Want to design a mood board? Not quite sure where to start? Creative freelancers use mood boards to help develop their creative visions for projects. Like scrap booking in school, freelancers take images and other pieces of inspiration from a variety of sources and use mood boards to arrange and organise them in one place.
Whether you’re test shooting or working with other freelancers on paid jobs, mood boards are a great way to share ideas and develop a cohesive plan for projects.
Not sure how to make a mood board? In this article, some of our members share their top tips for creating mood boards and we also explain how members can use Freelancer Club’s Mood Board Creator Tool to easily create their own mood boards.
Choosing Mood Board Tools
As mentioned in one of our recent articles, Canva, Adobe Spark, Adobe Illustrator and Moodzter are a few of the online mood board tools used by freelancers.
According to members Jodine Williams and Mike Hogan, Pinterest is another useful tool that can be used to make a moodboard.
“Pinterest is a great tool for creating mood boards”, says Jodine.
Mike views Pinterest as a handy tool for freelancers who work in the wedding industry. Think photographers, videographers, MUAs, hair stylists etc.
“Pinterest is excellent for mood boards and very popular with brides when arranging weddings!”
The Chrome extension makes it even easier to pin images whilst you’re casually browsing online. You never know when inspiration will hit and the extension enables you to quickly pin any image to a Board in seconds so you can carry on browsing and revisit the mood board another time.
Other members on our platform opt for other mood board tools. For example, videographer, photographer and art director Saira MacLeod says, “I use Evernote as it works across my iPad and phone.”
Interestingly, Saira approaches and uses mood board tools like Evernote in her own way, to help her develop her creative vision and communicate with clients.
“I approach these more as shot lists and storyboards rather than mood boards, as I find it gives me a more cohesive goal. I will almost always use this method to communicate with the client, if I’m delivering a visual. I always try to talk in visuals.”
Whats more, members can also view mood boards on a Collab post, which essentially means that they can better understand a member’s vision for a test shoot before they apply to take part in it. Our new design also shows a hero image in the preview so creatives get an instant idea of the vision. Handy, aye?
Introducing Clients to Mood Boards
For some jobs, like capturing photos or video footage at a wedding, it’s helpful to include the client (in this case the couple) in the mood boarding process itself.
As Mike Hogan points out, some clients are not familiar with the concept of mood boarding, so it’s important to explain it to them and where necessary, include them in the process.
“Not everybody is familiar with the actual term ‘mood board’. Creatives and corporates, yes, but many clients, especially for private events, are not familiar with the actual term even though they are creating mood boards using various platforms or social media when planning an event.”’
If you weren't sure how to make a mood board before reading this article, I hope you now have a better idea of where to start!
Remember that mood boarding isn’t just for freelancers who work in the fashion industry. Mood boards are a brilliant way for any creative freelancer to work out their vision for any project, whether you're collaborating with others or working alone.
We hope that you’ll check out some of the mood board tools that we’ve highlighted above, especially our own Mood Board Creator Tool which you can start using here.
Want to make a mood board for an upcoming fashion shoot? Check out 5 TIMELESS FASHION SHOOT CONCEPTS WITH MOODBOARDS. Know how to design a mood board, but want to learn more about test shoots? Watch HOW TO PLAN & ORGANISE A TEST SHOOT.
