How We Get Inspired: The Story of Mood Boards

We’ve recently been taking a look at past internal projects, and showing how you can use some of our “secret sauce” for your own presentation or content marketing work. For this post, we want to share one of the reasons that our portfolio shines with so many sparkling assets. That secret? Mood boards.

A mood board is typically a combination of images, fonts, colors, and textures that define the style of the project. It is a tool for creatives and clients to come to an agreement about style.” – Creatively Daring

When a client comes to us, we gather all of the information we need about their project on a kickoff call between our teams. From there, the designer comes up with several mood board options that help give them an idea about the direction we’re thinking.

But here is the thing: anyone can create a mood board. Even non-designers. And yes, even you. If you have an upcoming presentation or design project, here’s how to create a collage of your own ideas to help provide inspiration, and also keep you married to a specific theme rather than feeling overwhelmed by design options.

How We Get Inspired: The Story of Mood Boards

Think “Pinterest”

Even if you don’t use Pinterest, you probably have an idea about how it works. People create collections of images, recipes, articles, and other things they love on the web. Then other people can browse through those collections and discover new things to love, like a big lovable quilt of overnight oatmeal recipes.

Go rogue with this concept and save images or ideas across the web for your own inspiration. It could be quotes you copy-paste, photos you love, or even brand logos from other websites that you aspire to be more like. Steal from anywhere and everywhere! Since this will be used privately for your motivation, you can feel comfortable being a thief.

Who is Your Hero?

If you don’t know where to look for inspiration, visit some websites for other companies in your space. If you have a food truck, visit websites for other food trucks. What kind of images, icons, wording, and fonts are they using?

This can not only help you refine what you want your look and feel to be, but also give you a good temperature reading of what exists in the market. You don’t have to copy someone else, but you definitely need to meet their quality of design.

Organize and Embrace

Go offline! Print out the visual assets you need and create a collage using glue sticks and a little inspiration. It can be a huge as a campaign poster, or as small as a normal sheet of printer paper. Hang it up somewhere by your computer and use it as a visual reference for your next project.

If you are creating a mood board for a one-time project, a digital collage using an online service like Fotor might be a perfect option for you. Either way, your mood board should be able to showcase your inspiration in a single glance that conveys the overall feeling of what you hope to accomplish.

Looking for more design or presentation inspiration? Check out these related blogs!

Blinded By Science! The Story of “The Mega-Might of Presentations for Content Marketing”

Inspiration From Everywhere: The Story of Our Nashville Deck

The Story Behind The Design: The “Sports Spectacular” Presentation

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