A mood board is a collection of inspirations for your next project or piece.
Often, these boards are assembled digitally and communicated via imagery, but it’s also common to find them in the form of good old fashioned fiber and paper. Mood boards allow you to gather ideas, images and colors that resonate with you and create a “mood” for your next project.
Your mood board could be as simple as a Pinterest page full of images you find inspiring for your project, or it can be a collection of fabric swatches and paint samples to select from at the hardware store. It’s also very common to assemble boards to communicate ideas with others; we often put together mood boards to present work to clients. If you wondering how to create mood boards? Here’s how!
A mood board is a great way to get your creative juices flowing and break out of that pesky editor mode. Some people use them exclusively, while others just pull inspiration for their next project from them on-the-fly.
How to create a mood board?
In order to make a visual statement about who you are, what you think and feel, where your brand is going — it helps to create a mood board. If you can’t visualize the finished product in all its many permutations, imagine how hard it’s going to be for others to visualize it! A mood board acts as a catalyst for inspiration.
Mood boards aren’t limited to the visual realm. The process can be applied to music, sounds, architecture — anything that stimulates your imagination! I’m going to take you through the steps of creating mood boards for business branding.
First thing’s first:
- collect your materials (tape (masking tape is easier – painters tape if you have to), post-it notes, magazines, scissors, etc.). If you have a printer at your disposal, great! You can print images off the internet or cut pictures out of magazines. However – be sure that all images are in high resolution printing quality (if not try to scan them into high-quality printing). The idea is to collect images that in some way inspire you.
- Collection of pictures in boards :If you’re using the internet for your source material, I recommend saving all images from a page to your desktop and then opening them up one at a time. This way you can carefully study each image before you add it to your board or delete it.
- Once you’ve collected everything, it’s time to start creating! we recommend brainstorming on paper with a pen first. Write down all words and phrases that come to mind when looking at your images. Don’t over think this…write anything, don’t censor yourself. You can always go back and delete anything you don’t like or don’t feel fits.
- Once you’ve exhausted your stream of consciousness, it’s time to pick out the images that really speak to you. Collect post-it notes and start creating your mood board.
- Now you can step back and look at it as a whole. How do the images fit together? Are there any colors or shades that repeat? What about fonts and typefaces? You should be able to see something take shape! These boards are great for presenting your vision either to yourself or to others.
Tips for creating a perfect mood boards?
- Mood boards for interior design are a fantastic tool to help you visualize the direction of a given room, whether it’s your living room, bedroom or outdoor space.
- The most important thing about mood boards is that they allow you to create something with a clear focus. If you’re working on a room that’s been neglected for many years or one that hasn’t been decorated at all, you’re most likely going to have a difficult time simply picking out certain colors or pieces of furniture that you like.
- With a mood board, however, you can create a focus that will allow you to narrow down your decisions and start getting a feel for what the room is actually going to look like.
- There are several different ways that you can use mood boards to help you out, whether you’re a professional designer or someone who’s simply interested in home design. Once you know how to use mood boards, it’s possible for virtually anyone to create a room that they can be proud of and one that will really stand out as well.
- The first thing that you need to do whenever you want to use mood boards for interior design is to create a list of concepts that you want the room to include. As mentioned before, there are truly no set rules and almost anything can be included as long as it works well with everything else in the room.
- The next thing you should do after creating a list of concepts is to find images that can help you visualize what your room will look like. Keep in mind that the purpose of mood boards is not to create a literal translation of them, but rather something that just represents what they’re all about.
- So, once you’ve got a list of concepts and beautiful photos to go with them, the next step is to start putting everything together in a collage presentation. There are apps available online that make this process dead simple because all you have to do is select your images and arrange them however you’d like.
