Designers, filmmakers, photographers, and other creative professionals often need help finding direction for their projects or communicating their vision to clients or collaborators. A mood board is one of the most efficient tools that can help solve this problem. By creating a mood board, you can kickstart your creative project and seamlessly communicate its essence to others. This post explores what a mood board is and the process of creating one.
What Is A Mood Board?
Also known as a vision board, a mood board is a collection of visual materials (usually a mix of photographs, text, images, and textures) arranged on a board to evoke a specific theme or concept. All the components of a mood board combine to tell a cohesive story and bring the designer’s idea to life.
Mood boards can be physical or digital, depending on your preferences. It could be as simple as pining picture cutouts or printouts to a physical board. But these days, people also create dynamic mood boards that may include animations, videos, and other forms of media.
Regardless of how it’s created, the main goal of creating a mood board is to organize thoughts and ideas cohesively. The start of a creative project tends to be messy. Whether you’re creating a logo, building a website, or designing an interior space, there are many details you can incorporate into your project. A mood board helps establish your project’s direction, visual style, or tone.
How To Create A Mood Board
Image Via: 1825 Interiors
Brainstorm your Theme
The first step in creating a mood board is brainstorming and picking a theme for your project. All the elements of your mood board are meant to be connected by a central theme. Say you’re working on an interior design project; the first step to creating a mood board is to settle on a style or theme for your project. Then, you decide on materials, colors, textures, and other aspects of this theme. Starting with a theme will make it easier to find the other elements that will serve as inspiration for your mood board.
Collect your Elements
A mood board is a collage of images, colors, text, and videos. The next step in creating a mood board is collecting these elements. You can search online, look at magazines, or explore artworks and similar projects for elements related to the central theme you’re trying to create. Don’t just focus on the visual elements. Find texts, keywords, and quotes relevant to your theme that can be included on your mood board.
Review and curate your Board
The final step is to connect all the elements you have collected so far into a cohesive vision board. Chances are, you’ll have more materials than you need. Choose the elements most related to your theme and connect them harmoniously to reflect the idea you’re trying to communicate. Start with a central image or text to anchor your board, then surround it with the most relevant elements.
Remember that organizing messy elements into a cohesive board is a gradual process. You might need to experiment repeatedly and make adjustments as you continue. You’ll be able to create a visually compelling board that communicates your project vision as clearly as day.
