How to Make the Perfect Moodboard: A Step-by-Step Guide
Creating a moodboard is a fantastic way to visually communicate the concept and aesthetic of a project. Whether you're a designer, marketer, or just looking to revamp your personal brand, a moodboard can help you gather inspiration, refine your vision, and present your ideas to others.
What is a Moodboard?
A moodboard is a tool to help you put your visual materials in order and establish a creative direction in the starting point of a project. It can include fonts, colors palette, images, textures, descriptive words - anything that helps you define the direction of your project. Photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, event planners, anyone in the creative community can use a moodboard to communicate their idea.
Why to create our own Moodboard?
Gather inspiration. A moodboard is a great way to collect and organize visual inspiration for a project. By curating a selection of images, colors, and other elements that speak to your concept and aesthetic, you can get a better sense of the overall direction and vision for your project.
Communicate ideas. You can create a moodboard to present your ideas to a client. In this way, they can better understand the creative direction of a project and give you more constructive feedback. They might even choose between multiple moodboards, but make sure not to give them more than 3 or 4 moodboards ideas – you don’t want to confuse them.
Save time. Creating a moodboard can also save you time in the long run. By gathering and organizing your inspiration in one place, you can more easily reference your moodboard as you work on your project, rather than having to search for specific images or elements each time. This can help you stay focused and on track, and make the overall design process more efficient.
Step-by-Step Guide to create the Perfect Moodboard
1. Decide on a form.
Moodboards can be physical or digital.
Physical Moodboards are the traditional option. They can be made from a piece of foam board, or you can glue your inspiration onto huge pieces of paper and hang them on your wall to view. It may seem like an old-fashioned thing to do, but in a creative process, it is a real asset for a designer to know how to create a physical moodboard. Gather everything you have collected, such as printed materials (postcards, magazines, brochures, your photos, quotes from second-hand books, a color palette), and glue them on the board with spray adhesive, tape adhesive, or even paper clips.
Digital Moodboards are a more conventional option. There are many ways to create a digital moodboard. You can create your own using Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, or you can use online tools like Pinterest (which is great because you can easily bring together images into boards and even add other collaborators to the board), Canva (provides a variety of graphic-design tools and is a free alternative), and Milanote (allows you to add videos and GIFs, font files, and text notes to explain your ideas).
2. Research - Brainstorm your theme.
Take your time and do your research according to the tone and mood of the project. Once you've found a creative direction, name your moodboard and add some keywords that best describe the project in a text note. To increase your chances of coming across diverse materials, we recommend websites such as Pinterest, Unsplash, Dribbble, Behance or you can sit down with an industry magazine or a book. Keep an open mind and get creative.
3. Collect all the elements and curate your board.
After you’ve done the research, you need to start collecting all the elements to make the perfect moodboard. Group all your researched elements based on a color scheme or a repeating theme, and then make up a collection of items that look as if they belong together (all images should be unified to tell the same story).
With all your content ready and finalized, it’s time to put everything together and arrange it into a single layout. Place a key element, such as a logo, to anchor your board, then choose elements of various topics, such as typography, textures, colors, and photography, to really highlight your vision of the project.
Never stop looking for ideas, but always remember, as Neil Gaiman said, "The truth is, it’s not the idea, it’s never the idea, it’s always what you do with it."
4. Ask for feedback
Now that your moodboard is complete, show it to some of your friends and family and ask them to explain the general feeling and mood in their own words. Embrace constructive feedback because it helps you improve the work and create the perfect moodboard. After you've completed all of the revisions and implemented all of the feedback, it's time to share the moodboard with the client.
Don’t forget that the moodboard is not the final piece, but the starting point for the actual project.
Creating a moodboard may take a little time and effort, but it's a valuable tool that can help you communicate your vision and gather inspiration for your next project. Did you find the step-by-step guide for making a perfect moodboard helpful? Need help with some ideas? Check out our Pinterest Board.