Scrolling through social media today, you might notice your favorite fashion blogger or content creator using the term “mood board.” In fact, currently, #moodboard, #moodboardaesthetic, and other related hashtags have been used over 7 million times on Instagram and viewed over 400 million times on TikTok alone. Within the fashion realm of social media, some popular captions you might recognize are, “My 2022 moodboard” and “Moodboard Update.” Digital mood boards themselves are often posted alongside captions like, “Manifesting a life like this” or “Making my Pinterest boards a reality.” You can see that this trend is not going out of style soon, but what is a moodboard, why are they taking social media by storm, and why do content creators love to share them?
Read on to learn all about fashion mood boards, and why creating a digital fashion mood board can be helpful in creating your own aesthetic.
Contents
What is a Mood Board?
A mood board is a collage of visual elements that are used to convey a central concept and inspire specific ideas. Some elements that might be depicted in a mood board for a marketing team include images, sketches, color swatches, fonts, pop-culture references, and other design elements. Evev fashion brands require some other marketing strategies, including eCommerce PPC management, social media marketing, and other promotional strategies. While digital boards have become popular in more recent years, these boards have actually been utilized by fashion designers, artists, and professional designers for generations in the form of foam boards at design studios.
According to the study, The Mood Board Process Modeled and Understood as a Qualitative Design Research Tool, mood boards is design tools that “offer the creator opportunities for deep levels of engagement to take place in order to develop creative and innovative design solutions.” For instance, these inspiration boards have collections of colors, pictures, and styles. This format provides an in-depth focus on what an apparel designer might want to create and how they will make their concept through a design process.
Different Types Of Mood Boards
Now that we understand what a mood board is and how widely it is used by content creators on different social media channels, we can dive into what a fashion mood board is and how it is used by fashion designers.
While digital mood boards are a fairly new concept, physical mood boards have actually been used throughout history by fashion designers. You can use these to develop the best proposals and achieve success in the fashion industry. Designers like Coco Chanel, Miuccia Prada, and Edith Head all utilized a physical board in the visual direction of their collections. Nowadays, marketing and fashion specialists can use moodboards to plan follower growth, sales boost, and other business operations for growing their brand.
These physical mood boards were often made of cork or wood, and composed through the attachment of a selection of materials, photographs, and color palette swatches. The designer would fill these mood boards with stylistic elements such as historical and pop culture references, favorite brands, photographs, logos created by logo symbol generator, and bold colors and fabrics to create inspiration for their designs and test out different combinations. They would then use these boards to compose their initial idea or sketch before moving on to pre-production design.
Today, many fashion designers still utilize physical mood boards composed of foam, cork, or paper with a cut-and-paste method for image selection. However, other designers, fashion marketers, and bloggers have begun to opt for a digital option instead. These mood boards include all of the same visual elements as a physical mood board, but without the texture and 3-dimensional aspect. For example, a digital mood board might contain old photographs, movie stills, sayings in bold fonts, and color palettes alongside their HEX codes, graphics, and more.
- Fashion Mood Board – physical or digital mood boards for finding and visualizing fashion design concepts, putting inspiration and ideas in one place, and testing color and fabric combinations.
- Physical Fashion Mood Board – a cork, foam, paper, or wooden board with photographs, background colors, color swatches, fabric samples, and drawings attached for designers to find inspiration for their next designs all in one place.
- Digital Fashion Mood Board – A mood board composed of digital assets such as images, color samples, screenshots, graphics, fonts, and bold color photos in digital mediums to inspire fashion designers, bloggers, and more. If you want to improve your mood board with more effectiveness, consider some professional tips for photo editing.
How To Make A Fashion Mood Board
Are you an upcoming designer, fashion blogger, or overall fashion lover? No matter who you are, you can now create your own digital fashion mood board!
While creating physical mood boards can be an expensive or lengthy process, digital fashion mood boards can be composed quickly by anyone with access to a computer or phone in NoteLedge!
The Tool:
NoteLedge is an app that works like a digital notebook, allowing designers (like yourself!) to quickly capture inspiring content in one place. Use NoteLedge to compose a fashion mood board that you can share on TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest, or print it out and hang it near your closet for everyday style inspo.
To use NoteLedge, all you need is a phone, tablet, laptop, or computer. Download the app once you have your device and start creating your fashion mood boards!
While NoteLedge is free, NoteLedge Pro is an upgraded version of the app that features advanced abilities for creatives such as syncing and sharing work with peers, Pro also lets you have access to all creative materials like brushes, a color palette generator, and handwriting tools with unlimited PDF exports and notes.
