One of the toughest first steps to take as a professional in the fashion industry is taking your ideas and putting them into tangible form. However, it is one of, if not the most important steps, because:
✓ It helps solidify your ideas
✓ It makes the idea visually communicable to other industry professionals
✓ It helps ensure everyone working on the line is on the same page
It is crucial to the success of your fashion venture to establish goals and have a firm sense of the direction you want to take. Fashion designers are visual people and the best way to illustrate what you want to achieve with both your apparel designs and business is through vision and mood boarding.
But what is a vision board and a mood board…what’s the difference? And the question we know you’re dying to ask… how will they help me get ahead in the fashion biz and help me make my dream a reality? Well, let’s delve in and see what they really are, and what they can do for you!
Mood Board
Welcome to the mood board, the overall snapshot of the creative vision of your products. This board is the guiding light to the feeling and aesthetic your product will embody, and the atmosphere and value it will create for your target market. The mood board will help you, as a fashion designer or other creative professional, to make your artistic direction clear to yourself and any other person you may need to communicate it with. Using images, sketches, fabric swatches, and design elements such as trims, pom poms, or buttons, you bring the image in your mind to life in a tangible, comprehensive, and useful way. To learn more about how to build the perfect mood board to help you guide your design and production, click here to check out our awesome blog post devoted to mood board ideation and creation!
Vision Board
The vision board is another unique and useful tool used by fashion designers, creatives, and even by everyday people who want to motivate themselves to achieve their aspirations! Think of the vision board as the visual representation of your fashion business plan: it should help you answer the 5 W’s and 1 H:
Who are your creations for? Who is your target market?
What is your vision? What design elements and ambitions are you working towards?
Where do you see yourself in relation to this vision? Next year? 5 years from now?
When are you aiming to achieve this by? When are the milestones set to be reached?
Why are you focusing on achieving this vision? Why is it important to you? Your target market? The world?
How are you going to achieve your goals?
Your vision board is not only to help motivate yourself and keep you on track to achieving your goals – you can use it as a business plan to help communicate your motivations, company goals, mission statement, target market, corporate culture and your plans for the future of your venture. Basically, anything to may need to communicate with a potential investor or employee in your team can be visually represented by your vision board. Using images, quotes, words, and other useful elements, you can successfully use the Law of Attraction to not only showcase your upcoming journey, but to inspire yourself and your team to strategically focus their efforts of making this vision come to life (for a broad overview of the vision board and how it relates to the Law of Attraction, check out this awesome video!).
And now, for a quick recap:
Mood Board vs Vision Board
| Communicates the look and feel of an idea for a product or fashion line | Communicates the entrepreneur’s vision of the company |
| Projects the target demographic and who the clothes are designed for | Projects the company’s future path and how to achieve ideal projection |
| Created to visually represent tone, style, and feeling of the ideal garment | Created to inspire focus and motivate goal-oriented steps towards success |
| Used to communicate the aesthetic vision and design | Used to communicate the reasoning behind its importance and the desired action/outcome |
Create a mood board using Canva!! Check out the link here!
When have you used a vision or mood board to help visualize your ideas and goals? How did it help you achieve success in the fashion biz?
P.S. Like what you see here? There’s more of this juicy information in the Source My Garment book- An insiders guide to responsibly manufacturing offshore. Pre-order your copy here.