Free Worksheets to Plan a Haptic Mood Board for Your Project

Think outside the box and plan a mood board experience for yourself or a client with these in-depth worksheets

A mood board is more than a collection of pretty pictures. In fact, according to trend agency founder Gudy Herder (@gudy), "a well-structured mood board leaves nothing to chance." Building one for your client or project will allow you to get outside of your head and into a physical planning space. You’ll also create an attention-grabbing presentation for your audience—a real-world, tactile experience that stands out in the digital era.

Gudy has translated and visualized ideas for all kinds of creative projects. Her company Eclectic Trends specializes in interior design & lifestyle brands, identifying micro and macro trends for clients such as IKEA, Montblanc, and the European Institute of Design (IED). She also teaches mood board workshops to students and companies around the world.

Here, Gudy shares a set of worksheets to wake up your creative mind and plan a mood board by considering three key questions. But first: what exactly is a haptic mood board?

What is a haptic mood board?

A mood board isn’t a project in itself, Gudy shares, it’s an “activator”. A design artifact that solves a problem. You’re crafting a visual representation of an idea or concept, that can be used in presentations or simply to inspire you.

Haptic mood boards take this concept one step further. In the current market, experience is key to sticking in your audience’s memories. After all, you are selling them a really high-concept idea and vision that doesn’t exist in the real world yet. How do you make that memorable? Well, by bringing the idea to life in a mood board that’s a work of art in itself. Incorporating objects and surfaces that the audience can interact with, you make the idea “real”. In Gudy’s case, where she’s focused on interiors, that means using carpet fragments, paint samples, photos, and so on.

What’s your intention and message?

As mentioned, your mood board needs to serve a purpose and answer client questions. Though it feels good to create a mood board based purely off intuition, Gudy insists that “a little strategy goes a long way”. That’s why she identified a three-step formula:

1. Know your message
2. Know your objectives
3. Know your audience

A good mood board translates these three points into materials, color, and text. It’s a direct response to your brief and any conversations you’ve had with the client. You want them to leave the presentation with a strong sense of the future brand.

Example of a mood board for a client

In her course, Gudy gives an example of a client that would benefit from a tactile mood board. A couple wants to leave the city and found a bed and breakfast with a slow living theme. They want it to be nicely branded to attract their ideal customers.

In this example, the message conveyed by the mood board should be cozy, slow living. After the presentation, Gudy wants the clients to feel a sense of coherence throughout the branding of the B&B. The objectives will be to cover any needs discussed with the clients, and inspire them to activate the process of founding the business.

Her audience is a busy couple who really needs a selective process to be demonstrated. They don’t have time for in-depth market research, but have overall ideas of what they want the brand to look like. Gudy advocates for preparing responses to objections in advance. It’s important to help the client understand that this is a springboard, not a final and singular answer.

When building the board, Gudy explores the activities that could be offered at this B&B—break-baking and pottery for example. She also pulls together images that indicate a heart-warming color palette, and identifies sustainable materials that could be used in the decoration.

Free download: Worksheets to Plan a Haptic Mood Board

Inside this free download, you’ll find a set of worksheets that will guide you through answering the questions discussed above, to get you ready to make a mood board of your own.

After clicking on the link below, you'll find the Worksheets to Plan a Haptic Mood Board by Gudy Herder PDF in your computer's Downloads folder.

If you want to learn more, you can sign up for the course Mood Board Creation: Communicate Concepts Effectively. For more, take a look at our other branding and interior decoration courses.

Keep discovering free creative resources like this on the Downloads section of our blog.

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