6 Great tools for creating mood boards

Whether you work in digital or traditional media, if you're trying to get a big design idea across, a good mood board can be invaluable. With a mood board, you can instantly convey a whole assortment of concepts and feelings that are central to your pitch but difficult to get across verbally.

So what's the best way to put a digital mood board together? We've got lots of expert tips on how to create a mood board, but in this post, we've focused specifically on the tools you need to help do just that. Let's get started.

01. Milanote

If you're looking for an easy-to-use tool to organize all your ideas, Milanote is certainly an option worth considering. The software runs in any modern web browser and offers as much space and as many levels of hierarchy as you might need to let your creative projects fully develop. 

It can be set up as a private place for you to collect your thoughts or as shared workspace for collaboration – the choice is yours. You can sign up for free, plus get access to Milanote's library of inspiration and templates to help get you started.

02. Pinterest

Pinterest offers a surprisingly diverse collection of images to draw mood board references from. The big plus of using it is that a whole load of human users have done a lot of the curating for you, which is the time-consuming bit. And the collections are often themed better than any traditional image library.

03. MURAL

MURAL describes offers easy and user-friendly way for creative teams to think, imagine and discuss their design ideas. It'll cost you $12/month, but there's a free trial available if you don't want to commit just yet.

04. The Matboard

Image sharing site The Matboard is specifically targeting creatives as an alternative to the more mainstream Pinterest.

05. Evernote

Ever considered using the Evernote note-taking app to create mood boards? Us neither, but it can be done. This blog post over on SitePoint explains exactly how.

06. Sampleboard

Upload your images to Sampleboard, the digital mood board creation tool, and organize them into project files, then use the web editor to easily pull together design trends and color schemes. 

The mood boards you create can be shared on various social media sites and easily imported into documents and presentations. A range of mood board themes are available to get you started.