Visual boards, mood boards, inspiration boards, vision boards come with many different names but the intention is the same. It’s about collecting a group of images that speak to you or your project. Creating visual boards has been really key for me in figuring out what my visual style is and how to communicate with my clients about their visual vision. It’s a key part of any new project I take on to make sure we both understand what we’re going for.

Words only get you so far

I’ve found that just using words to create a visual project wasn’t cutting it. You can describe your brand colors to me, but there are so many different levels of variance in color. What you call blue I could call turquoise or indigo. There’s a lot of room left for interpretation if we only use words to describe visuals.

When mood boards are created, there are clearer visual references. It leads to better outcomes in terms of galleries delivered, more accurate pricing when giving quotes, and overall satisfaction in the completed project for both the client and the photographer.

Why you should use Pinterest in your visual board creation

Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine. Google Images is also a powerful visual search engine, but it doesn’t catalog and collect the images for you the way that Pinterest does. Once you collect a group of images, it’s easy to share with fellow collaborators or clients. It’s also easy for me to pick out common patterns and themes in the images that other people may not be able to vocally express.

My go-to method of creating visual boards

For the technical parts of creating a Pinterest Board, I’m going to refer you to Pinterest’s own how to page here. I like to talk about the creative side of the process instead of what to click and when.

Collecting pieces of inspiration

Sometimes clients have already created their boards and just send me their links. That’s awesome, but it’s not always the case. When prospective clients don’t have a board made, I ask for inspiration. It can be IG accounts, websites, product pages, anything that they find inspirational or enjoy. Even if they can’t say why they like it, I just start collecting all the pieces.

Finding what’s common in the pieces

After all the pieces of inspiration are collected, I scan at the board for patterns and themes.

Things to consider:

• white balance
• lighting techniques
• moods
• color stories,
• settings, locations
• props used, if any

All these aspects are evaluated and considered when I look at your inspiration board.

Making more than one board

Making more than one board is optional. It may seem like a lot, but the more specific you are with your ask, the more specific your result.

If you’re doing a personal branding session your visual boards might include: outfits you like, poses, locations, and your branding themes.

If you’re a product, your visual boards may include similar products that you found visually interesting, lifestyle photos of the product being used in various backgrounds, models using your products, and your branding themes.

You can always stick to one board and include all these pieces in the single board. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do this. There are many styles and approaches, and they can all work!

Review of how creating visual boards helps with projects

• Creating visual boards from Pinterest or other tools help eliminate the ambiguity that words can when creating a visual project like a photoshoot
• Even if you don’t know your “style” quite yet, Pinning things that draw your eye and attention sitting all in one place allows someone else to piece together patterns and other commonalities.
• You can share your ideas and vision easily with other collaborators helping you to bring your vision to life.
• It allows for accurate quotes if your decide to move forward with a visual project like a website, photoshoot, because it helps others determine what the scope of the project is.

I hope this post helped show you the value of a visual board for visual projects and how tools like Pinterest can be a big help in collecting pieces of inspiration, and later making those pieces come together in a fully formed project.

Please let me know if you have any other questions in the comments below. If you’d like to see how we can work on a project together, please fill out a Contact form!

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