What Mood Boards Teach Me About Myself
Visualizing my own inner life, one pin at a time
One unexpected addition to my world this year has been making monthly mood boards.
I first got the idea from my close friend Emma, for whom Pinterest is a meaningful part of her Gen Z social media diet. It’s where she brainstorms home decor and maps out activities for a friend’s bachelorette in Venice.
The topic initially came up while she was completing a Facebook Ads course for her startup. It encouraged her to make a mood board for the brand, the product, the campaign, and the life she wants to lead. Imagine spending the first few hours of a class finding photos of your dream existence in the year 2030: Where would you live? Who would be there? What season would it be? How would the air feel? What would it smell like? How would your hair be styled? And so on. The exercise led to unexpected clarity for her.
It revealed what she wanted—in the short-term for her business and in the long-term for her life. Part of that clarity led her to seize an opportunity in a great-for-her move from Paris to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When we were talking about it, she mentioned that she makes mood boards every month. I never knew this about her, and didn’t understand how one could create a mood board for a period of time rather than for a specific project, so I asked: What do you mean? She pins images to a Pinterest board every month. When do you make the mood board? Just before the month begins. What is in each one? Whatever resonates with her at the time. How does she get started? She operates with stream-of-consciousness. She picks one image or topic and sees what happens after that.
I had to try it for myself.
What Is a Mood Board?
A mood board is a visual aid—usually a collage—that helps designers communicate their ideas and inspirations. The very act of putting it together helps them agree on and convey visual language with their partners and teams. It telegraphs the vibes or aesthetic for a project. Similar to the magazine cutout-and-Mod Podge collages we used to make as kids, while the elements may seem disparate and random individually, their assembly and arrangement makes sense as a whole.
Mood boards have become popular outside of the design world, especially in the last few years since pandemic lockdowns, and especially among Gen Z, who are mostly making digital mood boards on Pinterest or Canva. Mood boards on Pinterest help people plan: for anything from an upcoming trip or dinner party to workout routines and inspiration for outfits and home decor. Much of the growth of this format and practice can be attributed to TikTok and Instagram, where the work-in-progress videos of making a mood board, especially animated flat lays, have become a genre unto themselves.
Mood boards have become so popular that Pinterest launched an app designed for shareable, interactive mood board creation with friends called Shuffles earlier in 2023. The idea of pinning as a method of identity-making and perspective-sharing is also the guiding principle of the ex-Zenly team’s new app, Amo. It’s about associating yourself, or an upcoming event, situation, or project with a vibe.
Mood Board vs. Vision Boards
Isn’t this a vision board? What’s the difference?
A vision board is a visual representation of where someone wants their life to go, or of one’s goals. Described by the WSJ in the 2021 article titled, “Vision Boarding in a Year of Uncertainty,” it’s a collage, preferably made by hand, that literally and metaphorically represents things that you want to happen in your life.
A mood board is more focused on aesthetics, and is typically limited to the scope of a project—like gathering inspiration for a fashion line (Sandy Liang’s last collection’s mood board famously had shell phones alongside Virgin Suicides flip flops and oversized slip dresses).
For what it’s worth, as a phrase, mood boards came before vision boards, and Merriam-Webster has a lengthy historical analysis and timeline of how these phrases have evolved.
What I make is somewhere in between but only tethered to a moment in time and not a project—more of a mood board than a vision board, but much less prescriptive. The only parameter is that I restrict is the month.
My First Mood Board
I was feeling despondent and unclear on the heels of my mother being diagnosed with cancer this summer. None of my usual stress-relieving activities were helping unscramble my thoughts, and I was longing for mildly creative or physical activities that felt gentle or playful. At the time, I was particularly comforted by what I referred to as “soft-girl activities”—listening to jazz, smelling fragrant flowers, yin yoga instead of vinyasa, lighting candles, and replacing nighttime drinks with daytime bubble tea walks.
Pinning seemed to fit right in.
I made my first mood board for August 2023. I wasn’t sure where to start, but I knew I was thinking a lot about being outside in urban parks, dreaming of sailing and tennis courts, and thinking back on carefree days in open-sky country while on a road trip with my boyfriend to the National Parks of the American Southwest. I was sick of minimalist clothing and craving vintage Cavalli patterned pants, floral print Dolce & Gabbana dresses, and La DoubleJ print-on-print outfits befitting of a dinner party at golden hour in the Mediterranean. This somehow led me to Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer, 1980s Miami interiors, golden hour light cast onto midtown Manhattan skyscrapers, and old Fiorucci campaigns. The dominant color palette was orange and blue, and somehow it cohered.
