Mood Board

The Art of : The Mood Board7 months ago in Creative Process, Design, Inspire, Mood Boards

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Art of mood board collage color format how to how to create a mood board

inspiration board Layout mixed media mood board mood boarding pattern

photography styling texture Typography

I have a bit of a confession to make: I love mood boarding maybe a little more than I lovedesigning and it’s no surprise that for me Pinterest is one of my favorite tools. I think it stems frommy need to classify things. Creating a visual representation of a new brand, a movie, or that nextperfect fashion trend is exciting and part of the basis of every good project because without amood board, you and your team/client can’t solidify the style/mood/theme etc.

What is a mood board?A mood board is typically a combination of images, fonts, colors, and textures that define the styleof the project. It is a tool for creatives and clients to come to an agreement about style. They comein many forms and they might even be called something different depending on the industry thatyou’re in. I’ve seen mood boards show up in fashion, film, photography, branding, web design,wedding planning, interior decorating etc. and they all have different ways of laying out theirgraphics.

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Page 1 of 23The Art of: The Mood Board

4/6/2014http://www.creatively-driven.com/the-art-of-the-mood-board/

Some of the key points to consider: Layout, format, color, typography, and texture.

Layout

(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/a_3x-

horizontal.jpg)

First off, It’s a one page document. If you’ve got pages and pages, you start to dilute your style.Find only the BEST images that represent your style and stick with them. The rest is fluff.

One thing I remember distinctly from my first branding class was that:

it isn’t just about what is in the mood board, but it’s also about how theimages are displayed.

Going For The Structured Look?

Some digital mood boards are very structured and gridded. They usually have less images than acollage type mood board, which makes every image even more essential to telling the story. Theyalso have a very “finished” look about them.



Do: Have consistency. If you want borders, make the same sized borders around every image.The first sign of a non-designer mood board is having some images closer to each other thanother.

(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-

content/uploads/2013/09/b07c6a4c6c6d718f2ce8e74207a79781.jpg)

Do: Line images up. I’ll never forget my layout teacher grabbing a ruler and making sure thateverything on my page lined up some how. When you see bad design, Most people won’t knowwhy they don’t want to look at it, but subconsciously what’s happening is that their eyes (and brain)are working extra hard to make sense of things that are almost aligned, too close, or nonsensical.A lot of it has to do with gestalt principles

(http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm)

but just take my word for it: if you’re going for order, commit to it and line your stuff up.




content/uploads/2013/09/e9fdfda48ba41c37a83f83cc09c3bcdf.jpg)

Do: Experiment with different shapes! I’m seeing more and more geometric looking moodboards and it adds a lot of interest.

How About Collage Style?

Other mood boards are more freeform; they over lap, they have inconsistent borders, and theyare usually coming from all different sorts of media, but they can be all digital too. This is more likea collage and gives off a “hand-made” or chaotic feel. It also makes it feel more like a “process”and less of a “finished piece” like the structured examples. Fashion design uses this method a lotwhen covering new trends or designing a new line.



(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Ethnic-

e1300152056201.jpg)




content/uploads/2013/09/IdeaJournalCloseup.png)

Do: Consider who’s seeing and using the board. If it’s just for you, putting it up on your wall orin a sketch book can work, but if you have an entire team of both creatives and business types, amore digital format might be best for sharing.

Format



(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/mood-board-

570x806.jpg)

Digital or physical also influences the style and depends on who needs to see it. I typically seedigital mood boards more in wedding planning, branding, and web design.

“Physical mood boards give you an extra tactile element and workbest with industries that produce actual objects like fashion andinterior design.”



Having physical objects mixed in with images pinned up on a real board feels very rustic andbecomes more of a piece of mixed media art, and I think It tells a richer story too. I see this mostwhen working in the physical medium like interior design, event planning, and fashion design.


content/uploads/2013/09/d74455460dc1e59ed6b73aebafd6c8cf.jpg)

Do: Choose your objects wisely. Having physical pieces to collage not only means working withdifferent colors and shapes that cast shadows, but also textures (more about that later).



