What is a Mood Board?
Mood boards (sometimes called inspiration boards) are used in a variety of styles and approach. Commonly used for Interior Design, with fabric swatches and paint chip samples grouped together on a poster, they are also used frequently in the Fashion Industry to highlight trends and styles. A Mood Board basically is a compilation of inspirational elements used by designers to create the look and feel of a design project at an early stage of the project.
A Mood Board usually fits into the process somewhere after wire-frames and before design mockups. Elements of a Mood Board include photography style, color palettes, typography, patterns, and the overall look and feel of the site. Dark or light? Soft or hard? Grungy or clean?
Getting the client involved early in the process can make a huge difference in the outcome of the overall work effort. I start by asking the client to write down as many descriptive words as they can about the atmosphere of the site they want me to build. I will typically create 3 separate Mood Boards for a project: one loose with imagery, color and text; another more detailed describing font styles and sizes, bounding box border styles, link colors and styles, etc; the third will be the most formal, using a structured template to display all elements of the site. I usually spend between 1 to 3 hours per Mood Board depending on the project size and client budget. The clients input at this early of a stage will not only save money, it will speed up the process to design and script the web site.
Below is a sample of a loose Mood Board for a guitar luthier supply company.
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