With the internet and all information spreading at the speed of lightning, you feel quite inundated with ideas and plans. Which ones do you pick and how do you go about them?
Specifically, being a creative in today’s world is quite a challenge, because you need to be very good at filtering your projects and focusing on the best. Then you need to adequately deliver your concept to the clients. That in itself entails plenty of creativity. And creativity usually works best when you sit together with a bunch of other people, exchanging ideas. But that’s not always the case, especially when more and more independent freelancers are fine working alone. When choosing what to work on and how to give it your best interpretation becomes an individual enterprise, brain-storming falls off from its classical sense.
For those who are not verbal or think words obstruct the true feeling of a vision, mood boards are great tools to convey … well, the mood. Initially created from foam board by design professionals in fields like architecture, fashion or interior design, now they have crossed over into the digital world. Therefore, mood boards are now a thing in the graphic design industry, as well as marketing, photography, blogging and more. They are perfect for bringing together textures, objects, fonts, or people that make up a theme. They set a particular tone in order to trigger certain emotions and reactions in your client. If this sounds vague, think Pinterest. That is the perfect example of how people gather a bunch of images under a name – interior design, for instance – and all their details create a room with a unique style.
Mood boards are a visual tool to describe the feel of a concept. They are excellent for arranging your thoughts, pinning down things that inspire you that you randomly find. Given that we’re mainly operating in the digital realm, mood boards are much easier to do than traditional ones. I think they are convenient for moments when you are not particularly working on a project but come across things you love. You can add them to a board, remove or edit them for later reference.
If you think you don’t need them for graphic design, here is a video about how to use mood boards for logo design. He does a great job explaining his process.
Because there is a growing interest in such tools, plenty of graphic deal resources also include mood board templates that you can customize, and share on social media, for instance.
Mood boards, also called vision boards, will definitely get your creative juices flowing to possibly convince that stubborn client to agree with you.
And if you are not very familiar with graphic design softwares you can give Canva a try.
For those of you already using them, tell us how you do it and how did they help you.
Here are a few links to stuff we liked:
