Has anyone ever tried selling already-made mood boards online- could they be made to be sold? Or not usually? moodboards like this:
Idk, is it a thing?
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Going by what my wife buys people for Christamas - if itās packaged nicely you can sell it for quadruple the price.
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Do you have the rights to sell the photographs in this scenario? Check the EULA. There may be an issue since the stock house could argue that the photo is an essential part of what is being sold. If the photo is part of disposable packaging for, letās say a flashlight, the flashlight is what the consumer buying, not the packaging. Put the same photo on a card or poster, and the photo is, essentially, what the consumer is buying. I donāt know how that would apply to a mood board.
Different stock agencies may handle this differently. One may prohibit the use, another might require purchasing an extended license.
Also, Iām not sure what brand of car that is, but the manufacturer of the car might have something to say about an implied endorsement.
Thereās a book that was published years ago called Pantoneās Guide to Communicating with Color that you might be interested in. Itās similar to what you did here, but goes into more depth, and suggests various color combos for moods like playful, whimsical, classical, elegant, luxurious,etc. It shows like 30 possible palettes for each, tells you the pantone #'s and also shows several real world examples of how the palettes were used on products, packages and ads.
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Thanks for pointing out these reasons, I havenāt thought of it before! All these photos are from Canva elements
It can work, but usually not as a straight āhereās a board, buy itā product especially if itās built from stock elements. The risk is that the images become the thing being sold, which runs into licensing issues (even with Canva).
Where Iāve seen success is selling mood boards as part of a service, or selling the thinking behind them colour logic, brand direction, systems, or education rather than the collage itself. People pay for clarity and confidence more than the board.
Whatās to stop people from browsing for ideas, but not buying?
Like pintrestā¦
Whether pre-made moodboards would be a viable and sellable product, I donāt know. I also agree with @Steve_O that licensing issues need to be resolved.
I also have an observation. Any designer unable to create their own moodboards has no business being a designer. Theyāre not hard to make.
Creating moodboards can be part of the exploration process to uncover the unique emotional qualities best suited to a clientās project. Since each clientās needs are unique, premade moodboards seem somewhat akin to selling a collection of premade X-rays to dentists.
I suppose moodboards can also help convey ideas to clients, though I have my doubts. Most clients will be befuddled by the whole thing and will be unable to look past the pretty pictures and colors to understand the purpose of the exercise. In those instances, a designer might as well pull out an Ouija board to conjure the design spirits in the room.
But moodboards arenāt necessarily going to an end client. If they are going to a designer to show to a client, the designer would be charging the client for them (or should beā¦) You selling to someone who resells might violate the EULA.
LOL, yeah Pinterest came to mind.
I agree with Just B. Any designer who canāt do this, shouldnāt be offering design services.
I created the one above, just got the pics from Canva. Iām just wondering if examples like that could be sold and stuff
To be honest, Iāve never used one.
I had a girlfriend back in college, who was an interior designer and she used them. They make much more sense for disciplines like fashion, architecture, interior design, etc. Where the final solution is a much more convoluted, expensive and involved process to arrive at. You need to make sure general directions are aligned, before refining the process.
I think if Iād presented something like this to most of my clients over the years, theyād have laughed me out of the meeting. For graphic design, mood boards feel more like esoteric bull to me. Why would you not actually just solve the problem at hand with two or three potential solutions than give them some vague, woolly approximation of roughly how you might solve their problem?
They feel very much the domain of the amateur instabrand wannabe designer, than anything a serious professional would ever present to a blue chip client. Feels like the Hollywood clichĆ© version of a designer to me, ādahlingā. As Just-B said, if I did need something like that Iād just make it myself anyway.
So, with the caveat that this is just my personal opinion, no, Iām afraid Iād never buy something like that. That doesnāt mean there isnāt a market for it. There are an awful lot of CanvaKid heroes out there ready to market to vacuous Instagram influencer accounts.
As others have said, though, just make sure you get your licensing locked down or you could end up in pretty deep hot water.
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So true!
The thing is to me, mood boards are usually pretty nuanced. At least if and when I create them for projects Iām usually gathering logos, fonts, photography styles, icons, illustration examples, colors, design treatments, etc. that I might feel are the general target for what I might be looking to create for a design or project. That would never be something I could just purchase off the shelf.
What you shared I wouldnāt even call a mood board as it only focuses on color and even then a more general focus on color. What I mean is in a true mood board (IMO) as I said you would combine typography, photography, color swatched, textures, design styles, inspiration, text, text treatments, etc. and for the colors they would be specific. What I mean by that is the colors may be more muted, or more vibrant, or more pastel. So even if purple was part of my mood board, it could be a very vibrant purple, or a more pastel purple, or a more muted purple, or a dark and rich purple, or a more warm purple or a more cool purple. Itās not just a mix of many types of purple.
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