Transcription
[music] >> So, I want to talk to you about something that I think a lot of designers get wrong. And to be honest, it's something I've also had to learn myself. For a long time, I thought a mood board was just a collection of things that inspired me. Saved images, Pinterest boards, and references that I liked. And technically, that's not wrong, but it's also not really a mood board. Not in a way that actually moves a project forward.
And I've seen this a lot, really talented designers and creatives sending over references that don't really reference anything. They've collected images that they like and called that direction. Now, there is a real difference between those two things. So, in this video, I want to talk about what a mood board actually is, what it needs to do, how an art director builds one versus how a designer builds one, and how to actually reference properly. Cuz there's a real skill here, and I don't think it gets talked about enough.
For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Louie, and I'm a designer and art director working for some of the biggest sports and lifestyle brands in the world, such as Nike, Adidas, Disney, and PlayStation. Recently, as I've moved a lot further into art direction, I've been getting involved with projects a lot earlier on in the process, having more of a holistic and authoritative view of the creative direction. The mood board has become one of the most important tools that I use almost every single day.
Before we get into types and processes of a mood board, I want to establish what the standard actually is. What are we actually measuring against here? A mood board isn't a collection of things that you like. It is a creative argument. Every single image on that mood board is a sentence in that argument. And if you can't articulate specifically why that image is there, then it shouldn't be there.
Think about it like this. If a project was a Michelin star dish, a mood board wouldn't be a selection of ingredients. It would show you how that dish is going to come together, how it's going to taste, how those flavors are going to work with each other. It's holistic. You need to look at it and see the whole thing. The tone, the aesthetic, the approach. All of these things you need to get across before you've even said a word. That's what you're building. It's not a Pinterest board, it's a snapshot of the finished project. So, when I look at a mood board, mine or someone else's, the first thing I have to ask myself is, can I feel the project in under 10 seconds? If the answer is no, something needs to change.
Now, this is something that I don't think gets talked about enough, because there are actually two very different types of mood board, and they both have very different jobs. The first one is your internal reference board. This is for you. No one else needs to see this one. And because of that, you have a lot more license here. It can be a bit looser, you know, it's a bit more exploration. You might have multiple versions of like similar stuff, like what I've got here. At this point, you know, even if things are a bit similar, it's fine, because you're trying to work stuff out. You're trying to work out what direction feels right to you. This is kind of where you're thinking visually for a project.
But, and this is the important part, even your internal board should feel like each reference has earned its place. Like it needs to be there for a reason. Because if it just looks cool, what are you actually taking from it? Is it the color? Is it the composition? Is it the texture? Is it the cultural reference that it's making? If you can't answer that, even if it's for yourself, for your own internal references, then get rid of it, cuz it's just noise. The other big trap with internal boards is volume, and I fall into this all the time. It's exciting at the start of a project, you start pulling references from everywhere, and before you know it, you've got about 50 references, and you don't even remember what you're kind of referencing at that point. More references do not mean more clarity. It actually means less. Fewer genuinely great references will serve you so much better every single time.
Right. So, I'm very excited to partner with Skillshare for today's video. And actually, this is a very good place to pause, cuz a lot of the stuff that we've been speaking about today, the visual language, how every single reference has to earn its place, this stuff goes way deeper than just mood boards. I'm really trying to learn as much as possible at this stage to take me to that next level. So, when I got brought in recently to art direct a shoot for the F1 Academy, one of those briefs that just gets you a little bit buzzing, to be fair. I wanted to make sure that I was as sharp as possible before going in. So, I jumped on Skillshare, and I took this class by Andre Leroi, a Brooklyn-based photographer and art director, and this class is called Art Directing Photography: Delivering a Successful Photoshoot for Your Company. 29 minutes, six lessons. It covers exactly the stuff that I need, communicating, you know, visual language, getting clients bought into the vision before you've even shot a single frame. Genuinely useful. Skillshare has thousands of classes like it, taught by working professionals. It's the kind of platform that you actually get something from. The first 500 people to use my link in the description, or scan the QR code, will receive a month free trial of Skillshare.
Now, this is an internal board that I put together for a fictional athletic brand. You can see there's a bit more exploration going on here. There's some variation going on. I'm testing, you know, a couple directions, but every image is earning its place on this page. I know exactly what I'm taking from each one.
