Kickstart your Creativity: Introduction to Mood Boards | Nancy Herrmann | Skillshare
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Kickstart your Creativity: Introduction to Mood Boards

teacher avatar Nancy Herrmann, Creative Director and Packaging Designer

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Trailer

      2:02

    • 2.

      Project Assignment

      4:04

    • 3.

      Mood Board Basics

      1:42

    • 4.

      Uses & Benefits

      4:58

    • 5.

      Visual Language Tools

      2:58

    • 6.

      Layout & Flow

      4:14

    • 7.

      Scale & Focal Points

      2:07

    • 8.

      Color, Pattern & Texture

      1:37

    • 9.

      Type & Words

      2:14

    • 10.

      Collecting Inspiration

      6:28

    • 11.

      A Note About Credits

      4:34

    • 12.

      Ideation

      3:40

    • 13.

      Iteration & Critique

      2:19

    • 14.

      Thank You!

      0:43

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About This Class

The ability to create a compelling mood board is an incredibly useful skill, whether you’re a designer, photographer, dancer or writer. It will kickstart your creative thinking and help you sell your ideas to clients. Join creative director, Nancy Herrmann in this self-paced class as she guides you through her step-by-step process for transforming random ideas into a professional quality presentation.

For the project assignment, you’ll create your own mood board inspired by an art exhibit, favorite book or song. Inspired by Nancy’s 365-day Mini Mood Board series, this class includes lessons on format, layout, focal points, color, type, research, ideation and self-critique, as well as tips and tricks she’s learned over the years. It’s a perfect Skillshare course for creatives working in all fields. No prior experience is required, however you will need access to Adobe InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop to complete the assignment.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Nancy Herrmann

Creative Director and Packaging Designer

Teacher

Nancy Herrmann is a creative director, packaging designer and mood boarding enthusiast based in New York City. Leaning on two decades of industry experience, she teams up with leading beauty, fashion and lifestyle companies to reinvent their brand stories and design irresistible products. Her personal approach seeks to infuse design work with the same sense of adventure and daring that comes from a love of snowboarding, yacht racing, music, art and travel. At the same time, this spirit is grounded in formative work experiences at industry icons like Michael Kors, I.D. Magazine, Virgin Entertainment and L'Oreal.

