution as much as possible so that the business is best set up for success.

How does Dropmark fit into your workflow?

I firmly believe the best way to improve your craft is to begin curating and studying well-designed things. Dropmark serves as a repository of everything that inspires me as a designer. It’s been an essential part of my workflow since 2016.

I use Dropmark during the design discovery phase to reference mental models, UX interaction patterns, and best practices while I ideate. I also use it for inspiration during the visual design phase and maintain Visual.Supply for this purpose.

How did Visual.Supply start for you?

It started as a side project when I began my design journey, collecting cool stuff from Dribbble, Behance, design galleries, blogs, and CSS awards sites. At some point, I wanted to share these finds with the design community and realized that Dropmark supported custom domains. So, I hooked up that domain with my Dropmark account—I think that’s really awesome!

Today, I have hundreds of items I’ve saved over the years, organized via Collections for just about every aspect of product design—websites, landing pages, web and native apps, e-commerce patterns, and so on. I also save the little things like clever email copy, well-done information architecture, or illustrations done in a unique style. I even have a collection of interesting typefaces!

When I’m engaged in a specific aspect of design and need references, I just go into my Dropmark collection and get inspired. Every few months or so, I revisit these collections and keep them updated. I’ve chosen to make most of this stuff public on Visual.Supply so I can point people to it if necessary.

On the personal front, I use Dropmark in myriad ways. My family is moving to a bigger apartment, and I’ve been using Dropmark to save all kinds of interior design inspiration. I’ve also been planning a new home office for the new apartment, so there’s a collection of desk setups from YouTube, Instagram and Reddit that I’ve been curating. I also have a ginormous “Wishlist” with all sorts of products that I one day hope to own. I’ve chosen to keep these collections private for now.

Lastly, just for fun: What’s the most fun/weird/interesting thing you’ve Dropmarked recently?

I have a few. As an introvert, I’ve found this illustration very useful while preparing for 1:1s with my manager. I also constantly reference which type of data visualization to use while designing dashboards. Finally, I have this very comfy-looking floor sofa bed that I intend to buy for my home office.

Thanks again, Karl! Be sure to check out Visual.Supply for some well-curated designspiration. You can also check out their website for more about them and their design ethos! We had such a delightfully inspiring conversation that we’ve already started our own interior design wishlist. ☺️

Ever seen a brand and thought, I wish I could make something like that? Us too! That’s why we’re peeling back the layers of our favorite brands to uncover what makes them stand out—and using Dropmark to turn them into creative inspiration fuel.

By breaking down brands into their key elements, we can see how the cake is made and return to these collections of inspiration for future projects. It also doubles as a creative exercise if you’re feeling stuck. Working on inspiration this way takes the pressure off yourself. It allows you to explore what makes designs resonate with you instead of forcing gold from your pen when the ink feels dry. If this idea sounds familiar, it comes from practice in design school when you collect layouts or websites and similarly break them down into separate components. For our first foray into this series, we decided to work on Matheson Food Company by Wedge.

Matheson Food Company is a pantry staple supplier, born into existence by Matty Matheson. Matty is a chef, restaurateur, and Emmy-nominated executive producer of The Bear. The gregarious chef has always been a favorite of ours; his personality is as prominent as his flavors, and we were excited to see that the packaging for Matheson Food Company matched. Some things that stuck out to us were the bright primary colors and the nostalgic packaging that permeates his brand. Matheson Food Company makes a good start to our series as it utilizes some popular design trends, like heavy use of typography with a minimal aesthetic. We liked how this packaging utilizes bold type but feels like a standout compared to other modern brands.

The breakdown:

1. Color Palette: The bright primary colors are eye-catching, particularly the big glowing red that they use as a primary color on the website. Although the brand color palette is relatively simple, that’s precisely what makes it stand out in a sea of competitors with more complex palettes.

2. Typography: The fonts used are a medium-contrast sans serif. This type of font is a call back to the packaging of corned beef that Matty loved and grew up on. The choice of type for Matheson Food Company reinforces the brand identity as a nostalgic, heritage-type brand. Still, it is also inextricably linked to the man behind the products.

3. Imagery: The imagery used for the packaging calls back to the first commercially available food packaging of the 30s. Additionally, the use of photography on the website is full of bright, saturated colors with candid subjects. The themes feel very approachable, as if you have taken photos at a family get together with a disposable camera.

4. Packaging & Layouts: Part of the reason for choosing a retro direction with the brand, according to Wedge, was to align with Matty’s past and position it as a brand with longevity. Through these choices, the design studio hopes to create a brand that outlives the nostalgia trend cycle.

With all these things in mind, we collected inspiration based on the brand, Matheson Food Company. We organized the collection by placing each component into stacks and writing a breakdown of the brand in a note. If this type of project inspires you, we encourage you to make your own! Simple takeaways are to analyze colors, fonts, and imagery from brands you love and experiment with these elements in your work.

We hope you enjoyed our dissection of the brand Matheson Food Company and its bright primary colors mixed with good vibes and nostalgia. Take a look at our collection to explore further, or get started on your own! Let us know if you’ve got a suggestion for who we should reverse engineer next!

