Do you know how to create a mood board for your coaching brand? If you said yes, great. Skip to the bottom of the post, because we have some free mood board templates you can snatch up and use to create one.
If you said no, it’s time to pay attention, because I’m about to walk you through one of the most important tools you can use as a business owner to create a visually impactful brand and website design.
But first, what the heck is a mood board?
a collage of various items, as scenic snapshots, song lyrics, and mementos, used to evoke a desired feeling, style, or ambience for a project or event, and often fashioned as a starting point from which to create an inspiration board
Dictionary.com
Mood boards are a tool designers have been using for ages to help get them on the right emotional track in the design process. That’s right, I said emotional. Because mood boards are all about identifying the right feeling or vibe for a project.
If you walk in blind to a design project, you never know where it could end up. So the mood board helps you keep the vision for a project (or brand) front and center in the brain. No detours allowed.
Have you ever seen a brand that looks different when you see it in different places? On Instagram it looks bright and cheerful, but when you look at the website, it loses its vibe and looks a little dull? That’s because the brand didn’t have a mood board. There was no consistent starting point to refer back to.
And that’s what I want to help you avoid with your coaching brand, by teaching you how to create a mood board you can use to visually inspire yourself and stick to.
How to Create a Mood Board for Your Coaching Brand
Step 1: Choose Your Moodboard Medium
The first step in creating a mood board is deciding whether you’ll do it physically, or digitally.
Do you want to get hands-on and find images in magazines, fabric swatches, and other things you can glue to a poster board so you can see and touch your mood board?
Free Canva Moodboard Templates For Coaches!
Fill out this form to access our free Canva mood board templates that you can use to create your own mood board for your coaching business.
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Or do you want to work digitally for convenience and/or just because you like your computer? Either way is great.
You just have to decide which one will inspire you more. If you decide to go digital, we have some mood board templates on Canva that you can use for free. You just have to sign up to get access to our free business resource library.
If you decide to work physically, you’re on your own. Go hit up the craft store, my friend.
Step 2: Choose The Purpose of Your Moodboard
Next up, you need to identify the purpose of your mood board. You might be thinking, “But Cass, you just said the mood board was to represent my brand and give me something to refer to…that’s the purpose.”
Yes, but no. What I mean by identifying the purpose of your mood board is… you have to choose the feeling you want your mood board, and therefore your brand, to evoke in other people.
That means you have to choose 2–3 emotions you want people to feel when they come in contact with your brand.
Do you want your brand to be evocative, bold, and sexy?
Maybe it’s cheerful, fun, and flirty?
Or calming, professional, and steady?
Think about what you do in your coaching business, and what you want to help your clients achieve. What do they need to feel about your brand in order to trust you to get them those results?
Step 3: Source Inspiration Images
Now that you know the feeling you’re trying to create with your brand, it’s time to start sourcing inspiration images and content to put on your mood board.
Pro Tip: Use Stock Photos!
If you plan on using the images in your Moodboard on your website and social media, then you’ll want to use stock photos NOT Pinterest.
Legally, you’ll be safe and you’ll have a library ready when creating your coaching website or social media graphics.
Here are a few of our favorite stock photos for coaches:
- Haute Stock: This is the one we use on our website and inside most of our templates. It’s our top choice! We love the diversity of the collections and the beauty.
- Styled Stock House: These stock photos are beautifully styled and perfect for a variety of niches.
- Inspired Stock: Spiritual Coaches – this one is for you! Created just for the spirituality niche.
- Tide and Tree Stock: Relaxing, natural, and soothing stock photos. Great for mindset coaches and life coaches.
- She Bold Stock: Love color? You’ll want to try this one. For the bold coaches who are not afraid to stand out.
A great place to start is Pinterest, whether you’re working digitally or physically (remember — you can always print pictures out from the internet and glue them to your board if you want — it’s your board…work how you want!).
Start typing search terms into the Pinterest search bar and see what comes up. Do the images inspire you? If they do, save some of them to a secret board and keep going.
You’re always better off saving a bunch of images and narrowing it down later, rather than only having a few to work with and feeling stuck or dissatisfied with the final result.
Hint: if you’re having trouble finding images that you like, try adding the word ‘aesthetic’ to the end of the emotions you chose for your board. Like ‘cheerful aesthetic’ or ‘bold aesthetic.’ It’s a secret designer trick that somehow seems to make Pinterest work harder for ya…sometimes.
Step 4: Make Your Coaching Moodboard Pretty
Once you have at least 20 images to start working with, you can start to play around with your mood board design.
Your goal is to test the images and inspiration you’ve gathered by putting them together in different arrangements until you can feel the emotions you’re trying to create.
There should be a moment where you look at the collage you’ve created and it just seems right.
It feels beautiful and inspiring to you, evokes the emotion you want your brand to exude, and makes you want to share your brand to the entire world.
Pro Tip: Sign up for Canva Pro!
With Canva Pro, you’ll get access to all their stock images, premium fonts, illustrations, and more. Perfect for creating a moodboard for your coaching business. Plus, you can try it free for 30 days!
Don’t be afraid to switch out images you love if something feels off. Sometimes, it’s one image that’s making a mood board not come together, and oftentimes it’s the image you were trying to force in from the beginning because you fell in love with it.
If the mood board won’t come together, start over using a different first image.
Final Thoughts
Now you know the basic steps on how to create a mood board, so it’s time to get started.
A mood board will help you maintain the correct vision and vibe for your brand while you create all sorts of different marketing pieces to grow it: from social media graphics to your website, and everything in between, whether it’s online or in print.
Always make sure to keep your board handy whenever you’re working on your business, so you can constantly remind yourself of what you’re trying to say with your brand in both text and design.
Download Our Free Canva Mood Board Templates
In our free resource library for coaches, we’ve included Canva mood board templates that you can use to get started in creating your own brand mood board.
The templates include 4 different layouts that you can play with, adding your own preferred images and choosing your own colors, until you land on the perfect vibe for your business.
Get instant access to the mood board templates by signing up here.
About The Author
Hey! I’m Cass, a Certified Brand Coach and a Co-Founder at Lovely Impact. I help coaches elevate their businesses with beautiful branding and websites. Here on our blog, my content focuses on branding, web design, and storytelling.