Create a mood board
Mood boards have been used across a wide range of design related professions as a way of collecting and presenting ideas in order to enable the development of a particular project or briefing. They’ve been used quite extensively in fashion and in interior design as a way of creating inspirational collages of textures, shapes, colours and styles as a way of creating an overall look and feel of the design.
Types and Styles
Creating a mood board template can be quite a personal experience, it depends largely on how you feel inspired. It’s certainly not supposed to be a boring, unfulfilling task, but something enjoyable and fun to do.
The Physical Mood board
Mood boards of course, were originally physical objects that consisted of everything from photography to magazine cuttings and even textures, such as fabrics and snippets of other inspirational objects – you could almost consider it like a giant scrapbook. If you’re quite a hands-on person, this kind of format may suit you best.
The Digital Moodboard
Since times have evolved and we don’t always have our clients in the next room, of course even mood boards have gone digital. There are several services online that you can use to generate your boards and to share them internally with colleagues, upload them to the cloud, etc. There are equally many articles that list and review these resources.
Where to get ideas
Regardless of whether you opt for the physical or digital mood board template, where you get your ideas from is really key. Imagine you have decided that your concept is ‘growth’ for example. You can imagine the types of images that google will throw up if you search for this, equally, in Pinterest, you’re likely to have some trouble since it’s a bit of an abstract thing. One way to resolve this problem and to be creative is to write a list of words related to the word (around 100) in order to help you to really think outside of the box. Then, look for images relating to these words.
Don’t forget your surroundings
Sometimes a simple trip to the library can help you to search for ideas and inspiration in a different way. This includes short mobile videos, photos, photocopying, reading newspapers, magazines and taking random clippings of things found.