Ringing in the new year, we always find ourselves inspired by the longer days and the idea of a fresh start. Following (an actually ancient) tradition, we usually make a mental note of a few changes we’d like to incorporate into our lives as new or updated habits. If you’re anything like us, it can be hard to keep those goals in sight once the holidays are over, work starts back up in earnest, and you settle into a daily routine. The problem with traditional resolution setting is that it usually starts as a BIG idea that never really gets refined into something actionable. Enter: S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

A S.M.A.R.T. goal is a framework designed to give you specific, measurable goals that are realistic and time-bound to align with your priorities and track progress effectively. Like the idea that creativity thrives in an environment set with constraints to work within, this framework eliminates the blank page and gives you a distinct focus. For example, one of your goals this year may be to “design a portfolio website.” But where do you start? With S.M.A.R.T. goals, that idea might become “I will dedicate 2 hours a week to create a 5-page portfolio site with responsive design by March 31.”

A few tips as you start your S.M.A.R.T. goal practice. Breaking your big goals into smaller milestones can help you decide what you’d like to work on. Using tools like Dropmark to help you stay organized and visually track your progress is a great way to keep your goals measurable. Take time to regularly review and adjust your goals based on progress. One of the great appeals to goals using this framework is that it’s not just all or nothing. By checking in regularly, you can continually adjust your plan. With that in mind, though, don’t forget to celebrate the small wins to maintain motivation!

The goals you set with the S.M.A.R.T. framework are much more likely to get done since they have been specific and included actionable, achievable plans. Although we’ve outlined using them for New Year’s resolutions, this framework applies anytime! We included a prompt for you to try out or use as inspiration below (more on our insta). If you work on one or make up your own, let us know how it turns out, and you might get featured on Dropmark!

Happy New Year and happy goal setting!

In 2014, Mike Wittrup and Daniel Rørbæk founded Barkas Studio, which operates between Copenhagen and Stockholm. Their work centers around the belief that anything can be designed, from brands to business models, and that when you cut through the clutter, you find the clarity that drives excellent design. Behind the scenes, their crew comprises folks from all walks of life, contributing to their deep understanding of what makes a successful brand.

We sat down with Barkas studio to learn more about what they are most excited about and how Dropmark fits into their workflow.

Where does your team gather inspiration for projects?

Basically anywhere. That can be a story, a piece of art, a walk in nature or feeling. It can be a memory or joke. What we look for in the beginning of any design process is an insight or singular and clear conceptual idea. From there we can start building the brand.

Currently we work a lot within culture driven global brands and organization. And at the moment how sport and lifestyle is fully merging is something we are very inspired by. Culture has always been about creating moments or experiences that bring people together around a topic, look, opinion etc. and nobody are better than uniting people than sports.

Can you tell us more about your approach to design solutions?

For us creating clarity is the core purpose of our work. In a increasingly complex world creating brands that have a clear and unified position and brand is key. So we want to ensure that each idea we create is sharp, purposeful, and impactful. We believe that clear ideas resonate deeply and have the power to inspire lasting connections.

Is there a particular project you’re most excited about currently?

Having the chance to work with a true icon in culture and synonymous with rock n roll and live music. That means, a new design system, full remake of marshall.com and a broader understanding of rock n roll in this day and age. We are still working with Marshall on a daily basis which is incredible inspiring and full on!

What do you wish more people understood about the design industry?

That it is not as sexy as it seems. :) For us it has always been extremely important to acknowledge that we alone cannot make a brand succeed. A bespoke typeface is great and might bring the exact distinct look that is needed, but to truly pivot, scale or build a brand you need to be strategically rooted and the classic design work should come after the creative position is clear. It should be an extension of your overall story.

How does Dropmark fit into your workflow?

We mostly use Dropmark during the research phase to find valuable references, resources, or collaborators for each project. We have all types of folders — Branding, Web, Video Mood, AI — so we don’t start from scratch every time a new brief comes in. Since different teams use it, we end up with a collective vision of what Barkas likes as a group.

We like that Dropmark lets you add a link and displays it as a tile with a preview of that page. We tend to remember mostly how things look like, so it’s practical when weeks later we are looking for that same reference again.

Lastly, just for fun, what’s the most interesting thing you’ve Dropmarked recently?

A Dictionary of Colour Combinations

Thanks, Barkas Studio!

We’ve all been there — a last-minute client meeting pops up on your calendar, and now you’re scrambling to assemble a presentation. When the last thing you have time to worry about is creating flawless slide decks, take a deep breath and open Dropmark. One of the great features of Dropmark is its ability to shift from an internal mood board to a client-facing presentation at the click of a button. In this post, we’ll look at the advantages of Dropmark presentations and how you can use Dropmark to stay ahead of those “Oh Sh*t!” meetings and get back to what you do best, creating.

Client work can present all sorts of challenges when sharing a work in progress, and in a fast-paced world, sometimes less is way more. It could make all the difference in winning a deal or maintaining client relationships. Use Dropmark’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface to start assembling content. You can refine your collections to suit the presentation style and client’s needs by changing the layout, toggling titles, or stacking relevant content. Dropmark also supports all media types, so you won’t have to think twice about what you’re collecting. Add collaborators so they can contribute in real-time even if you’re working remotely.

Add extra information to each slide using the description field, tags, or annotations if you’re a solo or team user. Descriptions and tags provide added flexibility, allowing seamless handoff to a team member or client. The ability to view context about the content in your collection after the meeting will keep stakeholders informed and engaged.

Did you also know that videos will autoplay in presentation mode? Let’s say you’ve got prototypes you have been working on and need to include, or you’re an animation studio, and videos are your bread and butter. Dropmark has got your back.

Ready to present? You can enter presentation mode by clicking on any item in your collection. Dropmark will then make the background black, giving you space to focus on that item alone without the distraction of your whole collection. Using the arrows in the top corner or the arrow keys on your keyboard, navigate through the rest of your presentation with ease.