How to create mood boards: 40 expert tips
Mood boards can be a great way to convey your design idea to stakeholders, helping you win pitches and get sign-off early on. Follow our expert advice on how to create them.
When trying to convey a design idea, moods, feelings and fluffy stuff like that are hard to communicate. So professional designers will often use mood boards: a collection of textures, images and text related to a design theme as a reference point.Telepathy would save a lot of time but sadly for most of us it's not an option. What I’m thinking and feeling about a creative idea, my intended vision for a piece of work, is limited to how good my verbal communication skills are at expressing this to project stakeholders. Mood boards help others to 'get inside our heads' in order to convey a thematic setting for a design or to explain function in piece of work.
That said, mood boards can be a pain to create, with many hours spent trawling image galleries, websites, books and magazines looking for that perfect image to sum up your intended feel for the work at hand. So here are a collection of tips to help make your mood board making more effective - and double your chances of winning that pitch!
Gathering inspiration
Look beyond the digital world
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Real world inspiration such as this can be a very powerful 'convincer' when putting together a board for a client.
Take pictures when you're out and about
Real world inspirations are all around us. So use the camera on your phone to take pictures of everything you see that inspires you - whether that be a bird in flight, a great use of typography on a sign, or the brickwork on a building. They don't have to be great photos in the traditional sense - it's all about capturing thoughts, impressions, themes and feelings.Creating the mood board
The basic concept
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When putting together mood boards, think of yourself as a curator rather than a collector, and try to have meaning and threads from one image to the next. It makes for easier interpretation.
Choose the right format
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An offline mood board will generally be looser in style and require the extra kick and emotive spark that comes from it being presented to a client. An online mood board should be tighter and will generally need to work harder to convey a theme or style.
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Build things up around a large image
Whether it's being electronic or physical, the layout of your mood board needs to give prominence to key theme images, then surround these with smaller supporting images that enhance the theme.Again, it's a subliminal trick. When someone looks at a large image on your board in their heads they'll have questions about it - which they'll quickly scan the rest of the board to find answers for. If you place smaller supporting images around the larger image they should do this job for you by clarifying the messaging given in the larger one.
Get tactile
When making a physical mood board, don't be afraid to get, well, physical. Traditionally mood boards are made from foam board and cutting this stuff up with a scalpel and spray mounting cut-out images onto it can be a pain, especially if you’re not dexterous with a blade. But it's extremely effective as a presentation tool. The tactile nature of cut-out images glued onto boards enhances the emotiveness of what’s being explained.It may seem like a ridiculously old fashioned thing to do, but perception-wise it's a real ace up your sleeve as a designer. Just be careful with your fingers on that blade...
How to pitch mood boards
Show your mood board early
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In this example Luke Prowse and I used mood images (such as shots of 2001: A Space Odyssey and a builder's hard hat) to show the kind of grandeur and style we wanted to associate with a pitch for a Daft Punk packaging design.
Mixing these in with the presentation - rather than bolting them on at the end - proved more effective in communicating this to the client.
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Save the surprise
It's important to make sure that a well-meaning project manager doesn't email an offline mood board ahead of the presentation 'so they know what we're presenting'. For an offline mood board it's far better to let it all sink in to the client's mind as you showcase it, rather than come armed with lots of questions before you even start.Get involved in the pitch
If your mood board is being presented to the client, try to be involved yourself. It makes no sense to have something which originated in your head being communicated by someone else, because that way meaning can become muddled in a Chinese whispers-type mess.Keep things loose
Locking an idea or a style down in a mood board can be detrimental, as the client will feel shoehorned into going with a particular style. Keep everything a little loose and don't make everything look too finalised.If you're using preview images from image libraries don't worry about the watermarking on them - it all adds up to a 'hey look, we can change this - these are ideas' feel to the board.
