What Is a Mood Board

A Definitive Guide

Social media is flooded with digital mood boards, and some websites, like Pinterest, are completely dedicated to them. Mood boards are almost everywhere.

Mood boards are beautiful to look at, inspirational, and fun to create.

Today, we will learn what a mood board is exactly, the different types of mood boards, and how we can express our creative freedom and design our own mood board.

What is a Mood Board?

Mood boards are visual images which are created by combining images, textures, colours, text or samples. The aim of a mood board is to convey a certain topic, concept or style. Mood boards are commonly used by designers, photographers or other creative people to bring across their ideas or concepts for a project.

A mood board is also called an inspiration board because that is exactly what it does – it inspires us. Mood boards are useful tools to help develop and express ideas.

Different Types of Mood boards

There are five different methods used to create mood boards.

Digital mood board

Digital mood boards do not require graphic design skills. It is easy to create this type of mood board using online tools and images and to source inspiration from other creatives.

Physical mood board

Physical mood boards will involve sticking images, texts, and samples to a real board – like a foam board or cardboard. We can make use of fabrics, cut-outs from magazines or newspapers, as well as different patterns, to create your board.

Practical mood boards

This type focuses on a specific project and will include design elements that will be included in the final design of the product or project.

Explorative mood boards

These mood boards are more of a creative process and explore different styles and design elements before the project’s first draft or product is produced. This is useful for interior design.

Mixed mood boards

These boards combine both exploratory and practical components. It requires a clear direction but also an open mind.

Want to learn why Mood Boards are important? Click here!