I was surprised at how liberating the exercise was. It took me two hours on a Sunday afternoon, and my mind took me to unexpected places and very loose associations. But it was the first time in ages that I just let my mind wander, capturing the threads of each train of thought along the way.
By the time I finished pinning and re-arranging the pins so that it looked on the page the way it looked in my brain, it had a perspective of its own. It helped me understand what I experienced recently (the calming blues and greens of coastal Bretagne, the fierce orange rock of Zion National Park, many meandering apéro conversations in Paris) and what I longed for. It helped me understand that I was grieving an August I wouldn’t be having this year.
It also helped provide me with clear alternatives that I could bring with me anywhere, even in between trips to the waiting room at Sloan Kettering. And it let me earnestly reckon with what itches I wanted to scratch: going to the Russian baths with friends, exploring in my own way on daily walks, having a morning coffee routine with my brother, and dressing in big, bold prints.
I felt so clear about what my intention for August would be and how I wanted to spend it.
My Mood Board, My Self
The board laid my inner life bare for me, and by visualizing it, it kept me honest with myself.
What surprised me was how much it informed the decisions I made that month. If I was confronted with activity A or B, I went with whichever option better resembled the mood board. If I was struggling in the morning to pick out an outfit and get ready for the day, I reached for a color or garment from my moodboard to kick things off. I felt so confident that this was the right choice, because the version of me a few days before who sat down and stream-of-consciousness pinned a mood board had selected it. And she seemed to know what she wanted.
Working with images like this has also been helping me hone my aesthetic perspective. While it’s always changing—you can see that there are stark differences between my August and October boards, for example—I’m growing more certain about my point of view in a visual medium, on everything from how to style ballet flats and trousers to the ways in which the marigolds and flickering candles decorating a friend’s wedding in India reminded me of an ethereal, rainy evening in Mixquic, Mexico at a cemetery for Día de Los Muertos in 2018, graves twinkling with lit candles as marigolds cascaded down mausoleum stairs.
Curating a mood board each month has helped me see these connections, but it’s also helped me develop a style. It makes me actively choose between similar images with slight variations—it’s not quite this ponytail; it’s this other one. It’s not this still from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette; it’s another one that better captures the embellishment of the textiles. It’s the image equivalent of going to the eye doctor as they flip the lenses and ask “Better 1 or 2?” And while both images are visible and meet your search criteria (“Paris rooftop”), only one formulation of it speaks to you. That’s what I choose.
It’s about understanding and conveying vibes, but it’s also about selecting between details. About accumulating enough small permutations, about enough ordinary and obscure things, so that when you finally take a step back, you see the forest from the trees, and are able to have a better idea of whether it’s more Northern Woodlands or rainforest based on what you selected.
My Process
My method so far is as follows:
During the last week of the month, I set aside 2-3 hours to aimlessly create next month’s board on Pinterest. The board is in Private mode.
I start by titling the board—November 2023, for example—and start with a simple search tied to something I’m thinking about: rainy Paris in November, Dior lipstick in color Rendez-vous, cricket match championship, the copper-brown color of Turkish coffee sets.
I’ll scroll and pin—without judgment.
I’ll follow tangents. A copper-brown color reminded me of shiny slate gray. Seeing a slate gray silk skirt reminded me of a dress Serena wore when I was rewatching Gossip Girl. Watching that show reminded me of leaves turning in fall, which I mentally noted when I was at Place des Vosges last week. The foggy, rainy days reminded me of spooky season, which reminded me of cemeteries, which reminded me first of visiting Montparnasse Cemetery a few weeks ago with my friend Carolyn and Tsundoku Society and also unearthed an old memory of a foggy morning at a cemetery on Mount Koya in Japan circa 2013.
Usually, following each and every tangent fills those two to three hours. Only once did I find myself stuck. In that instance, I took a break and resumed a day or two later, when my brain surfaced other threads to tug.
Lastly, I stop adding new pins—usually around the 250+ pins mark—and start dragging and dropping them around the page. Their arrangement says as much as what is contained there.
Then I let it sit for a couple of days in Private mode. I look at it a few times. Usually this is when I realize how cohesive everything actually is. It makes me feel less scattered and clearer. This is where I’m at. This is where my mind is going. To be true to myself this month, these are the elements I should bear in mind.
After a couple of days, I send it off to my friend Emma, who typically responds with heartfelt analysis in the form of a WhatsApp voice note about her perception of where my head is at this month.
It’s not that I set out with a thesis to guide each board’s creation. But I end up with one. And it sincerely helps tie-break decision-making throughout the month. It helps with the tough prioritization decisions—to stay inside and read or go to a networking event—and gives me something to refer back to when I’m not sure. Because the clear visualization of what I want to experience this month is present on an app on my phone.
