Mood Boards

My favorite way to brainstorm as a creative is through making mood boards. Gaining inspiration on tone, feeling, “mood”, colors, design, typography, similar inspiring designs, etc. Mood boards help keep all created materials integrated, communicate the vision to designers, and make sure all aspects follow the same professional brand.  Mood boards should spark an emotional response.

Personally, I find images for my mood boards primarily on Pinterest and Tumblr, as well as adding brand color pantones and hex codes. For physical mood boards, you can also add texture, paints, and swatches.

Here is an example of a mood board I made for my personal brand created in Adobe Photoshop. I got typography inspiration from Glossier and Chamberlain Coffee’s logo using black letter fonts. My brand colors are also listed with their hex codes to keep all promotional materials cohesive. When looking at my portfolio, you can see how all of my work fits within the brand set by this mood board.

Here are 2 mood boards I made for assignments for one of my seminar classes. These mood boards were meant to be a visualization of what I have learned in the class and what I have learned about myself.

Here is another mood board I made for my Etsy shop Garden Street Charms created in Canva. I used this mood board when creating my first promotional materials and product photoshoot on my shop’s Instagram. I found photos on Pinterest to use as inspiration for editing and product photography.

When looking at the posts at the bottom of the feed, you can see the direct inspiration derived from the mood board.