Packaging Inspiration for a Mood Board

Written By Zandra Zuraw

This project is primarily about the skill of translation: how to translate a source of inspiration into design decisions. Here, we’re starting with graphic design elements in packaging and advertisements. You’ll choose 1-5 sources of inspiration as a starting point for an imaginary room and create a mood board.

STEP 1: Samples of Packaging and Advertisements

Feel free to use any of these, below, or use your own. To find these images, I did several different searches on Pinterest. Things like “1930s liquor labels,” “retro food packaging,” “vintage travel posters,” etc.

STEP 2: Choose a Room and Notice the Details of Your Source(s) of Inspiration

Choose a room you’re currently working on, or just choose a room you’d like to design for fun. Think about all of the design decisions you’d need to make such as:

  • Wallpaper

  • Paint colors

  • Fabric

  • Tile

  • Flooring

  • Curtains

  • Furniture

  • Lighting

  • Countertops

At this point, you’ll also start looking more closely at the packaging/advertisements you’ve chosen. Make note of what you see in terms of:

  • Shapes

  • Colors

  • Patterns

  • Materials

  • Era

In my example below, you’ll see that I’ve chosen a vintage Italian travel poster, a cocktail menu from Howard Johnsons, and an ad for Barilla pasta. The idea of cocktails got me thinking about a cocktail lounge. I used the colors to inform my palate and noticed there were a lot of curves in all three sources of inspiration. There was also a mid-century vibe going on that informed my choices.

STEP 3: Start Sourcing

I think the best place to source products for a mood board is Pinterest. I did searches based on the design elements I made note of in Step 2. For example, I started with the walls. I wanted there to be a black and white background to everything, based on the band of black and white across the Howard Johnson’s menu. In Pinterest, I simply did a search on “black and white wallpaper.” Then I started looking for the big pieces of furniture: the sofa and the buffet. I looked to the colors in the inspirational photos and decided to go with blue for the biggest pieces, which ended up including the arm chairs along with the sofa. For everything from lighting to furniture, I wanted a lot of curves, again based on what I was seeing in my inspirational photos. I go into further explanation in the video below.

WATCH THE VIDEO

 

PHOTOS FROM THE VIDEO

RESOURCES

Along with Pinterest, I also used Canva as my primary resource for creating the mood board. Canva is a free graphic design and presentation tool. When you open Canva, type in “mood board” for what you want to create. You can use a blank canvas (as I did) or choose one of their templates.

There are also a number of free, online mood board tools you can use. I’ve used GoMoodBoard in the past.

Zandra Zuraw
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