Mood board

So what's a mood board? It's a poster composition of mostly images, minimal text, and can even include samples of objects. For instance, interior designers would include carpet or fabric samples, paint swatches and a collage of images from magazines to demonstrate the look that they intend for a room, whether it's a luxurious white lounge area or a rustic kitchen.

For industrial designers, mood boards can be used in several stages of a product development project. In its earlier stages it would be showing images of the lifestyle, ideals and aspirations of the target consumer. What does your target consumer look like? A senior couple living in the highlands, a young Asian immigrant, dual-income-no-kids yuppies (DINKY), a low-income family from the mortgage belt, etc? For instance, the ideals of meditative relaxation, fun weekends with friends, nature activities, or an enjoyable dinner with the family after a hectic work day. To achieve these ideals and lifestyle, show the kinds of products or objects your target customers surround themselves with (not necessarily the "tools" you are designing in the Experience Enrichment project). Are they red sportscars, stainless steel kitchen appliances, country crafts, heritage sofas, etc? The products could also show what problems or issues your target consumer is facing. For instance, objects which help elderly arthritic hands open packages, products which address identity issues for adolescents, and so on.

Thus, the mood board should show your audience what life is like for your target consumers and usher the "mood" for the design concepts you offer as solutions (in the case of your project, ones that would enrich their living experiences).

You can get good creative photography images at http://www.gettyimages.com/ and http://www.corbis.com/. It would be good for you to sign in (it's free) so that you avoid the watermarks on the images.

Like all graphical compositions, the mood board must have a pleasing and attractive layout. Instead of flooding your mood board with a hundred thumbnail images, select only the most representative images (around a dozen or so), perhaps the "pictures which paint a thousand words". Also instead of uniformly sized images, make the most important ones bigger than the others so that the composition has a "hero" and the others are subordinates that support the main image.