How to elevate your visual narrative through moodboards and collages

Whenever you need inspiration for your next creative shoot, commonly you’ll be looking at visuals as your source of inspiration. The best way to creatively organise these visuals into one cohesive idea is by creating a moodboard.

What is a moodboard?

A moodboard, or you might know it as an inspiration board or photography storyboard, is a visual roadmap where you can tie all the important elements together for your photoshoot—from the scene, props, lighting, location, atmosphere, and more. This is a great first point of reference before you jump to the actual shooting process, whether it’s for a personal or a client project.

Creating a moodboard can come in physical and digital forms, but typically this will consist of putting together images, colour schemes, sketches, etc. Together they are a unified visual representation of the outcome you want to achieve.

Why create a moodboard?

Every creative who includes creating a moodboard in the shooting process knows how this handy tool can simplify your life. Here are reasons why you should start creating one:

• To visualise/conceptualise your ideas - A moodboard can help you get a better sense or picture of your finished product. You are able to collect the basic elements on how to approach your own shoot, giving you a strong visual guide to keep you in the right direction as you go along.
• To communicate your vision with clients - Expressing your vision to your clients can sometimes be difficult. In this case, a moodboard can be an effective visual communication tool that you can use to collaborate with a client and to ensure both of your ideas are clear and on the same page.
• To save time - It is easier to change a moodboard than a finished project, and some clients might not know what they want exactly until they see it. So having a moodboard where a client can already visualise the elements and approve them during pre-production will help you save time and energy for reshoots.

Once you’ve put up your moodboard, it will be much easier to move forward to the more specific details of your photoshoot.

What to include in a moodboard?

When creating a moodboard for a photography shoot, these are the types of content that you can include:

• Images - Inspiration images are the most important element of your moodboard. These images define the look and feel that you want to recreate in your shoot. Your inspiration images can be composed of props to use, type of background, patterns, and textures.
• Colour scheme - When working with a client, they would want you to use their brand colours. Including a colour palette in your moodboard will serve as your guide when styling and selecting the colours of your props and background.
• Composition - Naturally you will have to style your subject in your photoshoot. Creating a sketch or grabbing an image of how you want your subject to be composed in your final frame can be helpful.

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Best tools to create moodboards

Physical moodboards

• Sketches and storyboards - If you prefer to be more hands-on, you can create quick pencil sketches to plan out product compositions, layouts, and scenes. Rough drawings with basic shapes and notes on key elements are sufficient.

• Flatlay - You can also compile actual samples of materials that you need into a flatlay scene. This allows you to see and touch the items you need for your photoshoot.

Digital moodboards

• Photoshop  - You might have been using Photoshop as your main photography editing tool, so creating a moodboard using this software will be easy! You can create your own moodboard template or purchase moodboard templates
• Canva - Want a simpler way to create moodboards? Using Canva’s templates will only require you to drag and drop the images and other elements you need. Plus, you can easily customise and arrange them too.
• Milanote - This tool is one of the best apps to use when building a moodboard because of its shareable feature. Milanote allows you and your client to professionally organise the important elements together.
• Pinterest - Thanks to Pinterest’s group boards, you can easily Pin images together on one board and even create more specific sections inside the group board to make it more organise.
• Procreate - This iPad app is perfect for creating artistic mood boards with its intuitive interface and powerful drawing tools. You can easily import images, add hand-drawn elements, and arrange everything using layers, making it ideal for those who prefer a more freeform, creative approach to mood board design.
• Adobe Illustrator - As a vector-based program, Illustrator offers precision and scalability for your mood boards. It provides a wide range of tools for importing images, creating shapes, adding text, and organizing elements, making it an excellent choice for designers who need professional-quality, print-ready mood boards.

Where to source content and ideas for moodboards

• Pinterest - There’s no doubt that Pinterest is the top go-to tool when it comes to inspiration. Pinterest has countless of Pins - from product photography, food and drinks, flatlay styling, and more. It also has a lot of ideas for creating moodboards.
• Instagram - Have an inspiring creator that you can look up to? Your favourite creator might be posting their moodboard samples and this is definitely a great way to get inspiration from. You can also grab samples of their work and put them together on your private moodboard.
• Stock Image sites - There are many free stock photo websites on the Internet where you can get visual inspiration, such as Behance, Pexels, Dribble, Unsplash, etc.

Bonus Tip: AI-Generated Images

• AI Image Generators - Tools like DALL-E or Midjourney can create custom inspiration images for your moodboard based on text prompts. This is especially helpful if you cannot find an image that exactly matches your vision. You just have to simply describe the style, mood, colour, props, etc. that you want to include and the AI can quickly produce your unique photo to include in your digital moodboard.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned all the things you need to know about creating a moodboard, you might still have that question in mind if it’s really worth the time and effort rummaging through the Internet or your stash to put together the elements you need.

The answer is absolutely yes! The truth is, there are a whole lot of creative ideas out there and some might even pop up in your mind later. The best way to make a clear sense of that is through a moodboard where you can pin ideas and see if they hang together nicely for your final output.