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

Made by Many used copies of Picture Post to inspire their redesign of the ITV News site

When putting together mood boards, it's easy (and therefore tempting) to just use Google Images. But just because you're working on a digital product, don't just look for digital-based inspiration. For example, whilst working on the ITV news website, digital innovators Made by Many looked at copies of the veteran Picture Post magazine in order to express how powerful and effective an image plus a caption can be for telling a news story.
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

Curation — What you leave out is as important as what you choose

Have you ever had the misfortune of going to a gallery exhibition and it just not doing anything for you? You weren’t 'touched' by the exhibition or 'moved' by what was on show – and other similar emotive profusions. It’s very easy to shove a load of stuff together and call it an exhibition; it’s an absolute talent to curate threads and synergies between works and call it an exhibition.
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

Find out at the outset whether your mood board is going to be presented in person or emailed to the client. The answer will decide whether you produce an offline or online mood board. The distinction is not trivial: the two formats demand very different approaches.
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.

Unicef final design — The finished UNICEF design

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

Dark Punk images — Mood images for a Daft Punk packaging design

Generally mood boards are considered to be separate to pitch or presentation work; they stand alone to show mood and tone. This is standard practice, but consider instead making them part of your pitch or presentation. Remember, you're trying to use subliminal visual tricks to make a client 'get it'.
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.

more Dark Punk images — Combining the mood images with the presentation helped win the pitch

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

Brand gurus Landor Associates use a form of mood board to showcase themselves to other members of the team. Formed of nine images in a 3x3 grid, it gives their fellow work colleagues an insight into what that person is like; their interests, loves, passions, cares and worries. If you ever want to test out your mood boarding skills - the ultimate challenge at making mood boards - try this out and showcase it to your colleagues.

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

images for Tom Baker — A mood board for Tom Baker's work on The Avengers cartoon series

Following on from the previous point, mood boards are a good way to brief a creative. Don’t be afraid to go into detail. This mood board was compiled for animator Tom Baker as a mood and style guide for creating cartoon versions of The Avengers TV series characters.
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.

Tom Baker's final Avengers designs — The finished characters

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

Pinterest offers a surprisingly diverse collection of images to draw mood board references from. The big plus of using it is that a whole load of human users have done a lot of the curating and hard work for you, and the collections there are often themed better than any traditional image library. For more on Pinterest, check out our article Things designers and illustrators should be doing with Pinterest.

Image Spark

We've all paid our dues by trawling the likes of Getty Images, iStock and Shutterstock for images for mood boards. But this can be a painful experience, with the search functions not neccesarilly geared around more ambient expression.
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

Moodstream is a resource from Getty Images. It's a unique 'pull that lever'-type, idea-generation and mood board-assisting tool.
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

A handy app for the iPad that will help you with putting together mood boards is Moodboard by Any Tribe. You can add photos from your Photo Library or the web, send your moodboards to Twitter and Facebook, or share via email. You can also share editable boards using iTunes File Sharing, plus the latest version has support for Retina.
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

If you want to collaborate and share ideas with other creatives of private boards then Musepeak could be the tool for you.
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

Olioboard is the perfect online app for creating mood boards for interior design. The tool's main purpose is to design a room in 2D or 3D and try it before you buy. But you can also use its preview of colour schemes and furniture choices to create an impressive mood board that you can save and share with friends and clients alike.

MyDeco

Similar to Olioboard, MyDeco is a mood board tool which is already packed full of home decorating ideas and furniture. You can start using MyDeco straight away but not registering means you're limited to the items in the site's library, so it's worth spending two minutes signing up. That way you can add endless items found on the web or saved on your PC to your boards.

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

Currently in beta, Mural.ly describes itself as 'Google Docs for visual people'. An easy and user-friendly way for creative teams to think, imagine and discuss their design ideas, many of its 45,000+ users use the service to create mood boards.

Matboard

New image sharing site Matboard is specifically targeting creatives as an alternative to the more mainstream Pinterest. Check out our in-depth review of what it has to offer.

Evernote

Never considered using the Evernote notetaking app to create mood boards? Us neither - but this blog post by Julie Gomoll explains exactly how it's done...

Pattern Tap

A one-stop shop for user interface inspiration, Pattern Tap has more than 25,000 registered users and tons of designs to pore over.

Polyvore

Polybore is a tool aimed at creating fashion-oriented mood boards

This free tool for creating fashion collages enables you to create mood boards from text and graphics you find on the web. There's a good video tutorial explaining how to use it here.

Sampleboard

Upload your images to this digital mood board creation tool and organize them into project files, then use the web editor to easily pull together design trends and color schemes. The mood boards you create can be shared on various social media sites and imported into documents and presentations simply and easily. A range of mood board themes are available to get you started.

Thursday 5 September 2013