Mood Boarding Masterclass: Creating mood boards that bring clarity to the design process.

1. Intro to the Class: Who is this class for and What You'll Learn : Hello and welcome to the MOOC body master class, where you learn to create mood boards for clarity in your design process. This class is for anyone who wants to bring visual clarity to their work in process. Whether you are a designer, marketer, or a store owner, mood boards can help you stay focused and keep your entire team on the same page. By the end of this class, you will be able to create mood parts using the three-step methodology, as well as knowing how to best use your mood board throughout the creative process. For your class project, you will create your own mood board for professional or personal project using the three-step methodology that you'll learn in this course. When you're finished making your mood board, don't forget to upload it to the class files. If this class sounds like something that you'd be interested in, then sign up for this class and let's get started. 2. Overview of the 3 Step Methodology : So let's get started. What we're going to learn is the three-step methodology for creating mood boards. Step one is concept analysis. This step tends to be overlooked a lot when people start to create their mood boards, they tend to just want to throw in a lot of images and just skip directly to step two, as we'll see. But it's really important to take your time in step one, the concept analysis because this is where you'll gain the most clarity. Then the fun part step to gathering inspiration. This is where you're going to gather all of the images, textures, anything that inspires you. And then step three, creating your composition. So in this step we're going to look at some of the design principles of composition so that we can create an aesthetically pleasing mood board. 3. Step 1: Analysis : In step one, we're first going to define our concept. So we're going to ask ourselves a list of questions that you can find in the sheet that attach to the class files. And through these questions, we're going to understand more about what this project is and why we're creating a mood board for what this mood board should look like and what this project could become. Then after we define it, we're going to list keywords. So we're going to use any words that can really create a mood or evoke an emotion in us. And we're gonna be using these words to find images later. So it's really important to not filter yourself and just let it flow. Because as you'll see in the last step that you can refine it and weed out anything that doesn't fit. So I'm just gonna go ahead and show you how I went about doing this for my project. So I opened up the sheet that I've created and I'm gonna do this on right on the computer. But if you want to print it out and write on it, that's definitely an option for you as well. So for my project, I am going to be creating a concept for a retail store that is based around wellness and self-care. The mood of the story should be really feminine and almost like it captures the feeling of late summer. That's what the brand would like for the store. So of course, if you're working with a brand, you should definitely include them in this concept, concepting and asking these questions. So what is the problem they are trying to solve? The problem that this project should solve is creating a store environment that draws people in and makes them one to engage with self-care or treat themselves to it. So who's the audience? It's always important to keep your audience in mind. And the audience for this project is young adult females and 30-something. Of course. Some things are also young adult females, but this is what the brand gave me. So what is the merging would like to evoke late summer for sure, this feeling of golden hour and wanting to hold on to the to the end of summer, to the warm weather until the warmth of summer. It's really important to get specific here with the mood. I think we can all relate to the end of summer and not wanting it to end. But also this embracing the change of the seasons and what it will bring. So I'm just going to finish writing that here. If your project or brands were a room, what would it look like? I think this room would be a bit Bo how, but also refined in a way not completely wild. There would be dry flowers rather than fresh flowers. And maybe hanging from the ceiling. If your project, such brands were a place, where would it be? I think this brand would definitely be on the beach somewhere. I wouldn't give it a country or a specific Beach because it's also kind of this vague conceptual feelings. So definitely a beach somewhere. But the kind of beach where you're not necessarily laying in the sun all day or you're more than the evening and you're gonna make a fire with some friends. What colors represent the project? Dusty rose and a muted orange. These colors that you get in photos during got golden hour. And this project could take many forms. It's going to be a retail store. But of course, branding will be important, which encompasses the logo, design, packaging, etc. And it could also, of course be a website, anything that has to do with creating a store. So the next step is distinct keywords. So I'm just gonna go ahead and start listing a bunch of words that we had already mentioned throughout answering these questions. So that's a great place to, to get inspiration from. And then just don't limit yourself, just keep going. And if you feel like a list hasn't started to develop, then you can do mind mapping as well. So take the first word, late summer, and what does that remind you of and just write down everything that comes to mind. Yes. So I think I'll just leave it at this for now so that you get the idea. And then the next step would be going through the list and getting rid of anything that just doesn't fit. 4. Step 2: Gather: All right, so step two is all about