Because they dramatically reduce the risk that we incur when beginning a new design. We do our best to create style elements that can be carried into the design comps, but sometimes only a small percentage of these make the cut. Most are never seen by anyone beyond the client presentation, and only one is picked as the direction for the final design. For lack of a better way to say it, these are throw-away design pieces. I think that it's worth taking a quick timeout to explain how we mentally approach mood boards. We've found that three is the magic number that allows us to show clients a good mix of styles without going overboard. This number can vary based on the budget, how rigid the client's brand guidelines are, or how open-ended the design direction is that they provide. Since then, they have become an essential part of our process. We typically design three mood boards for each new project. The Answer: Mood BoardsĪ few years ago, Tom gave a great primer on mood boards. Many client budgets can't support this type of overhead, so there has to be a better way.

Having multiple designers spend a lot of time creating complete homepage designs with the hope that the client will magically like one is time consuming and risky. As web sites become more complex, the process that leads us to successfully plan and build a site has evolved.

Mood board template figma