Lookbook design: product stories page by page

Lookbook design is mostly pacing. A good lookbook opens with a cover and a page of pure mood, moves through a handful of hero looks shown large, slows down for close detail, and ends with one clear page on how to order or stock the collection. Buyers, press and customers flick through it in a minute or two, so every page should either set the feeling or answer a question, never both at once.

What a lookbook is for

Fashion labels, jewellers, furniture makers, ceramicists and candle brands all make lookbooks. The audience varies: a stockist deciding what to order, a journalist looking for a story, a customer deciding whether the brand is for them. What they share is that they meet the collection through the lookbook before they touch it. So it carries the whole impression of the season.

How to plan a lookbook page by page

Before you design anything, write the page list. Twelve to twenty pages suits most small collections; more than that and people stop paying attention. Lay the plan out like this and you will see at once where the rhythm sags.

Alternate loud and quiet. After two or three full bleed photographs, give the eye a page with more space: a quote from the designer, a single detail crop, or the brand's background with one line of text. That pause is what makes the next image land.

Choosing a lookbook size

Decide where the lookbook will mostly be seen, then choose the page shape for that. A buyer opening a PDF on a laptop, a customer swiping on a phone and a stockist leafing through a printed copy all want different proportions.

• A4 or Letter portrait suits print and a PDF for wholesale buyers. Fashion photography is usually portrait, so the image fills the page.
• 4:5 portrait at 1080×1350 turns the lookbook into an Instagram carousel as well as a phone friendly PDF.
• 16:9 landscape works when the lookbook will be presented on a screen in a showroom or a call.

Keeping every page consistent

A lookbook shot over several days, by different photographers or in different light, can end up feeling like three collections. Three decisions hold it together: one photo grade, one type pairing, and one background that appears on every text page and behind any cut out product.

1. 1

   Grade the photos together

   Match white balance and contrast across the shoot before layout. If some images refuse to match, tint them in the brand colours as a duotone or a wash so they sit with the rest. Duotone photos shows how.

2. 2

   Pick two typefaces

   An elegant display face for collection and look names, and a quiet text face for the story and details. Elegant fonts has options.

3. 3

   Reuse one background

   Every quiet page and every product cut out sits on the same background family. It becomes the collection's colour, as recognisable as the clothes.

4. 4

   Fix the margins and captions

   Look names in the same corner, the same size, on every page. Readers stop noticing them, which is the point.

Gradiently fits naturally here. A Mark is a living background with its own colours and type voice, rendered fresh at every page size, so the cover, the quiet pages and the matching posts all share one look. Photos can be tinted in the Mark's colours or cropped into arches and circles for detail pages. And because each Mark has exactly one owner at a time, a claimed Mark is a look only you can export with.

Exporting the lookbook as a PDF

Most lookbooks travel by email, and a 200 MB attachment does not get opened. For a digital PDF, export photos at about 150 dpi at the page size and compress them; most readers will never see the difference on a laptop or phone. For print, keep 300 dpi, add bleed and send a print PDF. Print ready PDF lists what a printer checks, and product photo backgrounds helps with cut out shots.