When I look at my mood board, I’m inspired and I’m also reminded that it’s something I made. It puts me back in touch with my creative self, and helps me sharpen my perspective and point of view.
My Existing Boards
Here are all of my mood boards so far, and a short description about what was going through my mind as I was putting together each one:
August 2023: Described in a paragraph above. It feels like summer. A dash of last light twinkling on the sea. Racquet sports, Edith Wharton’s Boboli Gardens, The Narrows, and The Birth of Venus.
September 2023: September felt like a fever dream, and I kept seeing lavender and yellow-green everywhere. It was swirly and surrealist, like Hilma af Klint’s work, with a hint of unusual glamour. I was drawn to glitter, disco, patent leather, frivolous hardware, and bold black-and-white patterning. Icy blues of Gallen-Kallela’s art and the feeling of alienation I got watching Jean Seberg in Breathless for the first time on a flight.
October 2023: Feeling feminine and vampy. Attracted to witchy glamour, the moon, and the occult. Had the best figs of my life in Annecy on a work retreat and started to imagine what an upcoming trip to India could look like, fresh off the heels of a visit to Turkey. Lush still life paintings against black backdrops, bows, Olivia Rodrigo album on loop, and a Legally Blonde rewatch. A female surrealist painting exhibit in Paris.
November 2023: Heavily informed by the oranges and coppers of visiting Mumbai and Udaipur. Mumbai Art Deco and Marine Drive. The light yellow, brown, and grey appeal to me with clothing right now. Paris is so gray that all I can think of is coziness on rainy days and how smog and fog feel make the real world feel hazy and unreal. Visited the cemetery and was struck by the mausoleums, as well as the way fabrics drape on sparkling sarees. Issues of Toiletpaper magazine and my first Magnum Photo side event in Paris.
If all of that sounds insane, you wouldn’t be wrong. Making a Pinterest board is like capturing the thoughts that flit by in your mind so quickly it’s like they were never there at all. The ones that come to you when you’re half awake in the morning or before bed. But we don’t have many ways to capture these fleeting thoughts.
Some people keep dream journals to scribble when inspiration strikes; I pin. I just have to trust that they’re leading somewhere I want to understand. There’s no obvious point here, or to this piece, other than to say that I’m very much enjoying it. And I’m learning things about myself, my interests, and my perspective by doing this exercise once a month.
Mood Boards Are a Slippery Slope Though
It’s worth mentioning that the power of visualization, which I’m not quite saying but also saying a little bit, falls right into that blurry area where self-improvement, self-help, and delusion intersect. Vision boards are celebrated among business leaders but also among life coaches, charismatic gurus, and new-age influencers preaching about manifesting to Gen Z and millennials who long for community but end up with Goop-ian wellness and astrology instead—you know, “just put it out into the universe and it will happen.”
There is a meaningful difference between manifesting and discussing your goals. While positivity can inform motivation, psychology does not suggest that we simply will things into existence by visualization or verbalization alone. You’re better off expressing your needs to a brain trust of supportive peers and mentors to ask for help in reaching the goals you set for yourself.
It’s also important to make sure that you’re conscious of the limitations of the platform you’re using to mood board.
Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine that is subject to trends and advertisers like any other algorithmic platform. Stanley cups became a lifestyle item because they appeared in enough pins of Gen Z women in baggy pants and ovular sunglasses. And if you’re holding up a mirror to your inner life, and reading back on what it tells you, make sure that the images you’re pinning to your board feel honest to you and not merely funnelled to you by the algo; it’s worth the few extra scrolls deeper on the page to see all of the variations of your search, rather than what a brand paid to be on top.
Pinterest is also a commerce-driven platform. For every item you pin, there will be a corresponding shopping page where you could potentially purchase it and bring it into your real life. Reminder (also to myself) that you probably don’t need that item; it will not make you feel better.
With all of that said, what my new mood board ritual really allows me to do is to explore the tangents of my own mind, and visualize them in one beautiful page online. Sometimes I learn that I’m longing for some glamour, or hoping to be more reclusive at home. Maybe this month I’m feeling really connected with my boyfriend, or maybe I’m missing my girlfriends and should pick up the phone. Or, less deep, that I really loved rewatching Legally Blonde and can’t wait to wear my new Jimmy Choo flats with mixed metal hardware.
But the activity is, refreshingly, mostly, just for me. It’s not that serious. There are no stakes. There is no feedback. It’s just aesthetically pleasing, calming, and fun. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Sounds amazing. I’ll give it a try :)