Do: use good lighting to photography your mood board. The worst is having a beautiful board butnot being able to see the detail due to poor exposure. This one is “ok” but it would have beenbetter if half the mood board wasn’t in shade.


content/uploads/2013/09/5d7a0d62876141a5650b2d223b40942e.jpg)



Color

Color plays an important role in your mood, and thus should be obvious when looking at yourentire mood board. The color palette should definitely be defined through the imagery you’reusing. If you have a bunch of different images that have all different color schemes, you may needto simplify or go back and find more cohesive images. This can sometimes come organically, whenyou find a few images that speak to the style you’re looking for and suddenly you notice a commoncolor palette or maybe you know that you want to work in the sunset color palette, and you begin



to look for images that suit that. Along with images, you can also include color cards, fabricswatches, or physical items that represent the colors.

(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Blue-Moodboard.jpg)



Typography

Mood boards don’t always have to be just about images and colors. If typography is a vital part ofyour styling, you can definitely include font choices. I see this most in branding, web design andsometimes wedding planning mood boards (fonts on invites?) As usual, the fonts must makesense with the rest of the piece.





Pattern/Texture




content/uploads/2013/09/ec56691c3117c94b81e6fa874957697f.jpg)

While color helps define emotion, Pattern and texture help define context. You can gather a lot ofinformation from what kind of textures are going to be used. For example if you see old paper,creme colors, and maybe a damask pattern you might guess that the mood board was for someVictorian era style. Web design mood boards show patterns and textures that will be used in thestyling of the backgrounds, the buttons, and the graphics. It’s important to define those early on sothat the client doesn’t approve the work because they hate the particular texture you used.Because Fashion and interior design are all about the physical – the perfect polka dot dress orleather arm-chair, showing actual swatches of fabric and patterns is crucial to telling the wholestory.



(http://www.creatively-driven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/moodboard2.jpg)




content/uploads/2013/09/c8b360cc85895134240cd76b9b3b808d.jpg)

I hope you found this helpful. The main point is to be purposeful and consistent with your layoutand image choices and to make sure each image or item helps the story and doesn’t take awayfrom it. Lastly, don’t be afraid to add type and words. Everything can help tell the story.

You can take a look at some of the mood boards I’ve done here or read more DesignProcess posts here.

All image sources can be found on my pinterest board



Project Sneak Peek : Moolah 2.0 Up to Lately: Work, Anniversary, Blog

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1. @LorettaMay

View 6 months ago

The Art of : The Mood Board http://t.co/UGy9GcpIkC (http://t.co/UGy9GcpIkC)

2. @jdwiden

View 6 months ago

“The Art of: The Mood Board” by @LorettaMay on the @Cre8tivedrive blog.http://t.co/XnqH90GLda (http://t.co/XnqH90GLda) …it’s a look book for all you filmtweeps.

3. My Approach to Graphic Design. | CSS Blog

View 3 months ago

[…] great way to make visual connections and imagery, is through moodboards (http://www.creatively-driven.com/the-art-of-the-mood-board/(http://www.creatively-driven.com/the-art-of-the-mood-board/)), creating apictorial mosiac that […]

4. kissinia

View 2 months ago

Hi Loretta, thanks for this stunning post. I would like to provide a link to your post on my blog– hope you don’t mind Cheers! kissinia

LorettaMayreplied:

View 2 months ago

Hi Kissinia, Thanks so much for the kind words. Of course you can link to my

post! I welcome link backs! Was anything unclear about it? I always look

back on this post and think I could have organized this better… haha.

Cheers!

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5. @tingham

View 1 month ago

Btw, total fail on my part; I forgot to link this earlier: http://t.co/iePIlnKGu5(http://t.co/iePIlnKGu5) via @LorettaMay

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