Have you ever heard of “mood boards”? A mood board, or trend board / board, is a visual tool used in particular by designers which allows concepts and ideas to be communicated visually. A mood board is in the form of a thoughtful and planned arrangement of images, materials, words, fragments of text, and various elements which aims to evoke a particular style or concept.

Why is it important to use a mood board for creators and designers?

  • The mood board is a perfect support to create a clear design, with a collection of images and reference objects representative of your art or your style, like a portfolio.
  • Using a mood board helps you express the vision you have in mind for a project at a given time, such as when you need to create visuals for a marketing campaign.
  • Sometimes it is very complicated to externalize your visual concepts and ideas or to present your artistic identity to a client as part of a specific project. A mood board turns out to be a very effective visual communication tool, which you can easily share on your blog, or in a meeting, for example.
  • A moodboard is a good starting point to start a project and find inspiration. This tool can help you bring your ideas together and spark the creative spark.

1-? Pinterest

Pinterest is arguably the world’s most popular and easiest-to-use free mood board tool. It is also the famous application that revealed the concept of mood boards to the general public and which then rose through the ranks to become one of the most famous social networks in the world. At Pinterest, there are millions of images available, so you’re bound to always find exactly what you’re looking for. Each image, or “pin” is linked to a website. You can upload, share, and upload any Pinterest images you want.

By pinning these images or photos to your boards, you can easily collect the ideas that interest you and create a professional-level mood board, whatever theme you’re passionate about, because you can find everything on Pinterest.

2-? Canva

Originally intended to be a design application, Canva offers many models for creating mood boards. You can choose from hundreds of layouts and even create your own design.

This easy-to-use drag-and-drop tool, however, offers professional-level templates that are highly customizable. Canva is available on both desktop and mobile devices, and registration is free. For more resources (access to a media library, additional features, etc.), choose the pro version, which obviously is not free.

Canva is considered by designers to be one of the best tools for creating mood boards.

3-? InVision

InVision gives you the opportunity to create mood boards and organize your content. You can also work with members of your team and discuss your current design work. This tool is available on mobile and desktop, and it can support different file formats.

InVision gives you the opportunity to choose from six types of accounts, each offering a different set of features and capabilities. The basic Free, Starter and Educational accounts will allow you to have up to three digital mood boards. With Professional, Team and Enterprise accounts, you will have access to as many mood boards as you want.

4-? GoMoodboard

This tool gives you the possibility to create beautiful mood boards, and offers several templates to create collages. Just drag and drop your images with ease into these templates, and the tool takes care of organizing them inside a mood board for you.

But of course you can start your project with a blank board and organize your own mood board. You can add a comment under each image or photo in order to explain your ideas to people who will observe your work.

There is a free online version of this app, where no account is required. If you want to access it from your IOS device, it will cost you around ten euros per month.

5-? Moodzer

As an easy-to-use creation and collage tool, Moodzer is specifically designed to organize your images in grid-like systems. After dragging your images into the program, you can freely design your layouts, and resize your modules, apply filters, change colors or even perform image overlays.

Moodzer sets itself apart from other mood board tools with the ability to add typography elements to your work, with a wide variety of fonts, which will allow you to further personalize your collage. And what’s more, this tool is completely free!

6-? StudioBinder

StudioBinder is an authoring tool specializing in templates for photo and video content.

You can create “shot lists” and “storyboards” to organize your content according to the look you want. There are also tons of possibilities to customize your work and you will be able to change your layout, color appearance, frame size and specifications of your images in a snap.

The free version will allow you to create one project at a time.

7-? Niice

This mood board tool is particularly suitable as a workspace and allows several people to collaborate effectively. It is primarily designed for brands that want to bring together collections of ideas and trends. Niice offers interesting features like the ability to chat in real time between members of a work team, and even presentation opportunities. It also has a Chrome extension which you can use to store images while you are browsing the web.

8-? Milanote

How to create a photo moodboard? Milanote offers a moodboard model dedicated to photography. With this tool, you can organize images, photos, videos and links to try and find the inspiration and style you dream of.

Milanote includes features ranging from note taking to project management, and even a mapping tool. The interface can be configured in private mode, or as a collaborative tool for your company.

You can sign up for free and start working on your visual projects with a few worthy options.

9-? Mural

Mural is a “digital workspace designed for visual collaboration,” as described on their website. It is therefore the perfect tool for working on a creative process with others.

It allows the teams involved to imagine and discuss their ideas and opinions on a particular element of design or conception. You can drag images, create diagrams and of course design moodboards. It is even possible to launch polls during brainstorming sessions.

A free trial is available to try out the functionality of Mural. Unfortunately, after the test, you will have to pay around ten euros per month if you like the product.

10-? Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-taking tool that can also be used to design mood boards. Whenever you open a new note, you can drag photos into it while of course adding text.

Each project is stored as a notepad in which you can add inspiring content, be it audio files, images, or interesting links.

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