The Process:
1) Gather Your Ideas
While you might think it is difficult to start an inspirational fashion mood board without first being inspired, you can create amazing mood boards with cohesive fashion designs. What inspires you to challenge current fashion trends or go against the status quo? Perhaps you are inspired by a specific celebrity’s fashion style or a fashion movement during a historical time period. On the other hand, day-to-day visuals such as nature, the interior design of a room, or a painting might capture your fascination. Later, your customized sales receipt design might be influenced as well when you are ready to launch your clothing online. Once you have generated a solid idea, you can then name the topic of the mood board you will be designing, and begin creating the board with this topic in mind.
Some common themes for mood boards include “Parisian Minimalist Fashion,” “ 90s skater chic,” or “Bohemian Summer Lookbook.” Use the Text Tool to write this theme name across the page in a corresponding font, such as Didot or Silom.
2) Decide On Your Color Palette
In the next step, you should choose a color scheme to rotate around your fashion mood board. You should choose color families that complement each other, and make sense to fit under your chosen mood board theme. For example, the Parisian Minimalist Fashion mood board should include mainly blacks, whites, and beiges, whereas the Bohemian Summer Lookbook might include a color scheme of golden tones, pinks, and oranges. You can utilize the NoteLedge color editing functions to choose an array of specific colors that fit your board.
3) Add Fabrics And Textures
While it can be challenging to showcase physical elements such as the material of the clothes in a digital way, you can create complex styles and send mood boards to clients. Here are some ways you can strongly communicate the texture of a piece of fabric.
- Choose or take a very close-up, and very high-quality material. Close-up photos when taken properly communicate the feeling and pattern of the texture across the screen.
- Utilize a tool to show what the fabric of clothes (like linen suits) will look like up close in person. You can easily do this in NoteLedge by choosing a paintbrush or marker and adjusting the transparency and brushstroke to mimic the fabric of the clothes. Incorporate the color you envision by using the color editing function to test out shades and hues. This will display the tiny design details within the fabric and allow it to pop out of the screen!
- Use NoteLedge’s multimedia tool to capture the close-up image of the fabric that you want from web pages or Pinterest. Then add an arrow and caption to the right side of a photograph explaining the material of the item.
4) Extract Concepts And Themes
At this point in the creative process, you should begin to envision the exact types of designs and outfits you would like to display on your board. Use the photo tool to add saved photos, paintings, or screenshots that match your concepts, or a sketch. Make sure to use the Text tool to describe the photographs, paintings, or sketches you added.
5) Communicate Your Design Concept Beautifully
The last step is all about composition. Does your mood board tell the story of your creative process, and how does it do so? Be sure to include initial concept ideas such as very basic sketches, all the way to photographs of the final design. By including sketches, an effective color palette, strategically placed photographs, a theme written out in a common theme, and captions, your story and idea of your design will be told properly for the fashion industry. However, make sure these elements you included do look good together, or compose a beautiful aesthetic. When all of your complex styles come together to form one actionable mood board, you are on your way to designing a cohesive fashion collection, and actual fashion designs.
You can then present this beautiful piece you have created with these actionable mood board tips to your target client, or share it on boards for team members to view.
5 Examples Of Inspiring Fashion Mood Boards
Golden Desert Collection:
This mood board takes inspiration from the sunset-like colors and smooth wave designs found embedded in the mountains in the American deserts. Notice the vibrancy of the color palette found at the bottom of the board, and how each image showcases this throughout the board-making process.
70s Retro in Brown:
This example makes board creation simple with a collection of items with similar shades of colors. This board brings the oranges and browns of the 70s to a modern light in this design for menswear. Inspiration is taken from furniture design and knitwear treasured in 70s Western fashion in this capsule collection.
Nostalgic Geo Spring Florals:
With the blooming of Spring florals in mind, this designer incorporated the natural essence of nature into this beautiful mood board. Both makeup and fashion styles are worked from the color palette, featuring fresh greens, reds, and pinks.
Moonlight and Barocco:
This collage of images and drawings takes inspiration from the artistic Barocco period and brings it to the fashion and makeup scene. The typography, golden color scheme, and graphic illustration make this board unique.
Parisian Chic:
This minimalist, French-inspired fashion mood board makes good use of typography and writing. Branding designers on board sites often use this approach to showcase design elements. By utilizing a font style similar to signs found in Parisian cafes, this mood board showcases the French style without having to use much color or pattern.
Wrap Up
Both physical and digital fashion mood boards are tools that are used by fashion designers and creators of all sorts. Fashion mood boards help designers to visualize fashion design concepts, put inspiration and ideas in one place, and test color and fabric combinations. Digital fashion mood boards have blown up on social media through fashion bloggers and content creators wanting to showcase their style to the world in a simple, easy-to-understand format.
You can make your own digital fashion mood board through NoteLedge, our app that allows you to easily create an inspirational board through a combination of images, colors, graphics, typography, and more.
Get started on your NoteLedge fashion mood board today, and post it to social media to share your fashion aesthetic with the world. Tag us @noteledge so we can see your beautiful digital fashion mood boards!