gathering the visuals. So this is the part where most people find it to be the most fun making mood boards. So the important things for this step to now are to use your keywords to gather as many visual references as possible. So using sites like Pinterest or Instagram or even stock image sites, you can type in your keywords and find visuals that will go with the mujer looking far. So I'll show you how I do that a little bit later with Pinterest. But just two other things to think about during this step as well is to diversify. Don't just stick with one kind of visual. So not just images of things happening or places, but also textures and cutouts. And you can rip pictures from magazines and upload them onto the computer for making it digitally. Or you can find a flower somewhere out in nature and press it really any sort of inspiration that you find that what your goal is here is just to gather it all. And then at the end, you'll select and go through all the visuals that you found to make this kind of first added of your selection. So now I'm going to show you how I find visuals using Pinterest. So first I start by typing in my main key word in the search box, so late summer, and then I add a static to make sure that I'm getting photos that are more conceptual and religious, showing an aesthetic. I've already made a Pinterest board for this project, so I'm just going to go ahead and save anything I see that catches my eye to the sport. And I'm just going to continue doing that. And I just keep scrolling down intel. I feel like I've hit a wall with this. Or I feel like I want to try a new key word. Sometimes I will try out the keywords that they suggest based on my search. This time it didn't really work out. These photos are not anything like what I have envisioned for this. So now I'm going to try a new keyword. And we're back to photos that seem like they could work. So I'm just going to search and see if there's anything interesting. For this project. I have already saved quite a few photos in my Pinterest board because I've been working on this project, but I'm just going to see what else is out there. And another great way to find something is on Pinterest. If you're under the ANA photo that you like and you scroll down, they suggest photos like it. And sometimes you can find really, really good things under there. So now I have quite a few photos pinned in my board, some textures, all sorts of things here. And so what I do next is I'm going to save all of these photos to a folder, my Desktop, and I'll include any other images or items that I've collected for the project. So anything I've turned out of magazines, anything I found on Instagram, I'm gonna save it all to this folder and then I will go and do my selection in the folder. So right now you're just saving everything. We're not till the selection process yet. So then I'm going to open up my folder that I've saved everything to. And here you'll see that I've already tagged everything with little red dots and everything you see with the red dot has been selected. So images that I want to use and you can do by right-clicking and then going down and just hitting the color. And I'm just gonna put those all in a folder and call that selection. And then I'm going to put all of the not selected images in another folder called not selected, so that I can just keep organized just in case, especially if you're working for our clients, they want one of the images, they really like it, then you know exactly where it is. So then that is the first selection. And now you have all the images you want to start building your composition with. And we'll learn how to do that in the next lesson. 5. Step 3: Create Part 1: In step three, we're gonna put it all together through the use of design principles, we can make an intriguing composition. But first it's important to eliminate an unnecessary images or be open to it while you're making your composition. Just always remember that less can be more. And when you're finalizing your mood part, it's also important to walk away from it further. They'll Beck. Sometimes when we're looking at it for too long, we can't see what needs to be eliminated or what needs to be added. So I encourage you to walk away from it for a couple hours or even a day when you feel like you're finished and come back and look at it later. So what is a composition? So composition is simply just the way all of the elements on the mood board are arranged. Why is it important? A composition is important because the way that the elements work together tells a story and the way that because composition is laid out, also affects the way the reader or the person looking at the mood part will view it. So the way the eye moves, which is important because telling a story. So that's why using the design principles is really important in composition. So let's just go over some of the principles of composition really quickly. Proportion, which is the relationship of two or more elements in a composition. Not to be confused with scale, which is the size of one object in relation to another object in the design artwork. And we have balance. Balance is the way that the distribution of the visual weight is laid out. So every object has a weight depending on what the object is, the colors, the texture, and the space. Harmony is, then the elements of an artwork that come together in a unified way. Unity is this idea of using similar elements and placing them in a way that brings them together. Whereas variety adds interests by using contrasting elements within the composition. So, for example, with a mood board, of course, you want unity in the way that all of the images flow together in some theme. The variety would be not just using images, a place or an interior, but rather mixing it up, also using textures or cut out flowers, things like this. Emphasis means to create a focal point or the viewer's eyes are first attracted. So this goes back to the storytelling part of things. You want to be able to guide your viewer in the way that they're looking at the mode part. And finally, rhythm is regular repetition of elements in the project to produce the look and feel of the movement. 