Creating a Mood Board for Design Inspiration

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again: deciding what you want for your bespoke design can be a daunting challenge these days. The good news is, you have all the options in the world at your fingertips with endless inspiration streaming from Instagram, Pinterest, and Google every day. The bad news is, it can be very, very difficult to discern design you simply find beautiful from design you find beautiful for yourself.

When my clients apologize for being “all over the board” with their inspiration, I tell them it’s completely understandable to like many competing looks. Jewelry is designed to be beautiful, after all, and most people don’t have a solid understanding of what fine jewelry looks good on them because they don’t wear it every single day. Unlike with clothing which you (presumably wear every day and for which you might have a better sense for fit and proportion and comfort, when you’re creating an engagement ring, for example, this might be one of the very first real pieces of jewelry you have had made for yourself. How would you really know what you love on you, versus what you love for someone else?

I always encourage my clients to review this article from a while back where I walk them through different jewelry design terms and what they mean, but another useful exercise is to create a mood board of inspiration in advance of your custom appointment. Mood boards can really help you focus your aesthetic vision without committing to a single style. By including images outside the scope of jewelry, I as a designer can get a better sense for the feeling you want to convey with your custom piece and you can get a better grasp on the general impression your want your piece to leave to the outside world. For example, here are the mood boards that we used for our original Collection rings:

As you can see, each design has its own aesthetic that becomes more evident as you look at the inspiration for it. Mood boards can help you articulate what your mind’s eye wants, but what you may lack the vocabulary to express.

My job as a designer is to help you decide the best style for your lifestyle and design goals. By walking through how you would like to wear the piece and what aesthetic you want to convey, I can help you balance the competing interests with design solutions - or tell you where the aims are incompatible. This truly is the best part of my job: the creative element, when we design a piece that is truly unique, yet timeless and perfect for the client at hand.

If you’re considering a custom or bespoke piece but feel stuck in inspiration land, try assembling a mood board. I would love to see what you put together!