The 4 steps to building a successful mood board.

Over the years I’ve defined a clear-cut way of creating mood boards that’s not only fun—it’s useful. 

And it all comes down to four simple steps:

1: Clear some space in your closet. 

You know when you start a new creative project and you feel like your head is full of bees as you think about it?

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve got ideas zipping around in your head, buzzing from flower to flower, soaking up some nectar before zooming over to the next juicy looking bud?

Yup. Been there. When you’re an ideas machine like I am, it’s a very familiar feeling. It’s honestly OVERWHELMING. 

In the past, when I’ve felt this way, that’s when I would head over to Pinterest and start a fresh board and begin pinning anything and everything that looked interesting to the board. 

I’d tell myself “I’M GOING TO COME BACK TO THIS LATER I’M SO EXCITED I JUST CAN’T WAIT.”

Spoiler alert! You know what never happened?

You probably guessed it. I never went back to that damn board. It had just become a dumping ground for my feelings, not an actual space for me to process that idea. 

Now, whenever I start feeling that special way, I clear some space in my calendar and spend about 5-10 minutes just writing down everything that comes to my head. My goal is to get the bees out of my brain and into words on paper (or in the Miro template I use). 

2: Start browsing for inspiration.

After getting all of the thoughts out of my head, it’s time to start collecting inspiration about those ideas. This is when I’ll head over to Pinterest and start searching for images. 

I try to think more abstractly during this phase, and just look for images that I find interesting. They don’t need to relate directly to the project I have in mind. 

Make sure you look for inspiration across a variety of sources. Don’t just look for photos of people, for example. Try to find images of interior design, graphic design, travel photos, and more. 

3: Curate your selection.

After I’ve had my fun “finding inspiration”, it’s time to put my head down and start the process of moving from chaos → clarity. That happens by going through all of the images that I found, finding the ones that speak to me most, and figuring out why. 

Think of it like curating an art gallery. You might have hundreds of images to work with, but you need to find the most significant ones that represent something bigger. 

At the end of this step, you’ll have your useful mood board—the one that you can share with others who you want to include on the project. 

4: Identify your style.  

In step 3 you should have described each image individually. Now it’s time to stop looking at the individual images, and instead look at the entire gallery you’ve created. 

What do all of the images have in common? What’s the thing that’s tying them together? This could be things like similar colors, similar emotions, similar styles, similar textures...at this point to find the themes that keep emerging. 

When I went through this system for building my personal brand, I realized that citrus kept showing up in the images I’d collected. That theme helped me build one of my brand guidelines: I’m feminine, but tart. 

What are the themes you’re seeing?

The cool thing about this process is that you can do it over and over and over again. So you can do a quick brainstorm in 30ish minutes. Or you can take your time for each step. Or you can use it each time you want to refine your idea. 

If you try it, let me know what you think! It’d make my day if you responded to this email and showed me what you came up with. 

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