The Ultimate Mood Board

What Is A Mood Board And How To Create One For Your Brand?

I am not sure if you have seen a mood board, if you haven’t, don’t worry, today I will tell you what exactly is a mood board and how to create one with simple tips and tricks.

If you are looking for a specific design for your home, you visualize everything that you think will suit or look perfect. But when it comes to communicating what you want to a designer, you either can not express completely or your designer lags to understand your requirements fully. That’s where the mood board comes in.

In simple words, a mood board (inspirational board) is a collage (containing several images, texts, and other similar objects) of multiple ideas having some common patterns that are mostly used in the fields of graphic design, fashion and interior designing, and photography. This mood board can either in digital or physical form.

Mood boards are so much more than your ideas.

Mood boards are a physical or digital arrangement of pictures, texts, and objects that represents or intends to project a particular style or concept or simply stand as the basis of any forthcoming project.

You might be assuming that mood boards are just used by designers but no. Say hello to Pinterest, a tool that allows you to create digital mood boards of your choice for any category. Many professionals, irrespective of their specialization, rely on mood boards before they begin working on any big project. Not just that, if you are thinking to create a website or re-design your business office, you can simply try mood boards!

Why do you need a mood board?

Communication:

A well-expressed mood board ensures that your designer or stakeholders thoroughly comprehend what you want or the vision you have in your mind right from the beginning.

Confirmation:

If you have ideas in mind and even if you are sure about them, a mood board will affirm and help you in supporting your ideas in better execution. It will also help you in translating your concepts into real designs.

Inspiration:

When you are just started anticipating your new project, you can create a mood board to see how things take shape. It will allow you to convey your emotions and vision in a better way and inspire you to execute what you aspire.

Guidance:

A mood board accurately reflects your visualization. It guides you in bring your vision to life.

Build Foundation:

Are you anticipating you create something unique? A mood board helps you establish the foundation of your prospective project or what your end results may look like. Like I said that mood board can be more than just ideas - some professionals use this creative collage for the competitor analysis.

It not only helps you bring your ideas to life but also save a lot of time, define the project, and have a clear vision in mind.

Get A Nod From Your Client

Creating a mood board for your client is one of the better ways to showcase what the end results will look like. It gives him an idea of how you will work on it and allows him to involve everyone to agree on the set directions before too much work is done.

How to create a mood board?

Talking to one of our professional photographers, Arpit - he said the main thing about mood boards is not about following rules but ‘unleashing your creativity’ to design the basics of your final results or simply what you want your end results to be.

Choose your images and materials

Find The Match

Using too many images can be confusing and sometimes overload the sense, while a few won’t suffice or can be inadequate to transform your idea into a mood board. The key is to find the perfect balance of imagery, objects used in the mood board, and the text. Also, make sure your items match up with the criteria you have set.

Find The Target

Before you actually start creating a mood board, make sure you have all the answers such as who is the target audience? Millennials or Elderly? Male or female? Singles or married couples? Urban or rural? Given your target audience and demographics, you will be able to come up with a perfect mood board that they will love. Since the answers to these questions will help you analyze what may suit their taste better or images that can grab their attention.

Gather the material

Gather images and materials that can clearly communicate your idea that you are visualizing in your head. If the mood board is for your brand, make sure you collect the imagery and materials that convey brand emotions and identity. When you are done collecting, sort out the materials, and narrow down your choices. Discard the images that you think might not fit well into the mood board.

How to collect images?

Gathering images is challenging when you create your mood board. You need to select the images that tell a particular story when they come together in a collage. The collection of images or collage will showcase your or your clients’ style and liking.

Pick Colors

Colors play a key role in creating a mood board. What colors define your lifestyle, brand, emotions? Whether you are creating a mood board to design a futuristic, modular kitchen, or for a photography client, you need to make sure that you choose the right colors that evoke the right emotions. Would you like bright colors depicting cheerfulness? Or eye-popping yellow-ish? Do you want them to be muted or bold? Warm or cool?

Make sure to choose the best color palettes that can establish what your brand is all about.

Other things that you must include in your mood board are:

Words: Words or letters that convey a particular message of your brand can be an important part of your mood board.

Fonts: While creating a mood board, you need to make sure that you include specific fonts into the mood boards that match your brand identity.

Textures: You can include textures, patterns, and shapes that you think can are suitable for your mood board to give a prominent look.

Finally, Gathering It!

Now that you have gathered all the imagery and materials for your mood board, now is the time to pull it all together. Gather these materials in a way that looks simplified and gives a proper sense of your idea that you had visualized. Focus on the main theme of the mood board, color palettes, and place a large picture at the center and keep small materials around it to present an impactful foundation of your big project.

And there you go!