🚀What is a moodboard and how to use it in your projects

What is a moodboard and how to use it in your projects

by Team AllYourVideogames | Feb 4, 2022 | News |

If you have difficulties in developing your ideas and concepts and putting them into practice in the best possible way, the resource to create a moodboard may be the perfect solution to your problem. But after all, what is a moodboard and how can you use it in your projects?

This is a tool widely used in areas such as architecture and fashion and is perfect for defining the essential that will guide any business, work or the most varied marketing projects.

In this post, we are going to talk about what a moodboard is, the benefits of using the tool, how to create your moodboard and some examples that you can use to get inspired.

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What is a moodboard?

When translating the word moodboard literally into Portuguese, we will get “mood panel”, and there really is no better definition for this tool.

Basically, a moodboard is almost entirely composed of visual elements such as vectors, images, videos, illustrations and other similar resources that you can choose to use.

These visual resources will translate, at least in the tool, the main essence of the brand, project, product, company and among others you are working on. In addition to the aforementioned areas of architecture and fashion, the moodboard is also widely used by advertising and graphic design professionals.

There are several different ways to create a moodboard. The ones most commonly used by professionals are:

Through paper or wall: you can print all the resources you want and organize them on a separate wall or sheet, making it easy to see;
Editing programs, such as Photoshop: when creating your moodboard in an editing program, you also have an easier time changing when necessary, in addition to saving space;
Apps or social networks: You can also use social networks like Pinterest to create your moodboard, or even apps like Canva.

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What is a moodboard for?

The moodboard will define the style you will follow in almost any project you work on. That is, from the moodboard, the rest of the project will take shape.

This is the tool that will transform your project into something completely unique. Contrary to what many people may think, the sense of “style” is not only present in fashion or architecture, but in anything in the world and in its essence, literally.

From the moodboard, you will understand the best colors, typography, furniture, clothes, visual direction, style, positioning of objects and many other things that you can use in projects when putting them into practice.

Whether you are putting together a clothing collection, an apartment, an office, a house, a little room for your pet or anything else, the concept of style will be present, where everything should be guided by the moodboard you develop.

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What benefits come from using a moodboard?

Among the biggest difficulties when developing a project are conflicting ideas, communication noise, difficulty visually understanding what is being proposed and lack of organization.

The moodboard allows you to put all this on paper/canvas and virtually eliminate all these problems. In addition, the entire team can give their opinions and work together to add, remove or change what is needed.

All this allows the approximate final result to be visualized in a very predictable and palpable way. In this way, the moodboard ends up excluding those ideas that can cause problems in the future and makes room for adding the famous golden ideas to the project, without missing any opportunity.

With this, there will be a gain in productivity, time and money savings and greater satisfaction in the final result.

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How to create a moodboard?

Now that you understand better what a moodboard is, it's time to learn how to create your own. We will explain how you can create your own tool to make your projects easier.

1. Choose the design you want

You will have a wide variety of designs that you can choose from to create your moodboard. But before defining, you need to take into account what your target audience will be and what the best design will be to please them.

An example we can give for a moodboard is for a campaign and the different design styles you have for that are:

Classic model: this type of design is basically stuck to the campaign's brand colors, without many aspects that can be considered innovative;
Modernism and minimalism: this type of design makes use of sober colors and fast strokes, making your moodboard more attractive;
“Varejao” style: with this moodboard style, capital letters, warm colors will be used to attract the public and vectors and elements that can convey the idea of urgency and explosion.

The visual identity of the project and its elements are directly linked to the moodboard style. If you don't have experience with creating this tool, our tip is to always have graphic design books at your side to understand the concepts and the best ways to combine the elements and create your moodboard.

Your products and visual elements should always reach the moodboard audience and the best way to do this is through the visual elements and visual identity of the project, whether company, brand or others. Thus, the moodboard target audience will know the essences easily.

2. Choose color palettes

The color palette is one of the most important points when creating your moodboard. The best part is that you can create your palette with different shades of the same color or with different combinations of different colors. However, you need to be careful to keep the color palette intertwined with the rest of your project.

At this point, you should always revisit the visual identity and strategies you made earlier to be able to define the color palette in the best possible way. That's because it's likely that the palette is already defined, just needing to select some colors or secondary tones to improve and/or continue the visual identity, then you just need to apply it on the moodboard.

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3. Work on the textures

As said before, images are the main elements of a moodboard, but they are not the only ones. You can perfect your project and deepen your ideas with other elements, such as working well with textures.

Let's use the moodboard as an example for the construction of a house that normally requires two types of layers: the softest, like marble; and the ones with more “strength”, like layers that resemble the texture of a brick. The difference is that you can make texture adaptations for any project, whether related to fashion, objects, etc., not just textures in architecture and decoration projects.

Some examples of texture for those who work in fashion are the type of fabric, for example: silk, velvet or lace. But you will define this according to the semantic panel and the customer profile, in addition to the message you want to convey and the essence of the project.

4. Choose the best typography

The text is part of the visual elements that make up the moodboard and visual identity of any project. Many believe that this is one of the non-essential elements, but in fact it is quite the opposite of that, being extremely essential in any project, depending on the form it uses.

Whenever you write the texts for your projects, you need to understand how the words will be visually distributed, in a way that fits perfectly with all the other visual elements above.

Thus, the typography needs to be handpicked, because if you choose the wrong one, you can end up with all the harmony of the project.

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5. Try using resources beyond the image

Moodboards are not just limited to images, colors and texts. You can look to innovate and use other types of elements.

If you are creating your project digitally, then videos can definitely get on the moodboard. Content with movements helps a lot when it comes to encouraging creativity and defining the personality of your project with greater quality.

You have several ways to use video to your advantage, you can create material from scratch in apps and video programs to develop your moodboard, or use ready-made videos from other projects that have already been done and that serve as inspiration for yours. . But remember, if you're going to copy something, offer credit.

6. Don't get attached to the moodboard

When you create your moodboard, it will not be a fixed job, but a tool that you will use as a base for your project.

As you work, you can make changes and edits to the moodboard, after all, every project has unforeseen circumstances and the emergence of new ideas that can be applied. So, don't be afraid to let go, after all, you always need to keep the project up to date.

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7. Have visual references

It is also recommended that you have references from other moodboard templates for projects similar to the one you are developing. As much as you are not going to copy and paste the ideas used in other projects, you can make adaptations. Plus, these references are a great way to spark your imagination and creativity to come up with new ideas for your current project.

Some references you can have are color palettes that you can match, typographic models, texture types, fabric types, decorative objects, furniture models, lines and etc. References will vary according to the project model, whether for fashion, architecture or others, but it's always good to have some.

8. Review carefully

Always review your moodboard after you've finished putting it together. And the best time to review is after “rest” more. If you assembled it in one day, leave it to review the next day, so that the ideas in your head calm down and you can analyze everything with greater tranquility and impartiality.

In addition, your client needs time to analyze the moodboard and assimilate the ideas, after which he may come up with new ideas that you can adapt while you take care of the review.

Reviewing the moodboard ends up being one of the main steps to continue the project, as you can correct errors that may have gone unnoticed and that would be tragic for the project in the future.

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Moodboards in Motion

Above, we mentioned that you can also add videos to your moodboards, but nothing prevents you from going beyond that. Current editing tools, such as photoshop and others for video editing, allow you to create the entire moodboard in motion, not just a few elements.

You may have a harder time updating elements and making edits as the project progresses, but the end result will be much more accurate and moving material will encourage much more imagination to improve the moodboard.

Thus, the positive points of this type of project can compensate for the extra work that you will have.

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