Why mood boards matter
Each day, there are countless things to be inspired by, including our surroundings, daily interactions, and especially in the media we consume. In my case, I spend most of my days using digital platforms that have the power to inspire me in different ways.
One website that has specifically caught my attention over the years is Girlboss. This is a site that offers advice to women on wellness and trends, explains “how to’s” and also shares success stories of other women. There is also a podcast where the site creators share all this information with listeners instead of readers.
Aside from its excellent message, the site is incredibly inspiring for its engaging design. I created a mood board to represent the colors, typography, patterns, images, text and symbols that the site represents.
While analyzing this site, I used Gestalt’s principle to take in each of the visual elements. This principle says that the whole is more important than the individual parts and encourages our minds to view things from a bigger picture. One example of these principles is similarity.
Similarity is shown a few times throughout this website. For example, the website design repeatedly uses squiggly lines in each of the images which represents similarity.
Another example of similarity is the wrap-around text that is featured a few times throughout the website. This type of text seems to wrap around images or just warp around itself. It goes along with the psychedelic color scheme and also connects with Gestalt’s continuation principle. This principle allows the eye to follow a pattern despite an irregular direction.
To accurately show this in the mood board, I put neon images, warped text, and squiggly lines. In the mood board, I also included headlines from the website that represented the site’s message such as, “Feeling Anxious in a Meeting? Here’s How to Cope,” and more. Additionally, there’s a headphone image to symbolize a podcast, an image of a girl meditating to symbolize healing, and images of girls posing with colorful items of clothing/backgrounds to symbolize girlhood.
Overall, this mood board helped me understand more of the meaning behind each of the design choices and also helped me brainstorm new ways to create new designs. By breaking down each of the design elements, I felt I was able to place myself into the shoes of the website designers and further appreciate each element they used to engage audiences.
Citations:
Bonner, Carolann. “Using Gestalt Principles for Natural Interactions.” Thoughtbot, 23 March 2019, https://thoughtbot.com/blog/gestalt-principles. Accessed 5 November 2023.
Busche, Laura. “Simplicity, symmetry and more: Gestalt theory and the design principles it gave birth to.” Canva, https://www.canva.com/learn/gestalt-theory/. Accessed 5 November 2023.
Karimova, MA, and Tiffany Sauber Millacci. “The Emotion Wheel: What It Is and How to Use It [+PDF].” Positive Psychology, 24 December 2017, https://positivepsychology.com/emotion-wheel/. Accessed 5 November 2023.