In her current role at Stark Design, Nancy oversees branding, packaging and retail projects for a client roster that includes Vichy USA, L'Oreal Professionnel, Nuance Salm... See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Trailer: Hello and welcome to kick start your creativity introduction to make boards. My name is Nancy Herman when a creative director, packaging designer and boarding enthusiasts in New York City in this class, you learn how to create professional quality mood boards by building on a foundation of solid research, design principles and presentation techniques. A Mood board is a widely used presentation tool that uses a collage of images, text, colors and materials to communicate a concept or theme. Whether you're a designer, photographer, dancer or writer, the ability to visualize an abstract idea is applicable across a wide range of creative pursuits. A mood board will kick start your creative thinking and is often the first visual exploration your client will see. A clear, well thought out board will help sell your ideas and set the stage for further design development. This class is inspired by my 365 day mini mood board Siris, in which I created a single pairing of images each day of the year. As a creative director, I work on a range of projects for beauty, fashion and lifestyle clients, from band branding and packaging to retail design and advertising In addition, I've created mood boards for almost every client or brand project, including those seen here. For the assignment. You'll create your own mood board for Nard exhibit, favorite book or piece of music through a mixture of slides and string screen casting. I'm going to be taking you through a repeatable process for creating mood boards, along with tips and tricks I've learned over the years. Next up, we're going to review the project assignment and talk about format software and time needed . I hope you'll join me. 2. Project Assignment: Hi, everyone. I'm glad you could join me in this video. I'm going to introduce the project assignment and talk a little bit about format, software and time needed. Your assignment is to create a mood board for an art exhibit, a favorite book or piece of music using a digital format. I've included three distinct types of work because inspiration can come from anywhere. Maybe you want to try a medium that's normally outside of your field. It gives us a chance to take some of the inspiration that we see in our everyday lives and put some structure around it. For example, I love to create mood boards for art exhibits because it helps me solidify the ideas and the themes and even the techniques that the artist was exploring. While the course deliverable is limited to the mood board, you may want to consider it as a stepping stone for a more complete design project, and we'll talk a little bit about that At the end of the class. You can also choose a personal or client project. However, I would encourage you to narrow your exploration to a single concept. Sometimes we try to mash a bunch of ideas into a single board, and it really doesn't communicate anything. Instead, I often create several mood boards highlighting a different idea or theme for each. This way you can discuss the merits of each direction separately, for the purposes of this class will be creating a digital mood board. Now I know that many professions, including interior and fashion design, regularly use the physical material boards with fabric swatches and paper swatches and other things on them. It will be easier for us to share a progress with our classmates and potential clients in this way, and I'll touch on that a little later. When we review visual language, I've found that the best software the for this work is adobes. Creative suite That's illustrator in design and photo shop. If you don't have your own copies, you can download free 30 day trials of them at adobe dot com. I'll be creating my mood board with Adobe in design on a Mac, however, the demo will apply across any of the programs. This really comes down to personal preference and end use. I often create them in adobe in design because it's part of a larger client presentation. It's also easier to switch out the image, and the pages can be easily duplicated to create several iterations. If it's just a one off version of a mood board for myself, then I may use Adobe Illustrator. I rarely use photo shop, since I find it's easier to add colors and text with the other two. But if you're more comfortable with Photoshopped than go for it, you may be wondering at this point how much time it's going to take you. I would say Give yourself at least a few days. You can do it in less time. I did a mini mood board every day for a year, but you need the time to make the random connections, and it's really amazing what your brain can dio when you sleep on it. Plus, the depth and quality of your research will impact the quality of the board and ultimately , your end product or design. Remember, this is an important first step in the creative process, so give yourself the time to do it right. That wraps up getting started. In the next video, we'll delve into key concepts, including mood board basics and elements, a visual language that you'll want to consider 3. Mood Board Basics: welcome to Unit two. In this video, I'm gonna go over key concepts, including defining what mood boards are. There are many definitions of mood boards floating around, but they all boil down to about the same thing. A mood board is a type of collage containing any number of images, sketches, text and shapes, colors, swatches or other material gathered together in a single composition. And they used to communicate a concept or a theme in visual terms. While mood boards are used by a graphic and Web designers, photographers interior in fashion designers, they're not limited to visual subjects, so they can also self help set the tone for writing, dance or other mediums. Sometimes I've seen brand identity boards referred to his mood boards, although they are quite useful in developing a brand identity board there really distinct from them. A mood board kick starts the creative process. While a brand identity board is usually the culmination of a brand design exploration, here are a few examples from Pinterest. As you can see, they use the brands, logos, colors, fonts and graphic elements, and it's a final document that conveys the brand's values, attributes and personality. All in one glance, if you're interested in creating one of thes, there's some great classes on skill share that can help you with this, including Kourtney. Alicia is crafting a brand identity. Next up will discuss the uses and benefits of mood boards. 