A mood board is the process of creativity to research, pair, and save things together. The ideas of both the designer and the client should always be in sync with each other. But at times, the designer’s thoughts and the client’s visualizations might not just match. That’s when the mood boards come into play.
A mood board is a visual tool that keeps a designer aligned with the client and helps both of them to communicate in a better way. It saves ample time and stops the designer from investing unnecessary resources and going overboard with the budget of branding, graphic designing, packaging design or logo designing.
Here are five reasons on how important mood boards are in a designer’s life:
Invokes Creativity
Clears communication with the client
Smoother and easier process
Ensures synchronization with the project goals
Acts as a reference tool
1. Invokes creativity:
Creating a mood board allows designers the right opportunity to experiment with the various possibilities of executing the design rather than directly start designing with the initial ideations. The designer can research the client’s industry and their competitors as well as explore more with the style and elements of design. This will help the designer in getting more insights into the design process.
2. Clears communication with the client:
The entire design journey should feel like teamwork, instead of just the client shooting instructions and the designer working accordingly. Both the parties should decide and add on their valuable inputs. In the initial steps, one has the possibility of experimenting. The mood board allows the clients to add to the designs or incur slight alterations before advancing to the final steps. Here's an example of an interactive mood board created by Design Makers for their client:
3. Smoother and easier process:
If you are a designer who believes in time management, then mood boards are the real deal. A mood board ensures an easy design process. It reduces the ideation time as mood boards help in forming a set of corrected patterns or modules which can be added to the project to make the process quick
4. Ensures synchronization with the project goals:
As we move into the project, we should be aware of not deviating from the intended goals. The feel, mood, shades, and theme should remain constant despite several changes undergone during the design process. Mood boards make sure that the design is in sync with the goals that have been decided at the commencement of the project.
5. Acts as a reference tool:
Both client and designer can move back to the mood board for guidance, if they feel something is going off-bit, during the design process. Mood board act as a reference tool to check fonts, shades, or other design elements. Here's one from Design Makers:
Thus, mood boards are not only a valuable visual resource to keep the aesthetics, theme, and style of the design project intact but also form an essential part of the complete journey of the project.