Watch the audience's faces
When you're presenting an offline mood board, watch the faces of those you're showing it to. Ignore any verbal client 'oohs and ahhs' but instead watch their facial and emotive reactions as they look around the board. This will give you a much more honest take on whether the board is doing its job and if they're reacting well or badly to what you're showing them. You have to put these people 'in your mood' so ignore their mutterings and watch their emotive reactions.General pointers
Hone your mood board skills
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Text it up
Don't ignore the power of a few isolated words on a board. They're fantastic show-stoppers and give your viewer pause for thought as they have to mentally read what’s in front of them. Big, bold words juxtaposed together work very well at creating drama, tone and meaning for any project.Make the theme obvious
Obscure references can be fun but try to have a number of relatable items or 'touch points' featured in your mood board. You want to let others in, so being deliberately obtuse will earn you no points at all. It’s much harder to be clear and use imagery to sell your vision than hiding behind a pile of incomprehensible references just to fill the board out with. But it's worth the effort to do so.Aim to spark an emotional response
Think a little bit left of centre if you’re presenting a mood board to a client. What would give them a genuine emotive response to? Real word objects are good for this. If you were inspired by the beach, bring in a shell. If your eureka moment happened on the bus, bring in the ticket. This type of thing intrigues people's brains and gains that all-important emotive reaction.Don't make presumptions
Presumption making can be the difference between a successful mood board and one that's dismissed as being too cerebral. There's a danger of expecting too much of the audience - that they'll 'know what you mean'. Chances are they won't. So if it takes a few more references, images or textures to get what's inside your head into a client’s then add them in.Test your mood board
Finally, don't forget to test out your boards before you send them off. Remember, it's not a game of Pictionary, so if your testing audience have to ask too many times what an image means or why it's there, then it probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.Have fun!
The whole process of creating mood boards should be fun - a refreshing break from the often tedious tasks of the jobbing designer. If you're not having fun then it's a sure sign you're going about things the wrong way...Uses for mood boards
Use mood boards to brief designers
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Instead of relying on one example of character, several types were found in many different poses which helped Tom a clear take on the style and direction of the piece.
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Use mood boards to speed up client signoff
Mood boards shouldn't just be for pitches. Consider preparing mood boards to show other similarly themed projects, websites or functions before creating polished visuals.'I'll know it when I see it' is a phrase most of us are familiar with. But to hear this when finished artwork comes back from a client is gutting, signifying that it's back to square one. Using mood boards at different stages of the process can help you avoid this happening.
So what's the best way to put a digital moodboard together? There are a ton of tools to make things easy for you, so for the remainder of this article we've gathered together the best of the bunch...
Mood board tools
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Image Spark
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Try using Image Spark instead: it's a means of converging images using the app's own mood board functionality. You can also (if they're set to public) snoop at other's mood board and image libraries.
Moodstream
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An image speaks a thousand words but finding the right image to capture a mood can be a right royal pain in the rear. Moodstream helps you out with this and is an essential creative pit-stop.
Moodboard
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It's a useful tool although it does have a scrapbook feel to it. You may want to judge whether you use a board, a PDF or an app, based on the client and which medium suits them best.
Moodboard Lite
If the $9.99/£6.99 cost of Moodboard puts you off giving it a try, then give the free version, Moodboard Lite, a try. It includes all the features of the app, but limited to just a single board.Musepeak
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Designed for professional use, the tool has a lot of great features, including complete privacy, daily re-cap reports, guest URLs and real-time conversation. Musepeak is a service that you have to pay to use; however, the developers offer a 'Try it for Free' option in order to see if it suits your needs first.
MoodShare
MoodShare is another helpful tool that will help you organise your creative thoughts, allowing you to create and share multi-user collaborative mood boards.Its simple set up means that in just three steps you can easily develop inspiring boards to share with whomever you choose. Start with the search tool to find and save the best media online, including images, videos, sounds, colours and fonts. Then create and share your creations and get feedback in real-time with your team or client.
Olioboard
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MyDeco
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Gimme Bar
The developers of app Gimme Bar describe it as 'The 5th greatest invention of all time'. We're not sure about that but it's certainly an extremely useful tool for organising everything you find and want to save on the web. Gimme Bar allows you to create collections of bookmarks, including the facility to take entire screenshots, which is perfect if you want to show your team or clients examples of similar styles or colours. This is a great app for keeping everything that inspires you in one place.Mural.ly
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Matboard
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Evernote
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Pattern Tap
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Polyvore
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Sampleboard
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Further reading
Reasons why mood boards are worth the extra time
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