Creativity Tutorial: What a Mood Board Is and How to Create One

Learn what a mood board consists of and how to compile visual inspiration, with Linus Lohoff

A mood board will provide any visual branding project with the foundational elements to become a success. In many cases, the better the mood board, the clearer the process, and the better the final result.

A mood board can be comprised of anything that will inform the next steps you take in the design process: images, photos, textures, patterns, colors, text, typography, and objects.

Linus Lohoff (@linus_lohoff) is an art director and photographer who has worked for creative agencies such as Saatchi&Saatchi, BOROS & Vasava Studio. In this tutorial, Linus shares his process for how to easily create a clear and effective mood board.

1. Keywords and themes

Start by making a small list of the central pillars of your project. These will often be decided on through meetings with a client or brainstorming sessions with your team. If you’re going it alone, try to think of four or five words that sum up the essence of your brand.

The main words that stuck out to Linus when planning his KOYOK project were:

Creating a mood board will help you think of how to visualize abstract concepts and establish the kind of look you’re going for before you begin researching.

2. Find your images

Now it is time to find our visual references. Online databases like Google Images and Pinterest can prove invaluable. Many of them offer different features and strengths that will help you find the pictures that best fit your needs. Designspiration is another database that is more directed towards design professionals.

If you have the time and the resources to go old school and find your inspiration through analog means, such as through books, photos, objects, and places, this can bring your mood board to the next level.

3. Organize your board

There’s no point getting everything together if you can’t easily review your collection. The process of sorting your findings may also help you link your ideas together or even come up with new ones.

You can download pictures to a file on your computer or copy and paste them straight into a document. Linus recommends using a presentation software like Keynote or Powerpoint to make a set of neat and ordered collages that are divided into different slides, with each related to one of the keywords you selected at the start of your project.

As the process goes on, you will start to recognize the elements that most appeal to you. Now, you can refine your investigation, paying special attention to the colors, formats, and textures that you want to include in your design.

If you liked this tutorial, you can learn more about how to design a brand’s visual identity and build a professional brand book using key art direction techniques with Linus Lohoff on his online course, Art Direction for Creative Visual Branding.

You may also like:

- Principles of Concepting and Branding, a course by HUMAN
- Photography for Social Media: Lifestyle Branding on Instagram, a course by BOND
- Presentation of Branding Projects, a course by the branding people