6. Step 3: Create Part 2: Alright, let's get started building our composition. So I've already gone ahead and uploaded everything from my selection file into Illustrator. And you can see that all of the files are just around the canvas. And that's how I like to start off working. If you don't have illustrator, you can, of course, do this with Canva or print out all of the pictures and do it physically as well? Yes. So I'm gonna go ahead and just pull on to the canvas right away, these two big color blocks. So they're textured colors. And since they are really big color blocks, I know that I'm going to want them in my base layers, so I'm just going to offset them a bit to find some balance. And yeah, so that looks pretty good to start. And now I'm just going to start grouping images that I think might look good together outside of the canvas. So I'm just going to kind of throw ones that, in my opinion draw together and see if I can kind of find a story or some sort of theme that I can start to build my mood board around cern, just putting the images near the other ones that I think will work together right away, I can see that one side is already turning out to be more of this psych, darker, golden hour moody or type of images where the other side as Ben, mostly feminine, lighter and a little bit area, I would say a lot of the floras are over there. But here it's really just about kind of grouping and seeing what stories I have to tell here. So, yeah, I'm just going to continue playing around grouping these images together, moving away ones that maybe I'm not so crazy about anymore now that I see them next to other images. So it's okay to have something that you don't end up using. That happens a lot. Like I said in the previous video. The selection folder is just your first selection. It doesn't mean that everything you put on here needs to go into your final mood board. So, yeah, these groupings seem, seem to be working well. Let's see if I have any other assets that I can drag down. And we had these paint swatches are good. Then I move the flower over here, since I know I want to keep these two groups separate, it's good to keep a balance. And I have paint swatches on one side and the flowers and the other. And yeah, I'm not sure about this image. I'm just going to leave that aside for now. Have some flowers. Yeah. Maybe I'll use those, but I'm not sure. There's quite a lot of flowers over here, and let's just put it aside for now. So here I have kind of two groups that I want to use. And the ones in between the two groups are ones that I think could also be used, but I'm not sure yet or they're the assets like the color pallet and a font that I like. So I'm going to go ahead and start placing now. So I'm going to stick to these two themes, the light feminine and the darker, more goals and our style. And I'm just gonna start building around these two blocks as my base. So offsetting the images right away to try to keep balance from the beginning, I find that is a lot easier if you're considering these design principles in the back of your head from the very beginning to create an engaging and interesting composition. And it's really important to just keep an open mind when you're doing this because things will change. And so, for example, I've just placed this directly on the line here. But I know that at some point when I'm making this mood board that will probably change. Also. The first place you play something, if it's not stuck. And that's, that's a good thing because you're going to need to move things around and really adjust and play around until you find balance. And you, you feel that the mood board is telling the story that you want it to. So just keep placing objects on to the board. And yet that's why it's so important, especially before you start placing things on the board to kind of get an idea of what should be grouped together. Because if you're just throwing things on there randomly, it tends to get a bit messy and there doesn't seem to be any sort of story being told. And that, that definitely comes through to the viewer. And the whole point of the mood board is to bring clarity to the design process. So you want everybody who looks at the mood board to be on the same page. So even if they don't see the answers to the questions that we did earlier, that they will be able to feel that through them would barter. Because the reality is that not everybody who works on a project, if you're working in a group, will see the answers to those questions. So to keep everyone on the same page, it's just good to make sure that your mood board is telling a consistent story. So just keep adjusting and trying to find that balance. And although I have two sides of the mood board, that's kind of how I'm working at the moment. At some point, I do need to figure out a way to connect the two sides and be able to draw them in together because we don't want to different moods and needs to be one consistent mood. And the story that I'm trying to tell here, is this light feminine everyday? And then it goes into this golden hour. And I think we can all relate to a summer's day that turns into a really beautiful summer's evening. And this golden hour is that moment where, you know that it's turning into the evenings. So that's kind of what I'm going for here. And so I'm really just going to try to connect the two. And that can be done with an overlapping photo, or really just placements of your compositions elements. So yeah, it's just about moving things around until you have kind of this feeling that it's making sense and there's no way to know for sure. It's, it's all about just letting yourself feel how this, these visuals are making you feel. So like right now, the bottom of