4. Uses & Benefits: in this video of key concepts will discuss benefits of creating mood boards. Of course, the uses and benefits have created them are numerous for you and your client. They're sparks for inspiration as well as very effective presentation. Tools kickstart creative thinking. One of the benefits of having done so many mood boards over the years is that I've built a virtual library of images and references in my head, so I usually start dreaming about them before the project even gets underway. And even then, those times when I do find myself staring at a blank page or screen, they always help me get my creative juices flowing. Just a single word search on Pinterest gets me down the rabbit hole of images four hours. Fortunately, my mood board process keeps me from getting lost. Also, images evoke very powerful and passionate responses, So if you're dragging your freak feet, you can use them to get yourself invested in the project. Every mood board I've done is surprisingly different from every other, even when they're in the same industry. The process of research and discovery is really one of my favorite parts of designing. Keep in mind that At this stage of the creative process, the object is not to create the final design, but to start exploring the look and feel of it. So give yourself some leeway here. Clarify client expectations. In my experience, client briefs can be sometimes unwieldy or vague. There's either too much information or not enough to go on, since they come at the beginning of the creative process. Mood boards are an essential tool to clarify client thinking and expectations. Up front. I should note that they're also a great way to build consensus within your design team or among your collaborators. Everyone brings their own interest in images to the table, and it's always fun to see what what everyone comes up with. Do you even have the same idea about what's modern or feminine, or even the color blue images air much easier to talk about than abstract ideas? They take your vision and ideas and turn them into something tangible, so you and your client can discuss concrete examples. Basically, mood boards help you both get on the same page. Once you and your client agree in the look and feel of the project, they can also be used as a benchmark for keeping your designs on track, as well as for future discussions. And last. But, of course, definitely not the least is inspiration. As creatives, we usually operate off of a client brief and ever shorter deadlines. While that could be motivating for its own reasons, mood boards are such a great outlet for inspiration and play. They can be sparked by your own curiosity, whether it comes from just a color, maybe a concept or even the latest fashion trend. My many booed board series started that way last year. I was reading Twyla Tharp's lessons about visual metaphors in her book The Creative Habit. Learn It and Use It for Life. And I knew I wanted to level up my curating skills and mood boarding skills. I had gone to a point where I had done many of them, but I wanted something fresh to do with them. So I challenged myself to a 365 day project, and this is a compilation of my daily mini mood board Siris. For April here, I limited myself to a single pair of images, and I just used the bare minimum to communicate a concept. Of course, I collected way more images than the two, but in the end, I boil the concept down to just those essential pairing. And since I have a personal interest in fashion and beauty, photography are in architecture. I use that as a common thread throughout all of my research and my mood boards. It certainly has become a great vehicle for inspiration, not only for myself but also for other photographers, artists and designers that I have had the fortune of connecting with or collaborating with along the way that completes another video for key concepts. Please stay with me as we head individual language and review the various design elements to consider in creating your mood board. 5. Visual Language Tools: continuing on with key concepts In these next five videos, I'm gonna introduce many of the basic visual language tools or design elements that, but you'll be using When you start your projects, they'll be helpful to consider even as you start researching and collecting inspiration. And I've broken them down into small bite size chunks so you can easily return to the ones you need. Every image or object carries intention and purpose. Anyone can gather a bunch of images and call it a mood board, but it's the ability to edit them that will strengthen your presentations. It's even helpful to think of yourself as a curator rather than a collector. And as you research and create your mood board, you want to consider how each one supports or detracts from your concept. What you leave out is as important as what you choose to keep. You may want to return to thes videos and review the design elements as your brainstorm and lay out your own project. So the first visual language tool is format. Whether you work with physical or digital formats, each has its own advantages for a client project. It will be helpful to determine at the beginning how you'll be presenting the concepts. Each has a different approach, so you'll want to make sure to plan ahead. Traditionally, mood boards have been made in physical format and mounted on film bores or walls. You often see these done by