When I was a student, we made a lot of mood boards to visually communicate on the brands, users, and products.

We spend hours looking at relevant pictures to convey our ideas on our presentation board.

One of the main issues we faced was finding great websites where we could get unique pictures – so our board would not look alike our classmates’ boards.

Some more, knowing how to manipulate pictures will give a tremendous advantage for your design portfolio.

TIP: Beside looking for websites, I do recommend you to bring a camera or phone taking pictures of all things inspire you.

Create a library of pictures where you can pick up your own inspiration for your boards.

Let me share with you a series of websites with an amazing diversity of pictures and colors!

1- PATTERNS

TIP
Patterns are beautiful to give an instant mood!
Don’t abuse them, use them with parsimony.

Pattern People

PATTERNATIC

2- COLOURS

TIP
There is nothing more impactful than colors.
Give your color a story and you will add an emotional dimension to your project.
A good exercise is to try to describe the picture, not only from what it represents but the emotion it provokes with nouns and adjectives.

3- AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHY

TIP
Feel free to tweak the colors of your pictures on Photoshop so it will match the mood you want to convey.
Image/Adjustments/Saturation

4- AROUND THE WORLD GRAPHICS!

TIP
Get inspired by the graphic beauty of the world.
Click on a country and discover what graphic is happening there! 😀
A good exercise is to try to identify the specificities of different cultures.

Creative Roots (Update: the site is, unfortunately, no more active)

5- TYPOGRAPHY

TIP
Don’t get fancy with your font !!
Choose it carefully so it won’t distract your board content.
Font library at www.dafont.com

TypeToken

There are thousands of websites to get inspired by. And you, what’s yours?

Share them with us in the comment below!