What is your mood today? Are you feeling high, joyful, low, or sad? Our mood affects our day, and it also affects our style. To keep our moods on the positive side, we need the inspiration to thrive. During this digital age, we can create mood boards to inspire us every day. Art is not always about pretty things. It’s about who we are, what happened to us, and how our lives are affected. This a meaningful quote from Elizabeth Broun, a former director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The quote represents the purpose of a mood board. In this discussion, let’s discover 5 reasons to create a mood board
A mood board is a collage of images, objects, and text conveying a general idea. It can be an inspiration board for everyone. It can also be a tool to file ideas when starting a creative project. Mood boards can either be physical or digital. Physical mood boards are foam boards layered with image cut-outs or mount photos. They are a traditional pasting or pinning board. Digital mood boards use digital objects and photographs. It’s an easier and innovative way to convey ideas.
Who Uses a Mood Board?
Different creative professionals use a mood board. These include event planners, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior decorators, photographers, and set designers. The mood board serves as their visual tool to present an idea to a client. They are also used by a brand’s creative team and digital marketers. For them, the mood board sets the color scheme and design element for a brand campaign.
Even non-designers use a mood board. Many professionals in different fields use them as their first haven for any big project. The collection of pictures transformed initial thoughts into a first draft. Mood boards effectively align and direct the activities for ongoing projects. As such, anyone who wants to create a particular look or style can use a mood board to point directions.
Top 14 Mood Board Apps for 2020
The best graphic design software helps communicate the idea of a mood board and set the right tone for a project.
Here’s a list of the top 14 mood boards apps for 2020:
- GoMoodboard
- StudioBinder
- Mural
- Polyvore
- PatternTap
- Evernote
- The Matboard
- Canva
- Gimme Bar
- Olioboard
- Moodboard (iOS App)
- InVision
- Nice
6 Reasons to Create a Mood Board
For years, creative and design teams benefited from using a mood board. Here are 6 reasons to create a mood board:
Alignment. A mood board serves as a North Star for every project. It sets up a baseline guide that may include the color palettes, images, layout, and typography style. Everyone involved in the project can use them to consistently align their designs. For clients, it aligns their expectations and goals with the project outcome.
Collaboration. One good reason to create a mood board is to avoid wasting the design time. A mood board makes it clearer and easier to collaborate with clients about the direction they want to have. By establishing a visual experience, designers can present different patterns to a client. Clients will get a potential feel and look on the mood boards to choose the exact match for the project. During the presentation, they’ll get to agree on what colors resonate with their goals. They can also provide inputs to improve the design. In the end, the client and designer can collaborate on the style that they feel will work best. Remember, it’s easier to understand an idea through visuals rather than having to read a long text document.
Creativity. There are so many color schemes and spectrums to choose from when making a digital design. Also, there’s a wide array of dimensions, elements, and objects that you could apply. A mood board can help creators play around to check what makes the best sense for a client. Mood boards direct you to do some market research. To see what’s popular and working, you have to look for the style of the client’s competitors. By familiarizing yourself with a particular industry, you’ll get creative ideas that are relevant to the niche.
Flexibility. Mood boards are very flexible. Their graphic design software applies to multiple dimensions and mediums. As mentioned, a mood board is the first draft. This means you can change it as ideas change. If you or the client feel that there’s a need to change direction on some aspect, it would be easy to apply the changes. Commonly, the general ideas remain the same. It’s only the colors, imagery, or typography that you need to change.
Inspiration. Some projects can be done in short durations while others may take longer to complete. Another reason to create a mood board is for inspiration. A mood board contains all the best ideas of a team. Each image represents what each should achieve on the project. Together with what is why they should do it. Having an accessible mood board throughout the project will keep the team members inspired. It constantly reminds them of the importance of doing their best to achieve a larger goal.
Productivity. Last but not the least, the best reason to create a mood board is to ensure productivity. First, it speeds up the brainstorming process to finalize a project style by using visual elements. Getting the client’s approval through mood boards is clearer and allows it to move smoothly. Second, the approved patterns help the team quickly build up a consistent design. Psychologically this also sets the team’s mood to have high energy at work because of the inspiration it provides them.