fashion and interior designs, particularly because of the importance of fabric swatches and tactile materials to their work. So here's a few examples that were captured from pin trust. They all have high impact, and they're great when you're presenting to a client where touch and feel or even true colors like paint swatches are critical. In contrast, digital mood boards can be easier and quicker to produce, for this class will be focusing on a digital format. However, you may want to photograph physical objects or even scan them for inclusion. Certainly, digital boards are easier to share and distribute with your collaborators as well as clients. Almost all of my client move boards are part of a larger presentation, and they're usually sent as a PdF. Sometimes I may add Pantone color swatches or other materials. If I'm gonna have a meeting in person for this project assignment and as a general rule, you'll want to limit your mood board to one page. You may want to have separate boards for different concepts, but if you try to mash in a bunch of ideas on one board, you risk confusing yourself and your client. Next, let's review layout and flow. 6. Layout & Flow: key concepts, layout and flow. So layout refers to the overall organization of the images or materials, while flow refers to the direction that I moves around the board and how the images are visually connected, how you position your images is almost as important as the images themselves. Digital boards lend themselves to a more structured or orderly look. Since it's easy to set up a grid, I find these work better for presenting to clients and keeping the conversation focused. If you have a tendency to collect versus Curie, then you may want to establish a grid at the beginning and only allow yourself a small set of tightly edited images. They also come in handy when doing several iterations of a concept or if you plan on using them again and again. A standard digital format saves you from reinventing the wheel every time and speeds up the process. And this is really handy when you've got a deadline looming. This is also where I find in designed to be the most suitable of the programs. For that reason, I also tend to use one or two base layouts for client work. You'll also want to think about how you arrange the elements on the page for balanced composition. So here there's the upper left and the lower right are visually similar in their coloration , and they balance each other from left to right and top to bottom. The second set of images the large scale won. The women are positioned similarly, and they also balance each other out. So across the whole board, it's an asymmetrical balance because they're different. But they're equally weighted for my mini mood board. Siri's. I used a simple and evenly balanced layout ideal for two images. It was easy to fill the template and new images each day, and it worked perfectly for sharing on social media. Collages, on the other hand, are more free form. Whether you do them by hand or computer images overlap each other, and they're inconsistent in their layout. They could be very useful for personal projects or even as an early step to get some ideas down and get feedback from your colleagues. So here's an example from my colleague Melanie Billy. It's a very rough preliminary study for a concept ad campaign she created. You can see it can come off as a bit chaotic. So if you want to present this type of freeform mood board to clients, I really suggest that you keep it minimal, like the 2nd 1 for Melanie. This one is so clear and beautiful, and it has just a few choice images, materials the yellow and blue colors all together. They tell a very compelling story with just a handful of elements. So now we're moving on to flow. Fly will help the eye move across the page from one element of or in area to another. So here we naturally look on the upper left with the words are and also the flowers on the darker background. And then our eye moves adjacent to the woman's face. And then from there we move to the bird, in large part because it's in a circular shape and it kind of breaks the grid. And next we see the woman who's larger scale, but she's also silhouetted, and then that flows down to the right and then over to the silhouetted object of the skincare creams and then up to the woman's hair. Because there's movement there. It helps us see that, and back to the larger scale the object and then back down to the lower left and we tend to naturally read top to bottom left to right. So this flow also considers that and works with that. Our next video will continue to build on our visual language tools with scale and focal points. 7. Scale & Focal Points: so that leads us to scale and focal points. I recommend building up your board around one or two larger images or focal points. By giving them visual wait. You'll quickly underscore the concept or theme. Just make sure your selections are delivering a powerful punch. You don't wanna waste precious real estate on a so so image. Then you can add smaller supporting images, colors or textures to provide details and enhance the meaning. With this board, there's one larger element of the woman on the left. And, really, who could miss that? Gorgeous Montclair kept help. It's also slightly set off from the background using a drop shadow, and that helps it pop off the page. There's another focal point, which is the woman on the right, and she's a medium scale. And then, in addition to the proportion of the elements on the page, you want to pay attention to the scale in the cropping of the images themselves. So, for example, there's a pastel face cream down in the bottom, and there's air scaled up a lot to give them private prominence as compared to some of the other images on the page. But don't feel you have to include the entire photo if just a piece will do the drop. Contrast ing shapes like the bird in the circle or Cilla Wedding objects against the background are also easy ways to create focal points and also noticed the flowers on the upper left become a focal point not only because of their placement but because of the dark centers against the white petals. So uses focal points sparingly. You'll want to draw the eye through the board organically, as we saw in the earlier example about flow Video. Six is all about color, pattern and texture, and if you have any questions or comments about the visual language basics at this point, I encourage you to post them on the class board. 