A moodboard is a collage of visual assets, like pictures, text, colours, and shapes that evoke a certain style or concept. Also known as an inspiration board, they help convey the overall “feeling” of an idea and get minds visually focused and organised, which is especially important for teamwork, where everyone should stay on the same page.
Moodboards can be a powerful starting point in a creative project, being a visual reference and a springboard for new ideas. This tool refines a project’s style before diving into designing process and concepts implementation. Moodboards define the core aesthetics, inspire new creative solutions, and navigate in times of uncertainty throughout a project.
Moodboard Ingredients
A mood board can be made of different materials depending on the project you are collecting for. It can contain inspirational examples of photos, colour palettes, lighting, typography, quotes, decade, patterns, shapes and everything that gives you a cohesive direction and clear understanding of what you should do at the following stages.
Applications
Though moodboards are usually used by stylists and designers, they actually can be beneficial to those outside the creative industry too!
Defining personal style
Whether it’s a seasonal change, or you just want to refresh your wardrobe, a visual collection of your favourite looks and style icons can guide your purchase decisions and just make the entire shopping process less stressful and time-consuming.
Branding
Personal or corporate - all kinds of branding should have a well-balanced identity. Moodboards allow building a brand GNA with a harmonious combination of visual codes, vision, and mission.
Brainstorming & Negotiation with clients
Words can fail in shaping a picture in a client’s or team’s heads, whereas the collage of visual materials saves time by eradicating tedious meetings when someone tries to explain how something should feel or look like.
Planning
A mood board of your perfect dream- life can navigate you when writing new year resolutions, setting goals, building your career and taking serious decisions.
Creating a moodboard
There are numerous programs and applications for making collages. You can also take magazines and scissors and create the tangible one, whatever is more convenient for you. So here are some options that are affordable to everyone:
IKEA noticeboards https://www.ikea.com/au/en/cat/noticeboards-10574/
Pinterest pinterest.com
Canva https://www.canva.com/create/mood-boards/
Moodboard http://www.gomoodboard.com
Adobe Spark https://www.adobe.com/express/create/mood-board
Spending sufficient time on the mood board stage can result in smoother project development. By illustrating and visualizing ideas, you can save lots of effort, mitigate misunderstanding in the team and come up with more creative nonstandard solutions.