Now, the client-facing direction board, completely different. Completely different document, completely different job. Your audience might not be creatives. They might not have the context or the visual kind of literacy, in a way, to understand what you're referencing or why. So, everything has to change. Fewer images, way more considered. They need to feel like, you know, there's a bit of harmony going on on the page there, to sit together kind of in like one big single object. Not just look good individually. In my opinion, if something is a great reference, but it feels a little bit visually jarring, I've often found that they kind of stand out a bit too much. Maybe the colors are clashing, the tone is off a little bit. I always try and recolor it or kind of change it a little bit, maybe edit it in Photoshop, whatever you need to do, just to make sure it fits in with the rest of the page. Cuz if something stands out to you, it's probably going to stand out to your client. And if it looks out place to your client, they might not understand what you're trying to say with that. So, everything on this client board needs to be visually strong. You know, don't have a pixelated image in there. Don't have something that's badly cropped. It undermines the whole thing before you've even had a chance to explain yourself.
And one thing that people really underestimate, size. The size of each of your images on your board is a communication decision, really. Larger images, for example, demand more of your attention. Psychologically, whoever is looking at your board is going to give more weight to the bigger references on the page. So, your most important references, the ones that are the most central to the overall direction, I would say, should have the most space on your board. That's not an aesthetic choice, that's an editorial one. Every decision you make on this board needs to tell whoever's looking at it something about that project. It almost works as a piece of design in itself.
Now, captions. This is something that I do on client boards quite a lot, and I generally think it does protect your work, rather than kind of just take away from the clean mood board aesthetic. But, next to each reference, you know, or you can even do this on a following page. Sometimes I just have like a clean version, and then do it on the following page. Describe what you're actually referencing in each of these images. Is it the color palette? Is it the photography treatment? Here, the material, the texture. Is it the typographic mood? Like you have to be quite specific with these things, because the worst thing that can happen, and this has happened to me quite a few times, genuinely heartbreaking, is the client reacts negatively to something that's on this mood board, and that isn't even part of the reference that you're referencing. They've just kind of looked at an image without understanding which bit of this that you're taking it from, and suddenly you're on the back foot, you're trying to rescue your idea, and that never really works, I find, with the clients. Once you're on the back foot, they've got something in their head, it usually gets killed, which is not what we want. But, when you annotate your board, you're not over-explaining it, you're being pretty top-line with it, pretty direct. You're just basically protecting that direction. You're making sure that anyone and everyone that's looking at that board has the same understanding as you. Cuz sometimes you got to remember, you know a lot more about this, you you have the context, you've picked these things out, you know exactly what you meant, but other people coming in, fresh-eyed, they might not know.
And one more thing on the client boards, as an art director, your direction has financial implications. If you're referencing premium materials, maybe certain photographers or certain photo effects, textures, materials, those sort of things, locations, someone's got to pay for that. So, your board, essentially, needs to justify why all those decisions are there. You don't have to go into too much detail about it, but the why needs to be clear enough that anyone that's, you know, looking at this feels like this is considered and intentional, like you've made this choice for a reason at the end of the day. You need to make sure that that is visible.
Now, art directing boards versus designer boards. So, I want to talk to you about something if you're a designer looking to move more into art direction or creative direction. Or if you're, you know, an art director who's just trying to be more clear on what your role is at this stage of the project. The mood board that an art director builds and the mood board that a designer builds are completely different. Not because one is better than the other, but because the role is different, and the job is completely different.
As an art director, your board is holistic. You're holding the entire vision, the world, the feeling, the campaign as a full 360. Your have photography direction, you know, it might have color territories on there, it might have typographic moods, materials, texture references, tone. It's all in one place. Graphics might be one element in there, but that's just one part of the kind of bigger picture of the campaign, essentially. You're showing someone the whole thing before anything's really been made.
The designer mood board zooms into one specific element of that vision. Maybe it's the type system in detail, the graphic language broken down, composition. That's completely different on that board, and it should be. It's the evidence that supports the argument um that the art director has already made. When those two get confused, maybe, I don't know, the design board moves a little bit too far into the art direction, and maybe throws off some of the initial ideas, or maybe the art director mood board gets a little bit too granular into some of the specific design kind of uh ideas, the project starts to lose a little bit of clarity. Everyone can then start pulling in slightly different directions, and then it just starts to feel a bit off.