8. Color, Pattern & Texture: video. Six is about color, pattern and texture. Color can be an important element in your mood board, even if it's simply black and white, it will be suggested through your choice of images and materials, so consider them carefully. It may build organically, or you may choose to consciously focus on a small selection of colors. So the purpose of this client mood board tribal tangerine was to explore the color itself is a theme. You may even want to include a separate color palette on the board. To further emphasize your concept, This example was part of a larger presentation that included a single mood board but also broke out materials and color on additional pages. Also consider getting tactile even with a computer generated board. Although it won't come across a strongly on a digital board, its inclusion can help suggest intention and prompt discussion or further design. Exploration, pattern and texture can also deliver a lot of information, such as time period culture, materials, printing techniques, etcetera in this case, stripes or both patterns and texture, and the tropical colors, feathers and patterns seen here help to suggest a wild adventure. Next, let's take a look at how type and words can work on your mood boards 9. Type & Words: Welcome to Unit two video. Seven key concepts of type and words. Certainly, mood boards aren't limited to images and color. And if it's important to your concept, you may want to consider including examples of typography. This is most often used for branding, Web design or any projects where printing may come into play. I suggest she showed details of type rather than entire phrases or fonts. At this point in the creative process, you'll want to make suggestions about direction rather than lock yourself into a specific front choice. So in this case, the exploration was for a packaging project, so type sample was perfectly suited to the mood board. Another might example might be an event planner who would want to include type examples to illustrate an invitation style. Also, a few well chosen words can have a powerful impact on your mood board and aid the client discussion. Here's some of my mini mood boards that used words as both a design element and a way to get the message across. In another example, I've used the theme name Holiday Heritage, along with a list of the characteristics. Generally, I prefer using the words sparingly after all your mood board is meant to stand in for written or verbal communication and to illustrate a design intent. But I have found in cases with corporate clients or larger groups, it helps to have some keywords, so the concept can be communicated across different teams. Now that we're armed with some key design elements, let's move on to Unit three. Now we're going to dive into the project assignment and collecting inspiration. Remember, you can always come back to these videos for a refresher when you get started on your own layouts. And if you have questions about anything I've gone over so far, please don't hesitate to post them on the class page so we can start a dialogue about them . 10. Collecting Inspiration: welcome to Unit Three in this section will get started on her mood boards by collecting inspiration. We'll cover where ideas might come from where to collect your materials, and some resource is to get started. The process often starts with a prompt from a client brief or, in this case, the course assignment. Or maybe it starts from your own curiosity about a subject any subject that you want to explore Further, As mentioned earlier, the assignment is to select a piece of work and art because a bit a book or a song as your starting point, I was almost surprised at how many themes I could come up with for my mini mood board. Siri's. Even what seemed like the most mundane topic could yield great results when I put my own spin on it. No doubt the mood board will be more successful. If you're excited about the subject, you can share your selection with your Skillz share community to get the ball rolling and get others inspired by your choice. Personally, I can't wait to see what you've come up with for my demo. I've chosen to create a mood board inspired by the recent Matisse Cutouts exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I saw it with a friend, and we were both completely bowled over by the impact of the show. The vibrant colors, the combination of hand cut organic shapes and the enormous scale of the pieces sometimes covering entire gallery walls. It was such a beautiful contrast to the gray January day outside, we paid the obligatory visit to the gift shop, but I skipped buying the catalogue and opted instead to create a mood board. I find it makes a great way to really absorb the work and themes of the artist and to make them my own. If you've picked a favorite Booker song, you'll want to revisit thes and get yourself inspired, study the work and take notes before, during and after. They usually limit myself to a word or short phrase, jotting them down along the way with any associations that come to mind. And here's an example of a couple of notebook pages from the exhibition. What do you see, hear and feel? Consider all the senses and how they impact your perception of the work, maybe sleep on it and take some more notes the next day. If you're viewing an art exhibit, I would avoid taking pictures of the actual work. Unless maybe there's some detail you want to know. We don't want to censor ourselves early on, but this process is about digging into sources of inspiration, not documenting the work. A worker song is easier in this respect. Because