What Is a Moodboard?
A mood board, sometimes called an inspiration board, is a tool to help you hone your visual ideas at the start of a creative project. It is a collage of images, material samples, color palettes, and sometimes descriptive words and typography that will guide your work.
Who Uses Moodboards?
Moodboards are used by various creative professionals, including graphic designers, interior decorators, set designers, fashion designers, photographers, and event planners. Anyone developing an object or environment that needs a particular look often starts with a mood board to specify design elements and color schemes.
3 Reasons to Make Your Moodboard
A mood board has two primary purposes:
It helps you refine your ideas. Perhaps you are starting from a blank slate and want to find inspiration. Maybe you already have a firm idea, but I want to let you know that it comes together as you imagine and guide yourself through the many creative decisions ahead. In either case, a mood board will give you the clarity you need before buying materials or building elements.
It helps you communicate your ideas to others. Usually, a creative professional like a graphic or interior designer will build a mood board to present their ideas to a client. From there, the client will give feedback about the suitability of the overall concept or the strength of certain items on the mood board over others. They might even choose between multiple mood boards the designer has used to present different options. A layperson planning their own event or design project wont have clients. Still, they will probably also need to communicate their ideas to someone else at some point a contractor, collaborator, or, if its a wedding, their fiance.
It is an assignment for this class!!
Whats the difference between physical and digital moodboards?
One of the most significant choices when you start a mood board is whether you want it to be physical or digital.
Physical mood boards are the traditional option. Typically, they are laid out on a piece of foam board a craft material used for purposes as wide-ranging as building dioramas and mounting photographs. Cut out your images neatly and stick them to the board with spray adhesive for best results. You might layer the images on top of each other to cover the board completely; if you prefer a neat grid layout with gaps between items, consider painting the board in a color that matches your chosen palette. Alternatively, a cork pinboard with pins can be a stylized way to display your inspiration.
Digital moodboards are a contemporary solution. They allow you to easily incorporate images youve seen online or objects youve photographed digitally. Several online platforms offer you a way to bring these images together. Some common ones are:
Pinterest. This social media platform lets you quickly combine images into themed boards. It is perfect for discovering new images, so you will want to use it in at least the research stage. Another advantage is that many people are familiar with the platform, so you can easily collaborate.
Canva. Canva provides online graphic design tools that offer a free alternative to expensive industry software. Its moodboard maker has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface and several template options. The clean layout makes it a professional-looking option for presenting your work to others.
Milanote. This is another good browser-based app. It packs some handy features, like adding videos and gifs, font files, and text notes to explain your thinking.
How to Choose Your Moodboard Format
To decide whether to make your mood board physical or digital, consider the following:
Are the clients or people youre communicating with local or remote? If theyre far away, a digital mood board you can email them or share a link to will be more practical.
How vital are textures to you? A physical board is your choice if your ideas are best conveyed by natural fabrics and materials that a person can feel with their fingers.
Where are you collecting most of your moodboard items from? If you spend a lot of time online while saving images that inspire you, go digital. If you love reading magazines and already have a stack of them to work with, go physical. Play to your strengths.
Step-by-Step Guide: Make Your Moodboard
There are three steps to making a mood board:
Brainstorm your theme. You probably have some ideas in mind from the get-go. Now, could you brainstorm some keywords associated with these ideas? For an interior design project, you might zero in on the style (modernist, Scandinavian, tropical), materials (concrete, ash wood, rattan), or color (mustard yellow, blush pink, forest green). This will help you with online image searches try Google but also Getty, Unsplash, Pinterest, and Instagram. If youre not drawn to a particular idea yet, sit down with an industry magazine or book, let your eyes roam, and note what resonates. Youll soon find inspiration.
Collect your elements. Take your early sources of inspiration, then challenge yourself to think outside the box to find more. Movie mise en scene, fashion editorial shoots, vintage illustrations, artworks, fabric and color swatches, architecture, objects, and clothing can all be good mood board fodder. Dont disregard typography either an old-style serif font will have very different connotations to a clean and contemporary sans-serif style, making it a great tool to showcase some keywords or relevant quotes.
Review, curate, and present your board. Odds are, you now have more material than is helpful. Curate by choosing images and samples that come together harmoniously, building in some breadth to reflect your originality (or increase your chances of appealing to the client if youre working with one). A cohesive color palette is essential, so discard anything that clashes. Consider eye-dropping five critical colors from the images into swatches if you’re making a digital board. Obtain paint and fabric swatches for the same effect if making a physical board.
PLEASE NOTE:
For this assignment, the only common theme is Death of a Salesman. You must complete a moldboard, following the instructions above, and submit your assignment digitally.
You can make your mood board either:
Digitally – Use various word processing programs, such as MS Word or Acrobat, to create your board digitally. Please save it in a .doc, .docx, or .pdf format before you send it to me.
The old-fashioned way – If you wish, you may complete your board in a collage style and paste/glue it up on your board. If you do this, you still must submit the assignment digitally. You can photograph your board and upload the photo. For this assignment, I will accept. Jpg files as well as the usual .doc, .docx, or .pdf OR you can convert your file to .pdf
This is also acceptable if you would like to create a PowerPoint presentation as your mood board. PowerPoint files are okay for this assignment as well.
As I stated above, we focus on the play Death of a Salesman. You may focus on the overall play, OR you may focus on one of the design areas listed below:
Set
Lighting
Costume
Projection / Multi-Media
Please do not use sound; it is difficult to “illustrate” sound on paper!
Furthermore:
Your moldboard MUST have some written explanation explaining your images/content. I’m not looking for a caption under each image; I am looking for what motivated you to create in the direction you went. Use your written analysis paper as a starting point! (which is why you are analyzing this project)
Your project can be as short as 1 page (minimum) or as long as you like!
YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST 10 images that correspond to the look and feel of your version of Death of a Salesman.
All explanations on your board must be legible and in college-level English.
RESOURCES:
Links:
Mood boards for Set Design
Help / Ideas for mood board construction:
Inspiration and direction for a mood board
Inspiration for a Mood Board
