Creating a mood board is a great way to visualise, develop and communicate design concepts. It can be a useful frame of reference for interface/website design, storyboarding, brand design, fashion design - in short any kind of creative endeavour, including those that aren’t explicitly visual. The idea is to collect images and objects that encapsulate a “feeling” or direction that reflects what the designer is trying to achieve.
A great online tool for creating moodboards is provided by Image Spark. A free account gets you 1GB of space to create up to 2 mood boards. Creating a library of images is made easy with the plug-in (Firefox). You can also upload your own images, or browse the libraries of others in the “community” to collect images. Then just arrange your images into a mood board using the simple, intuitive interface. The tagging facility opens up the community content so that you can see interesting collections of similar images uploaded by everyone.
It’s unclear whether future upgrades will involve a cost or not. The site’s success will depend ultimately on whether the community takes off. The simple interface is a step in the right direction, although if I have a gripe, only plug-ins for Firefox are available at the moment. The site can also be pretty slow. Having said that, it’s free, useful and compelling!
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KeHoeff commented on 28 May 2009 at 9:27 pm
hey this is a very interesting article!
Bill Bartmann commented on 1 September 2009 at 9:33 pm
I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work
Tim commented on 22 February 2010 at 6:16 pm
Great idea, cant seem to upload images. Think they need to get a few bugs sorted out first.
Sarah commented on 19 May 2010 at 4:29 pm
I think this tool is really great. Mood board can make one`s design look more live and creative.
Thanks for the news.
Taylor commented on 14 November 2011 at 8:54 am
This is so cool and I would really love to do this!