you don't already have visuals to rely on. You get to imagine what it would look like. You might want to consider the time, period place or the genre for ideas. After you've spent some time with the Art Booker song, take a look back through your notes. Now you want to start collecting your inspiration doing Reus research both online and offline. There are a couple of helpful sources for compiling your research, including Pinterest and Drop Murder. Here's a home page for Pinterest. Of course, Pinterest is probably the most well known and accessible. It has both a search and a collecting tool. Although it is lacking in some features like reorganizing the image assortment, it's quite easy to get started in use. I've also included a link to my Matisse board on Pinterest in the resource is so you can check it out. Another good option for image collection is drop mark dot com. It doesn't inherently contain content like Pinterest does, so you'll pull your images from elsewhere. But the nice thing about Drop Mark is that you can collect more than just images. You can also capture audio, video links and project notes. You can see your images in a slide show format and share with others. Some of the more advanced features air available with a paid subscription. Although I have used drop mark for client projects for this course, I'm going to stick with Pinterest since it's easy to use and readily available back to Pinterest. Here's mine. Matisse Cutouts Board and I started with random keyword searches on Pinterest. Since its curated by users, there's a good chance that someone has already taken an interest in my subject. I usually set up a secret board to compile all my random ideas, So if you're working on a client project, this could be useful for confidentiality. You can also drag and drop your own images onto the pin boards. Just make sure to tag your pins with your reference notes, so you'll remember why you penned it and where you found it. I also try these same searches on Nice Dot Co, which called calls images from colossal design inspiration be hands and other creative sites. I'll look to Trend Land and, uh, I have included a list of other Resource is in the project guide. Finally, all to do a Google image search. It does cast a very wide net, so you'll have to do a lot more editing. I find it really helps scenario your keywords and get specific when you're doing Google searches. Otherwise, it'll send back every imaginable image that has been randomly tagged with your keyword. Again, you'll find a list of additional resource tools and sources in the project Guide for these this course. And don't forget offline research your own photos, books, color swatches, found objects or materials as well as your own Sketches can be excellent sources, so look around and see what you can include. At this point. Consider sharing a snapshot of your PIN board or sources with the skill share community. It's a great way to exchange ideas. You may even want to invite your colleagues to your PIN board so they can add inspiration. And don't forget to credit them properly. I'll discuss that a little more in the next video. 11. A Note About Credits: At this point, I'm going to interject a note about credits and for good reason. First of all, it's a good professional practice and common courtesy to credit your sources. Yes, it takes a little more work up front, but can truly save you time down the road. Also, it gives you a trail of breadcrumbs in case you need that image source again. I can't tell you how many times I've run into dead end searches on Tumblr, and it drives me crazy every time it makes you smarter. It helps you and your fellow creatives expand your knowledge of photographers, artists and publications for future reference, and you can use it to be brilliant at cocktail parties and design conferences. Trust me, you may want to hire or collaborate with that photographer, illustrator or letter for this project or a future one. Tag your pins with credits as you go and be is complete is you can include name of work artist and her photographer, year and publication. Try to collect from original sources like the artists or photographers websites whenever you can. I went to great pains to track them down for my many mood boards and it was well worth it. It led me to additional work by that artist that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. And in some cases I was able to personally connect and collaborate with those same people that I admire and respect. And finally, here's a great tip for tracking down those original sources if you find one that isn't credited. So here's my image on Pinterest and I can't find the original source. I clicked on the image and it took me to a tumbler page with hundreds of hundreds of images and new credits. I couldn't find the original source, so I'm gonna do a Google image search and I'll show you how to do that. You go Teoh google dot com and you'll see a link here appear in the right hand corner for images. So just click on that link and it will give you a search far right here. And then you click the camera icon right here. And so you can either upload an image that you might have on your desktop or you can paste the image. You are well into the search box and we'll show you how to do that. Where do you get the URL, um, go back to your image. And if you press control and select the image on a Mac press control, it's like the image. You'll see a pop up menu and you scroll down here to copy image address and then just select that and go back to your Google image search. And then you just command the paste that in and search by image, and that will give you, ah, bunch of things that are matching that image. Um, so you scroll down the list and you look for likely matches, right? So I'm looking for ones. Maybe that might have some more detail here or, um, credits or something like that again when I see Tumbler, I usually stay away from that because I find those or dead ends. So this one looks credible. I'm gonna click on that, and this will take me to a page. So now I have seen I can see the entire spread from this piece, and I see credits credits here. Herpes, bizarre September I scroll down. Here's the image that I was looking for and if I keep going down, this lovely person has included additional credits a photographer of the stylist and the model. So any one of those can lead me to more images and interesting sources, as well as allowing me to credit and link back to the original source. How awesome is that? It was so worth it to watch this whole video just for that tip. Now stay with me as we move on to ideation in video three. 