Thoughts from our Creative Director Re: Mood Boards

A vital part of our process when directing a client’s project is setting the tone and life of the project by creating a Mood board.

How mood board is created?

A mood board is created by a UI artist to give our client options and insight on how artwork will look and feel at the end of the user interface’s completion. Typically mood boards combine color, text and sometimes an image, to help a client choose a graphical direction for their project to proceed in.

UX and UI

The terms UX and UI have become somewhat analogous. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they definitely are not the same. While UX is all about logic, planning, and structure, UI is much more focused on the design and overall feel of a product’s front end aesthetics and behaviors. When that art and science blend together harmoniously, real magic starts to happen. But sometimes design can get bogged down by poor communication.

Starting with the wrong foot

The art phase of a project can quickly become derailed if you start out on the wrong foot. You might envision something in your head that just isn’t coming across in the design. A designer can spend countless hours perfecting something just to have it rejected because they have gone in the wrong direction. It can be expensive and frustrating for everyone involved.

Carry your client along

That’s why it is so important to get the client involved early in the process. As designers, we think we have the answers. We know what works and what doesn’t and we take the responsibility of design extremely seriously. But it is still easy to misinterpret a client’s expectations. Art is subjective and cannot be described with words. Additionally, if the client doesn’t have a clear vision, it makes hitting the mark that much more difficult.

That’s where the trusty mood board comes in. Mood boards allow us to explore ideas before we even begin a design mockup. They allow us to do the talking in a visual way. We can start to explore possible design solutions on a much broader level, and we can shotgun lots of ideas quickly.

It might seem like a waste of time and resources to go through this exercise, and more efficient to go straight into mockups. But the effort up front can save of hours down the line. By getting involved in the process early and setting a direction, our clients are given more opportunity for input. A great designer listens and understands the needs of a project before choosing everything on a whim. Additionally, creating a mood board is fun and can be a great way to express the brand of the product while setting the project up for miscommunication and continuous design changes down the line.

At Rocksauce, we design with the clients best interests and input in mind. Reach out to us today to see how we can design and develop your next big product!