Here are some ideas for creating a mood board: Physical mood boards You can also create them in whatever way, shape or form you like, be it physical (think back to the cork pinboard!) or virtual. Perhaps the best thing about mood boards is that there are no rules. Fonts, color palettes, and design elements from history can be a terrific form of fresh inspiration today. If you’re inspired by a particular era in history, find images or actual objects from that era to add to your mood board.
If you’re a service provider working with a client, use a mood board to pitch a concept and sell your client on the idea you’ve created and reduce the risk that the final product doesn’t meet their expectations.įor my next collaboration with the Canadian-based yarn company Fleece & Harmony I’ve shared a screenshot of my Pinterest mood board with Jennifer, the owner of Fleece & Harmony, and she in turn created a colorway based on the photos in the mood board. Often, it’s easier to just share a few pictures that represent similar colors, shapes, and textures rather than to try to describe them with words. It acts as a visual reference point to convey and align the vision between everyone involved. It’s magical what a few different artists and makers can achieve together! I’ve found that having a mood board for each project is a helpful for ensuring a unified aesthetic.
Here are some examples of Lundstrom’s mood boards:Ĭoordinate collaborations with other makersĬollaborations are one of my great joys in running a creative business. “It’s motivating to find photos from nature and other creative artists that I can then focus into a new creative work myself,” says Lundstrom. Rachel Lundstrom dyes yarn in Lakewood, Colorado for her business, Six and Seven Fiber, and uses mood boards to organize her visual ideas. Getting in the habit of collecting visual inspiration is one way to grow as an artist. Have you ever wished you had saved that photo you saw on a blog post because it perfectly captured the feeling you wanted for your next photo shoot, but now you can’t find it? Maybe you came across an unlikely color combination on your way home and wished you’d recorded it somewhere?Īll of these visuals can be saved on a mood board so that you can reference them later in your creative work. Mood boards are a brilliant “catch-all” for creative ideas and the visual inspiration you come across in your daily life. Keep track of inspiration & organize ideas Rather than wandering aimlessly in a sea of ideas, you can use a mood board to tighten your vision for a new project and refine the aesthetic. Mood boards are a wonderful tool to get un-stuck, to get organized, to get inspired. From taping fabric to my studio wall, to more recently, pinning thousands of pictures to my Pinterest boards. Mood boards have been a part of my creative life for as long as I can remember - from cutting out catalog photos and gluing them on cardboard, to filling cork pinboards with postcards, color swatches, and quotes.