this mood board seems very heavy to me. So I'm just going to try to move things up because I don't want bottom heavy mood part. Because trying to find some balance. Always ask yourself what the focal points are. Where are your eyes being drawn to? Where is the weight of the image? So just moving things around and playing with the different elements. So maybe let's add in some of these different elements. So the cut-out flowers added a nice little layered effect, which I really like to always make sure I have. This is where the variety comes in. So here you can see we have a textured bottom layer with the color, one of our main colors and images on top of that. And then on top of that I'm adding in these PNG files and cut out paint and flowers. And yeah, so that's really, really nice. I think it's looking good. Still needs to be a little bit more balanced. But that's just think about this as elements that we would like to get on the port. So here I have my basket Fund and the colors are the colors up here. Seems like a good spot for it. And yeah, some people say not to add a frontier mood board, but I like to, even if later in the design process you don't go with this fun Qj, choose a different one. I like to, to add it just because I think fans can really give an element to the Mood. Yeah, so I'm just going to tweak some things here to try to find more balance. I have decided that that photo, the last photo, I don't actually want to add that, so I'm going to really work with what I have on the board here now and just tweak it to until I get to this feeling of balance. So I'm just gonna change sizes of things. Move the positionings are bit here. Maybe this could be a little smaller, I think yeah, that looks good. At this point. It's really just about playing around and moving things just a tiny bit, making something bigger or smaller. This flower that seems to be a little better or something is still not feeling 100%, right me. So I'm just gonna keep moving around and tell, tell it really feels right. Let's just zoom out and look at it. It still doesn't seem 100% balanced me. Let's just go ahead and throw background on there sometimes that helps. So I really like this cream color. I think it goes with the other colors really nicely. So I'm just going to adjust this. And then of course, plays the other way on the back as the background. So range sent back. That looks better already, but still it's a little off. And so just trying to see where my eye goes. And I'm gonna go ahead and select everything on the right side. Oops. First I need to lock my background. And then I'm going to select everything on the right side and just push it up a bit. I think that will do the trick. Es, There we go now it's feeling. So yeah, actually I'm pretty happy with this. I'm just going to move this image down a bit so that her head's not hidden and I think we have it. So now what I would do is stop looking at it for a couple hours or even a day and come back to it when when my eyes are fresh. And then make any final adjustments. And then you're finished with your mood board. And then of course, comes the time to use it. So we'll talk about that in the next lesson. 7. How To Use Your Mood Board: So now that our mood board is made, how do we use our mood ford? Well, if you're working for a client, this could be a great way to pitch your idea to them. So a lot of times when designers are pitching their ideas to clients, it is very difficult for them to know exactly what they mean or what they visually our thinking. So a mood board is a great way to convey these ideas and make sure that everybody that you're talking to or pitching your idea to is on the same page. That way there's no surprises. It can be the cornerstone of the project. And another great thing for even personal projects that mood boards help with is to stay on track. Now, this is where the clarity comes in. We see thousands of photos every single day. It's very easy for us to get off track when we're working on a visual project because you have one idea in mind. And if you don't have it pinned down in a visual way, like on a mood board. It's very easy to get swayed when you go onto sites like Instagram or Facebook or even walking down the street and seeing an advertisement. You keep getting this input. And in the end, you might have a project that starts to look a little bit confused. A mood board helps you stay on track, setting up checkpoints throughout your project to go back and always look to your mood barred. And then look at the project you're working on and make sure that it's aligned. So for example, with the mood that board that I made, this could be used if there is an interior designer hired for the retail store, you show them the mood board and when they create their proposal for the interior design, you can look back at the mood board and make sure the two conveying the same mood. Same with if you hire a brand designer to work on the project as well, or if you are the brand designer, always looking back and forth at what you're doing and what the mood board is. So using this mood board again as the cornerstone of the project and always going back to it to make sure that you're staying on the same page that you started off on. So that from start of your project, it is the same message that's coming across and it doesn't get confused. 8. Your Class Project: Now it's time for you to make your very own mood board. Whether you want to make one for a personal project or a professional project. Make sure to follow the three steps. So go back if you need to and rewatch, but follow step one, create your concept step to analyze it. Also, you can find the questions attached to the class notes. And step three, create your composition. Don't forget to keep the design principles in mind while doing that. And when you're finished, don't forget to share it with the class. As always, thank you for taking my course and I really hope that it was useful for you.