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Why creating a Mood board is an ideation technique for businesses?

Plenty of the ideation techniques can be used to a business in order to promote innovation and creativity among the workforce. However, the one that can be used before even the actual process of implementing a project in order to provoke a “feeling” or creativity to the workforce, are Mood boards. Basically, anyone that is creating an object that needs to have a specific “look” often starts with a mood board to spec out elements.

Mood boards are physical or digital collages that can include anything from images, texts, materials to photography, illustrations, textures, descriptive words or even color palettes. The origin of this technique is not known; however, we could say that the most common era that a mood board could be found in the past was fashion designers’ ateliers.

What is the purpose of Moodboarding in a business?

Moodboards are a perfect way to clarify the aim and the design of a project before diving into the real creation and implementation. Moreover, they are an excellent idea to guide and influence the co-workers of a project in order for them to be on the same page as the creator. Therefore, you create a strong visual framework and collaboration between colleagues becomes easier.

To apply it you have two ways, physical or digital. Physical is a traditional way of creating a moodboard, that can help someone to think outside of a box and take inspiration from the real physical world. A physical moodboard can be created by drawings, cutting images and gluing them in a board or canvas. However, is difficult to share it with co-workers if you working remote.

Physical Moodboard, Source Emily Griffith

On the other hand, digital moodboards can easily be shared among the workforce as images or files. Despite this, is easier for the designers to create them as they use tools from their everyday work life while in the digital form of a moodboard videos can be added as well. The digital moodboard can be created first in platforms like Pinterest, where someone can already find prepared, or Canva.

Digital Moodboard, Source Crowdspring

How to create a Moodboard

The way to work this technique can be described in the following steps:

  1. Brainstorm your ideas of the project and set directions
  2. Collect existing material (logos, tag-lines, brand values, statements)
  3. Add inspiring visual content (images, photographs)
  4. Add examples of textures, motions or sounds
  5. Add color, fonts and files
  6. Transform your board and make it from messy to organized
  7. Explain your thinking

Important notice about the creation of a moodboard is to remain open to inspiration and also to feedback. To be more specific, it is important to take suggestions from your co-workers in order to make improvements.

Moodboarding is interesting for the next techniques:

  • Brainstorming
  • Presenting Ideas
  • Communicating
  • Focus on the project idea
  • Receive and give feedback