12. Ideation: in this video, ideation will start to edit our research and narrow it down to one or two concepts. Review your research in your project notes. Remember, every image and peace carries intention and purpose. So consider how yours adds or detracts from your overall theme or message. So here we come back to my Matisse Cutouts board on Pinterest. And I started with some Matisse artworks to reference, um, so you could see those here. I didn't want to come collect a lot of them. Just a few things that were inspirational to me. And then I moved on to the fashion inspiration, which is kind of a go to category for me. I often look at fashion and graphic design and architecture and categories like that. So you want a brainstorm? This is one of the most exciting parts of creating mood boards. It's the time when you start interpreting what you see and making those creative connections so you can see here. I started with fashion and then were fashion. And then it was interesting because I cut out. I got pictures of Matisse in working in a studio. I was starting to think about the paper craft and the cutouts. You can see that in here. So I did a search for paper cutouts, and I started coming up with all these wonderful art pieces and fashion items, and you can see how lovely they are. While I love paper craft, I could have easily gone down that path. But the color story in the plastic quality of the art was just so compelling that I couldn't resist it. So here he started to think that I wanted the Boot mood board to have more of an art direction focus instead of, for example, a technique focus, which was the cutouts. So I started collecting some additional images for still life photography and set design, and it included more color here. So you want to generate a few ideas or themes that you want to explore further and jot them down. By the way, themes can also come before you even start the process. You may already be curious about a topic or be prompted by the client brief. Now that you've honed in on one or two themes, continue taking notes and gathering inspiration. This is a back and forth process of gradually refining your images, type samples, colors, words, etcetera, and this is also were crediting. Your sources can start to come in handy. For example, maybe that photographer had some other images that are better suited to your theme or shallow, or show a slightly different angle. Continue refining until you have a solid and manageable set of images. At this point, you may want to move them off of your pin board and onto your dust. Stop. I often make a couple of sub folders with the theme so I can easily recall and access them . At this point, you can also upload some notes with your PIN board or image edits. Also, sharing your resource is insights with your classmates. They may see something that you haven't or may push your project in a great direction. Now that you have a manageable set of images to work with, the next step is to start laying out your images on an art board and creating several versions or it orations 13. Iteration & Critique: This is Unit three, video for it. Aeration and critique. Now we'll start to bring her images together on a single board and see how things are shaping up So you can see here that I've already set up my board in a horizontal format at 11 by 17 inches. So you want to start placing the images as I've done here. And I used a previous Mead mood board as a template. Yeah, so you keep in mind the relationship between the images the hierarchy flow in any text or titles, refer back to the design principles we discussed earlier. So you want to do several generations. So I moved the images around. You can see I've been trying a few different things. Um, here I silhouetted the woman and again trying to move place different objects on the board . I like how this is working with this woman up here's really great attention getter, and then this silhouette, the beautiful Dior dress. So it's starting to shape up. But I still need a little ways to go, um, and you want to keep working on it until you get a layout that you're satisfied with. So you keep moving around. And, you know, I tried this one and this didn't work and maybe turn it around. So then you'll want to step back. When you get when you get something you're satisfied with, you want to step back and edit, edit, edit. I cannot stress this enough. Can you represent the same theme or story with less images? A single picture tells 1000 words. So do you really need 20 of them? Here's my final mode board inspired by the Matisse exhibition, so you'll want to finalize your layout, Keeping in mind your presentation, medium client or personal needs as well. A standards of execution. I'm glad we all made it The star. I'll share some final thoughts in the next video, so don't go away. 14. Thank You!: So here's our final video together, and I can't wait to see everyone's final mood boards posted here on the Skill Share Project Board. Now that you've completed the course, you're armed with a valuable presentation tool for all your personal and professional projects. As you continue to practice your newfound skill, you'll find inspiration everywhere and be able to act on it. Thank you so much for taking my class. Kickstart your creativity, introduction and mood boards. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have, and I would be honored if you would take the time to write a review, share your work and follow me on social media. Thank you.