MOOD BOARD Preliminary Research

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During the initial stages of my research, I found that the best way to communicate my vision was through the use of media. Mood Boards became the best way for me to translate what I wanted from my website and app. In order to best illuminate my ideas, before moving into illustrating my backgrounds, I chose to create four mood boards.

Mood Board showing my Users (created on canva)

The first of my four is tailored to my user demographic. As I’ve stated in the past, this is 18-35-year-olds and primarily women. Though despite this, I still aim to be inclusive to everyone as research gathered from a small Texas Faire, suggested that 35% of visitors were male (T. T. U. Libraries, 2013). With this in mind, I tried to incorporate people I felt would attend my festivals events. Due to the fantasy-like nature of Ren Faires, most of my images stem from a costume setting. Even going as far as to include individual costume components I felt reflected my user. After seeing this imagery, it later contributed towards the contents of my guidelines page, allowing me to visualize the outfits and props my user would likely be wearing at events.

Mood Board showing my Website Aesthetic (created on canva)

For my second mood board, I shifted my focus back to the overall design for my website and app. This meant finding imagery that I could use to inspire my illustrative backgrounds.  With this preconceived notion, I settled on a more story-book style. Choosing to prioritize a hand drawn effect, as opposed to realism. This was backed by the research I gathered, that by adding illustrations to my design, I would in fact be encouraging my brands recognizability (B. Muzyka, 2025). I also chose to try and find images with subject matters I felt would work well as backgrounds or buttons, without overwhelming my user. Ultimately trying to instil Miller’s Law (E. Stevens 2024).

Mood Board showing my festivals Events (created on canva)

Moving into my third mood board, I gathered inspiration for my events page. Given as this was a key feature of my website and app, I needed help figuring out the content and designs I wanted to incorporate. After researching numerous types of events, I settled on a handful of images I felt translated the environment I was trying to create. Whilst the colour palette was not something I wanted to reflect on my overall design, it still helped when creating the pages content. Much like my user mood board, this slide helped visualize the festival in a physical format as appose to simply an online persona.

Mood Board showing my Colour Palette (created on canva)

Finishing off with my fourth and final mood board. For this slide, I chose to start addressing some potential colour palettes. Whilst this is something I plan to talk more about in my next blog post, I still wanted to incorporate an eclectic visual format during my mood board stage. This final slide was one of the biggest contributors when designing my website and app, as it helped me identify the muted colour palette I would later use throughout my illustrations.  

References

Images in Mood Boards