Creating Your Mood Board

A quick and easy primer

Here’s a short video tutorial on how to use Pinterest to create your mood board. Please go through the video and the FAQ below, and email me if you have any questions!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a mood board? Why do we need one?

A mood board, also called an inspiration board or a vision board, is a simple and powerful tool to help us get on the same page on your brand vision for your photos. It helps us communicate concretely about what you want and don’t want in your images.

Different people have very different ways they envision the same idea. For example, pick a brand value such as “confidence”. For you, confidence might be about walking tall on a city street. For someone else, it might be dancing in a park. As a photographer, I want to understand how you see your values.

2. What kinds of photos are appropriate for the mood board?

I’m looking for anything that inspires you in any way or evokes a strong emotion. We’re not trying to recreate or imitate other people’s photos here, but trying to understand what elements of photos resonate with you. There are two ways we accomplish this:

1. Photos that evoke a strong and immediate positive reaction in you. “Yes, I want something like that.” Note that not all aspects of the photo might evoke that reaction. It could be the colors, pose, composition, setting, location, emotion or any combination of attributes

2. Photos that provoke a strong negative reaction. “Hell no, I don’t want to be seen like that.” As before, it could be any combination of aspects about the photo.

Sometimes the same image can evoke positive and negative reactions! Those are particularly interesting, because they reveal things about your tastes that you might not have considered before. Include those!

Do the photos need to be only of people?

No, they don’t. Any photo that you feel drawn to is welcome, including but not limited to: people, nature, animals, quotes, objects, abstract art, paintings and so on. Every photo that you’re drawn to says something about you and what you’re looking for: colors, shapes, outfits, moods, emotions and so on.

3. How many photos do I need?

The more photos you can provide of different varieties, the better. That being said, here are some guidelines that I recommend:

• At least 50 photos that evoke positive reactions

• At least 5 photos that evoke a negative reaction

I have found that only a few photos are enough to elicit what a client doesn’t want, but it takes more to get to the right nuances of what you do want.

4. How long should I spend on the mood board?

I’m looking for snap judgements here. At this point in the process, please don’t spend time on a photo analyzing your preference or second-guessing yourself at this point. If a photo evokes an emotion in the first second or two, add it to the board!

We’ll dive in depth into the photos during the first planning masterclass, where we’ll get to analyze them together.

I recommend spending at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted, focused time on this exercise. That said, if you’re having fun with it, keep going by all means! You can also do multiple iterations: do a little bit, take some time away and come back to it later.

In practice, most of my clients spend at least 1-2 hours on their mood boards, and more if they really get into it!

5. Ok, I’m ready to start. How do I get set up?

1. We’ll use Pinterest for the mood board, so if you don’t have an account already, head over and create one!

2. Install the Pinterest browser button. This works only on Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers - not Safari, unfortunately. This button conveniently helps you save images to your board from any website, not just on Pinterest!

3. Create a new board on Pinterest. Call it <Your full name> - Icon Experience. For example, Ana Melikian - Icon Experience.

Do I really need to use Pinterest? Can I use a different tool?

Pinterest is designed to make this kind of planning easy (though it might take a few minutes to learn to use). It’s used by all kinds of creatives, including photographers, designers, stylists. So it’s a tool worth learning.

BUT

If it’s really not your thing, you can use other tools: Word/PPT, Google docs/slides, or even a shared folder. Anything that lets you collect a set of images, review them individually and as a whole, and share them with me is fine.

The rest of this guide assumes you’re using Pinterest.

6. How do I actually add photos to the board?

There are two quick and easy ways to add (in Pinterest terms, pin) photos to your board.

Browse the Pinterest site

Hit the search button on Pinterest and start looking for images! Here are some recommended ways to search, but feel free to get creative and playful.

• Terms related to your industry e.g. “Real estate agent personal branding”

• Specific people that you admire or look up to, whether in your industry or celebrities e.g. “Michelle Obama portraits”

• Your brand values e.g. “Confident black woman”

• Your brand colors and attributes e.g. “woman in yellow dress”

• As you keep adding images, Pinterest will start showing recommendations at the bottom of the board.

These are only a few suggestions. Please feel free to try other keywords and terms related to your vision!

Use the Pinterest browser button

One of the challenges you’ll quickly notice on Pinterest is that the photos can sometimes get a little … homogenous. This is the time for you to step out of the box and add images from other sites. Any publicly available image on the web can be pinned to Pinterest using the browser button! Here are some places to look at.

• Photo-focused sites such as Pexels, Unsplash or even Instagram

• Google Image search

• Magazine articles and blog posts containing images

• Celebrities who inspire you in some way

• Your friends, colleagues or competitors whose photos you love (or envy! I’m a huge fan of constructive envy)

• Photos generated with AI tools such as Midjourney or Dall-E.

Feel free to get as creative as you want. If you have physical photos that you’d like to add to your board, you’re welcome to take a picture with your phone and add them to your board using the Pinterest app.

Use my starter board

If (and only if) you’re completely stuck, I have a starter board for you! This board has a collection of images that inspire me, and that I have collected from my clients’ mood boards and other sources.

However, I highly encourage you to find your own sources of inspiration first!

7. How do I share the board with you, Raj?

If you’re using Pinterest, add me as a collaborator to the board. Use @seriesaphotography as my Pinterest ID.

If you’re on Google docs/slides, please share using my email raj@seriesaphotography.com

8. Do you need me to also add notes to the photos?

If there are images that stand out to you in any way, feel free add a note to them in Pinterest stating what you liked or didn’t like about them. This is helpful for yourself as a reminder as well as for me. Before our planning call, I’ll go through your board and review the photos and notes.

However, if that feels like too much to do at this point, you may skip this step. As long as we go through those ideas in the planning session, you’ll be covered.

9. Any examples of client mood boards that you can share with me?

Yes! Here are some of my favorite client mood boards. Below the screenshot of the board, you can read some advice from each of these clients about how they went about creating the board. You can also view the boards on Pinterest using the link below each screenshot.