how to create a mood board

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Mood Board
That tendency to collect can actually serve you well in your design workflow. How? Through creating mood boards. A mood board (or inspiration board) is a physical or digital collage of ideas that’s commonly used in fields like interior design, fashion, and graphic design. It can include just about anything — photography, designs or illustrations, color palettes, textures, descriptive words — anything that helps you define the direction of your project.
- Do it yourself. Mood boards don’t have make use of outside inspiration. …
- Match brand qualities to content. …
- Do more than one. …
- Go to the source. …
- Don’t limit yourself. …
- Get organized. …
- Cover all your bases. …
- Apply your ideas


Next it’s time to start searching online. There are lots of fantastic sites where you can find great visual inspiration for free, like Dribbble, Behance and Designspiration. The keyword you use to search can be literal words describing the topic of the moodboard (e.g. “bicycle”) metaphors (e.g. “ribbon”) or descriptive (e.g. “clean”).
Focus on composition, hierarchy and scale
Now that you’ve got the raw pieces, it’s time to start arranging them into a final composition. Starting by scaling and placing the logo can be a good way to anchor your composition. Use the size of elements to indicate their importance, and put related elements side by side. This process can take a while, so just relax and enjoy it!