One of my favorite exercises is creating a mood board. I take this approach when working on a brand identity or creating a cohesive, custom website. It is a fun, creative way to get to the visual heart of what a client wants to convey by using images and other examples to lay the foundations for communicating your brand authentically online.

What is a mood board?

In short, a mood board is a place to collect visual ideas and inspiration. In my practice, I like to include fonts, other websites, pictures, words, and color palettes in my mood boards to gather a wide variety of examples and sources of inspiration.

When identifying needs for a website or general digital strategy, I find that creating a mood board is a good start. It allows both the designer/developer and the business owner to lay a very firm foundation that doesn’t just rely on language. While someone may say that they want clients to feel calm and welcome when entering an office space, everyone may have slightly different associations and visualizations of what those words look like.

By relying more heavily on imagery, mood boards are one of my favorite ways to convey design ideas and inspiration by bypassing words altogether. Neat, right?

How to make a mood board?

One of the first things I like to ask clients is to share the following:

• Are there any websites or social media accounts that you’re inspired by?
• How would you like people to feel when they come to your website?
• Do you have any colors or imagery that you take inspiration from?

These resources can help me to put together a collection of color palettes, imagery, logo ideas, and font types to then share with my client. This is such a fun and helpful way to share visual representations of our options for the end result. It also helps me to gather my thoughts and create a holistic vision of the brand and related imagery.

With these examples in mind, I generally place these resources side-by-side on a new Figma board. Currently, I do this in Figma because it’s also where I generate and share mock-ups and prototypes for web design. However, you can certainly do this in Canva, Pinterest, and other image-based tools, as well!

Leveraging the mood board

I like to use mood boards in a few different ways. Of course, the best part is that they’re a fun and helpful way to convey a general mood or feeling, but you can also use them for things like:

• Color palettes: Using any predominant colors that have appeared on the mood board, use a color picker to help generate color palette options.
• Font styles: Check for any fonts or general styles that may appear on the mood board. For example, when designing my own website, I had included a handful of 70s-inspired images and fonts that led to my choice of header style.
• Imagery: Are there any common themes or images that appear in the mood board? These images may speak to both personal style and a deeper association for that brand identity that can form the basis of a logo design or provide some ideas for iteration.
• Copy and brand statement: Common words, text snippets, or even inspirational quotes can help create inspiration for a personal statement or brand message.

Whether you’re working with someone to develop your brand identity and messaging, or you’re creating it from the ground-up single-handedly, mood boards can be an excellent way to get the creative juices flowing.