#Mood board meaning full#

But the rest of the time it’s much simpler to just provide examples that people can actually see, and ask them which one ‘feels’ right. If we’re in a face-to-face meeting, hand gestures suddenly come into play. The only way to really describe the acceleration of a rocket or the curve of a wave, short of resorting to mathematical formulas, is to actually show that motion somehow. How do you explain the shift of a parallax, or the pace of a gif? As well as being images to start with, motion graphics work in two additional vectors- time and position. If web layouts are hard, motion graphics (anything animated or filmed) is harder. Letting your eye move naturally around a layout and seeing where it lands isn’t something that can be conjured up in any other way. Hierarchy (the order in which you look at those elements) is also really important to web design, and the only real way to check if it’s right is to look at it. How would you even begin to describe a layout made of lots of interacting elements? Or the difference between the desktop and mobile versions of a responsive design? Some parts might even be moving, or responding to your clicks with modules that appear or disappear as you need them. Web layouts really don’t translate well into words. As the possibilities of web development have expanded, movement, animation, and a wider range of layout options have been thrown into the mix. Better for Web designĪs well as branding, we also work design for web. It sounds very logical, but it’s easily forgotten in a world of emails and text messages. Humans are visual creatures, and design is a visual medium, so we should use visual tools. Doing it this way reduces the number of stages your brain has to go through to get all the information. It’s much easier to look at 10 images and and get an instant overview than it is to read slowly down a list. View project here > Mood boards let you see all the options at once When they said ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, this is what they meant.

Mood boards let us skip using words entirely. It’s so much easier to just be able to point and say ‘That one!’Īt this point, the best way to clarify exactly what we mean is to switch from words to pictures.

Sometimes the word we’re searching for doesn’t even exist. Is it Duck Egg? Teal, or maybe Aqua? Malachite? We start googling items to see if the colour matches closely enough. Every time a dozen eggs has to name colours for our web development, we have the same discussion. Another will think of ‘stifling and overly formal’ and say no. When asked, “Is our company Traditional?”, one person will take that to mean ‘vintage and respected’ and say yes. People interpret the same word differently. But sometimes this stage can get a little tricky, because one word can have multiple meanings. Often we’ll have them use our Brand Words tool to work out how we need to represent their brand. In either case, we start with talking about their brand values. When clients come to us with a project in mind, sometimes they already have an idea of how it should look. Here’s why we think mood boards work so well… It’s hard to describe images using words! If they are similar or arranged around a theme, then the goal is to confirm or fine-tune that style.īut as designers, why do we ask our clients to look through these images? Shouldn’t we be doing it ourselves? If the images contrast each other, then the mood board is there to help you choose a direction for the visual style. They represent a range of options that would work well for that brand.

#Mood board meaning full#

These examples are hand-picked by the designer and are full of ideas, exploration and inspiration. A mood board is simply a collection of images and examples, presented to a client as part of working out the visual style of a project. Mood boards are a great tool in any designer’s arsenal.