Mood Boards and the Art of Visualization with draw.io

The day-to-day landscape of doing business can change drastically with the slightest shift of the corporate winds. One executive on the other side of the world can twitch a proverbial butterfly wing, and before you know it you’re navigating the hurricane of a task like none you’ve ever faced before.

Let’s say you’re a project manager. You spend your days doing what project managers do. Due, in part, to your skill and hard work, the company has outgrown its current headquarters. A new home must be found, designed, and prepared for a rapidly growing workforce. Soon. And someone has decided you’re perfect for the job.

What?

Draw.io and Confluence to the rescue

So, there’s a lot that needs to get done in this situation. Not the least of these things is to collect ideas from a variety of teams and execs and to settle on a design for this new office. You’ll hire a designer, of course. But you want to have some inkling of what you want or need before you start paying their hourly fees.

But how can you curate and present these ideas in a way that everyone can understand? How can you keep everyone on the same page and allow them to make an informed decision?

Your marketing and design friends have a tried and true tool for just this sort of situation. They’ve been using it for years. And with draw.io for Confluence and no specialized technical or design knowledge on your part you can use it too. Not just for design, but for collaborating and sharing ideas with diverse teams and stakeholders so that everyone can be happy with the final result.

And the video below will show you exactly how easy draw.io makes it to visualize, share all of your best ideas, and add a moodboard to your Confluence page in 60 seconds.

The mood board

A mood board is a collage of ideas. That’s basically what we’re talking about. The concept originated as cut-and-pasted poster board creations. And while this analog format may be perfectly suitable for a small group of designers working in the same room, for the kind of project we’re talking about, the mood board has evolved. Like the rest of our world, it’s become digital.

Yes, mood boards are most commonly used in fields like fashion, interior design, and graphic design. They also can be (and increasingly are) used for everything from multi-team projects to building the foundations of a company. The fact is, using mood boards as part of your initial brainstorming process is a powerful way to mature an idea while also saving time and energy.

Many professionals in many different arenas are now turning to mood boards as an important first tool for any big project. They’re not just a simple collection of engaging pictures, but a powerful form of visual organizing. They can be a fundamental transition between an initial thought and a first draft.

A study by the Journal of Business Research put it best: Mood boards are effective tools for establishing a point of reference in order to set the scene, direct activities, and align sub-products.

Sure, you can use a thousand words to describe the essence of your vision for that new corporate headquarters, but a visual collage of images, shapes, and quotes can convey the same message more effectively and in a fraction of the time.

Why draw.io?

”Within your visual communication there will inevitably be some information or meaning beyond the image itself for the person seeing to find. This makes visual communication a very powerful tool, by influencing what people see, you influence what they know, and by influencing what they know you further influence what they see.”

This is how Aldous Huxley spoke of the power of visual communication. It’s this intrinsic power of visualization that drives draw.io and makes it the perfect tool for all forms of visual communication, including mood boards.

draw.io for Confluence helps you intuitively translate your vision into one or several mood boards, and it’s easy to share them with your entire team. There’s no special technical knowledge required to start. Just search for the right images online or create your own and insert them directly into the draw.io canvas. draw.io is 100% integrated into Confluence, so you and your entire team can collaborate and share diagrams in real-time or asynchronously.

And here’s that video I promised to prove just how easy it is to trap and display that perfect image in your mind.

See for yourself

Visit our YouTube Channel, or book a free demo to learn more about the limitless ways in which draw.io can make your diagramming life easier!