Mood Board, Fabric Board

In fashion design class, we're always required to do 3 sometimes 4 boards. Collectively, they are referred to as Story Boards. Individually, there is the Mood Board, the Fabric and Colour Board (sometimes they could be on 2 different boards), and the Style Board. This is not always the case in industry as we were told and as I've personally seen on a field visit. Sometimes a Story Board encompasses everything that are on these different boards. In a company we visited, their board consisted of a massive white board where they tacked on photos of the styles they wanted to sell and the fabrics they wanted to use.


The size of the boards gets smaller as you progress to Year 2 and 3 but in the industry (as per my observation), the bigger the boards and the images, the better.

Anyway, this is all about what we do in school in Year 1.


The Mood Board is all about what inspires you and how the images convey the feeling or the mood. Example, the mood I wanted to convey for this childrenswear range is a fantasy-based wonderland so I used a photo of a castle, fantasy photo of a sky, and lots of glitter.



Here are other mood boards, two boards depicting one theme. The theme is all about Old-Fashioned romance so I downloaded images from various sites. I do not own the images.





The Fabric and Colour Board contains the fabrics that would be used in the range. Depending on the teacher, the names of the fabrics are included as well as the code (i.e Fabric #3033 Silk). For the colours, the paint shop is a favourite destination. The colour cards section is great since the various shades could be found. On top of that, they're free. The colours are renamed to best represent the range, example, instead of just writing Red, it could be Warm Blood, or Pink could be Blush. It's all about marketing.



The Style Board contains images of the style, silhouette, etc that the range is inspired by. So, if the range is all about ruffles and puffed sleeves, the board would contain those images. Often the style is based on a trend declared by Fashion Forecasters. Fashion magazines and online sites like style.com also have these trend shots or trend explanations.

(Will look for a sample of this one in my pile of thingymajigs. Found one)



EDIT: Another board is the Hair, Make-up and Accessories Board. Depending on the teacher, you either have this on an A3 sized board like the others or the contents of the board could be placed in the Research Book. The Research book, sometimes referred to as the Journal, will be on another post.

Again, if the contents fit in one board, one will do but if two boards are needed, then two is also fine.






The purpose of these boards is to focus the attention on what the range would be. As I have personally experienced, once I start designing, I tend to go different ways. So, it's always good to have these boards propped up to remind myself that I'm just doing ruffles or I'm just doing a geometric silhouette.