For me personally, this is something I've been really conscious of as I've moved further into art direction. My job now is to hold the whole thing and make sure that every element of that project is serving the same direction. And the mood board is the starting point. If that is unclear, then everything else from that point is also unclear. It really sets the foundations. It really is that important.
I want to get into something that I think is a real skill here. And it's something I've been a lot more intentional about recently. Most people reference by attraction. They see something they like and then they add it to their board. But that's not really referencing. That's just collecting. Real referencing is actually quite analytical. When you find something that you like, maybe something that stops you scrolling, maybe something that caught your eye, the question isn't just do I like this? The question is, why do I like this? Is it the color combinations? Is it the overall composition of the page? Is it the quality of some of the assets used, textures, fabrics, materials? Is it the cultural reference that it's making? The lighting, the mood, it could be anything, but you've got to break it down to something that granular.
Because once you know the specific quality that you're referencing from that image, you can take that specific thing and use it in a combination with other specific references and use it to create your own unique thing. When you start to pick up all those little pieces and put them together, that's how you can create something that is truly ownable and truly yours. That's not copying. That's sort of how creativity has always worked. I remember we used to do this in art all the time. We used to take, you know, various painters' styles, break down what it was about their styles and then try and recreate something in that. Nothing truly is original, but the combinations of things could be. And when a combination comes from a real place of understanding, you have a real solid idea of why you've made all of these choices, the work has a real quality about it that people can really feel. Like it feels a lot more elevated. It feels a lot more considered.
I've been trying to do this a lot more recently. You know, I've been categorizing references as I build them. Not just saving things, but, you know, the reason. What is it? Is it the color? Is it the image treatment? And when you start doing that consistently and kind of putting it together in this way, something really interesting starts to happen. You start to understand your taste a lot more clearly. You start to see patterns in the things that you're kind of drawn to. And that self-awareness really feeds directly into the choices you make when you start creating stuff.
Where you find your references matters as well. And I want to be clear, Pinterest and Instagram are fine. They're great to use. There's loads of choices on there. But I've become way more considered about this. Instagram is driven by an algorithm. So, you know, if we're all getting served the same sort of stuff, is it really original? I also think Pinterest is just full of ads, so it can get quite distracting. And again, that is an algorithm, too. So, if I'm searching something, you're searching something, we're probably going to get the same thing. It doesn't really feel like you're kind of discovering on here. Feels like you're being served it, being fed stuff, which maybe I've already looked at, other designers have already looked at. I don't want to come up with an outcome that everyone's kind of being given the same references at the same point, if you get me. So, things might start to look the same.
I think Arena is different. The boards on here tend to be built by people who are genuinely intentional about the sort of things they collect. The standard to me feels a lot higher. The content is a bit more considered. There's less of it, really, but that's kind of the point. Like I feel like it cuts out a lot of the maybe not so good stuff. And when you find a good board on Arena, you feel like you've kind of found a goldmine. And the quality of your references does really shape the quality of your output. So, it is worth being a lot more selective about where you're looking. Use multiple sources. You can use Pinterest and Instagram. That's absolutely fine, but just remember the standard that you're trying to hold these references to.
So, to bring this all together, a mood board is a creative argument. Every image is a sentence. Every size decision is an editorial choice. Every caption is protecting your direction. Your internal board can be looser. But you still need to know why every reference is there. Your client board needs to be clear. It needs to be considered. It needs to be set up for a way that if someone who has no design background, that has no concept of the project as a whole, gets an understanding of what it's about just from looking at it. And the shift from just collecting references to actually being able to understand them. Knowing what specifically you're taking from each one. That is real mood boarding. That's what I found has really changed the quality of my work. Because when you understand the reasons behind the choices that you make, it helps you make better choices. And when the mood board reflects that clarity, it also presents that feeling to the people that you're presenting to. They don't always know why, but they feel it. And that's the job.
In my next video, I'm going to go deeper on finding inspiration, how I am personally building my inspiration and reference libraries, where I look for all this stuff, the different formats and mediums that I, you know, use to collect these ideas, so that you can make sure that you're not pulling references from the same place with the same algorithms as anyone else. That's something that you want to see, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.