No one wants to start a project staring at a blank piece of paper (or HTML document)... One strategy is to begin a project by creating a mood board.
You can create a mood board however you like, essentially you're just doing research and collecting examples of inspiring design. If you're creating a portfolio website, you might start by googling "portfolio website ideas" but you shouldn't limit your preliminary research to a specific field.
Any website can offer ideas for navigation menus, background patterns, typography, or any other aspect of web design. Consider your favorite book covers or movie posters. Look at the surface textures in your living room. Visual design is everywhere.
When creating a mood board, you should save any content that might prove useful—if you're not sure if it will work in your final design, save it anyway. Pick and choose from the media you encounter, and don't be afraid of stealing. Most art and design is made by combining elements and ideas from previous authors. Just try to make it your own somehow.
Some methods for collecting images:
- Screenshots— Especially with websites, you may just end up taking screenshots of sites that you like. Just be sure to organize you images in a single folder. You can also use screenshot in some of the tools below.
- Pinterest — A great resource for design inspiration, create an account and save images into specific boards for each project. Try searching for colors, shapes, textures, etc.
- Matboard — Save images from the web and search existing collections for inspiration.
- Go Moodboard — Online mood board tool
- Tumblr — Ostensible a public way to collect images, but lots of unique stuff here as far as art and technology.
- Evernote — this is a guide on using the popular note-taking app to create a mood board.
It's easy to find design that you "like"—but the challenge is to choose the right visual elements for the project at hand. Just because a spinning solar system menu (or whatever) looks awesome doesn't mean it will help communicate your message and make your site function effectively.
So as you collect images for your mood board, consider some guiding questions:
- How should users feel when they use the website? What emotions does the content suggest?
- What is the style of the website? What other websites, design styles, artwork, or genres should the users think of when visiting the site?
- What adjectives would describe the website?
- What is the primary purpose of the website? How can you make that clear?
Write down some answers to these questions to help clarify your idea.
As you collect images, make sure to consider color, texture, typography, images, decorations, animation, and other essential building blocks.
Refining
After you've collected a bunch of images, it's time to refine your selections to create a cohesive picture of what your website will look like. Be able to articulate which elements you want to use from each image on your mood board.
Watch the following (short!) Lynda course for more information on mood boards and design research.