So just as I start to write one of my first posts on design process, the web lights up with a few great designers headnodding in disgust for the very thing I want to champion: Moodboards.

Bronwyn Jones’ “Just not in the mood” comes down pretty hard on the whole moodboard party. Jones feels that, despite the good intentions of their creators, moodboards amount to nothing more than “futile exercises in finding a point of view — by having absolutely no point of view whatsoever.” Even more damning, they prevent a designer from hitting the ‘soul’ of a new design, instead leading artists to approximation, and not fresh creative work.

But I just don’t buy it — and this is coming from a self-proclaimed, ‘fluffy creative process hater.’ I see quite a lot to like about the moodboard scene, despite the horrible name (which gives me the sad image of a broken lava lamp next to a Ouija board).

What is a moodboard?

Wikipedia sums things up pretty well:

“A mood board is a type of poster design that may consist of images, text, and samples of objects… Designers and others use mood boards to develop their design concepts and to communicate to other members of the design team… [and] may be used as a frame of reference during the design process…”

Put simply, a moodboard serves as a “creative spec” for a design project. It isolates “style” as an element independent from the other design priorities in a project. This is unique — the moodboard creates a helpful layer of abstraction in the design process, pulling the subjective, stylistic elements of a design (color, tone, texture) into a document that’s eminently ‘discussable’ by the internal team and, with any luck, the client.

Another huge plus for moodboards is how quick, malleable and rough they are — they allow for rapid iterations and help avoid the detail-obsessed “can we push that pink down a few hex values, move that button here…” nonsense in the discovery phase. What’s more is that showing moodboards to the client and using them to establish a dialogue gives you a huge edge — having some direct say in the matter gives clients some design ‘buy-in’, so they trust your choices a bit more.

Strawboards

Honestly, I probably haven’t seen the ‘real,’ art-schoolish moodboards that Bronwyn’s got such a strong hate-on for — and I hope I never have to. This the crux of my beef with her argument — Bronwyn’s seen some nasty moodboards float past her, but then decides to slam the whole lot of ‘em as useless, self-centered design exercises.

For now, let’s put aside the worst-case scenario, and instead imagine a really great moodboard. A moodboard so great, in fact, that it nails the balanced functionality of creative experimentation and a functional process document. It gets everyone involved to start to thinking about the goals of the style early on, helping them talk about the issues confidently, both within the internal team and to the client. The client’s thrilled that he’s got some buy-in on the process, so much that he trusts the first round of comps, seeing his ideas and influence materialized by an artist… High fives all around, and things move swimmingly to launch. Fun to dream, eh?

Reality Ain’t So Nice (But it Ain’t So Bad Either)

Of course, things don’t roll that easy in real life. Clients either want nothing to do with the process or they want too much involvement. Any Moodboard created without an initial discovery phase would most likely be totally useless. And team members need to find that balance of roughness and detail that keeps them exploring in this phase, while working to nail down a functional ‘design palette.’ Most importantly, no one should waste time diverting attention to these documents as design objects themselves, since the main goal in this phase is to move process forward and aid communication.

I suggest overcoming the fear of an art-school disaster and trying a moodboard on your next project — if you work on reigning it in and keeping it simple and quick, you might find it makes that pain-in-the-ass process of nailing out an early design much, much easier. Say it with me now, mooooooodboard.