Creating a mood board and organize your creative ideas are essential steps in any design process. It helps you gather inspiration and ideas, establish a visual direction, and ensure that everyone on the team is on the same path. With that in mind, here are some of the best tools for creatives, platforms you can use to create organized, visually stimulating mood boards that help you to visualize your ideas and share them with your team. We have tried to provide as much factual information as possible about the assessment of these websites to help you make informed decisions when using them for your creative process.
Niice
A collaborative design platform
Niice allows users to gather visual inspiration, create mood boards, and share creative ideas.
It provides a space creatives to collect and organize visual references such as images, websites, and design projects from various sources, including popular design websites and stock photo libraries such as Behance, Dribble… Niice offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of curating and presenting visual inspiration and enables individuals or teams to collaborate in real-time.
Niice is more focused on marketing and products that can be useful for the marketing agencies or design concept companies.
Pros
- Collaborative features
- Ability to add GIF, MP4 to your mood boards
- Browser extension to grab images from around the web
Cons
- Expensive for some users and even companies
- No option to export mood boards in the free version
- Keyword-based search functionality can lead to limited or inaccurate results
Limited Free option / 99$ per month / 499$ yearly
Flim.ai
When AI meets Creativity & Inspiration
Flim.ai is a video and stills database that serves as a comprehensive resource for creative individuals seeking inspiration for their projects. It encompasses a wide range of content, including movies, TV series, ads, and music videos. Flim’s got over 1 000 000 images !
One of the standout features of Flim.ai is its powerful AI-powered search engine, which is perfectly adapted to mood / atmosphere / concept searches. This innovative search engine enables users to effortlessly explore the vast collection of videos and stills.
While Flim.ai is not primarily a mood board platform, you can seamlessly transform its collection system into a mood board with a single click. Users can create their own collections and instantly view and share a comprehensive overview of their mood boards.
Definitely our n°1 best tools for creatives !
Pros
- AI-powered search engine
- Videos available in MP4 or GIF
- Curated and quality content
Cons
- More an image search engine than a mood board tool itself
- Daily limited use without subscription
Free browsing and searching, but only 3 downloads per day / Basic plan: 14.90€ monthly / Pro plan (with Video Cuts): 34.90€ monthly / Company team subscriptions: contact Flim.ai for more information
Milanote
An easy-to-use tool
Milanote lets you organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, where you can save text, images, and links from the web using its Web Clipper. Milanote also integrates image databases offering a vast library of free professional photos that you can easily drag and drop into your boards. Milanote supports all common file types, including JPG, PDF, Word, Excel, and more. One of the best tools for creatives.
Here is what we found as pros for your mood boards or cons of this tool :
Pros
- Video files such as MP4 or GIF supported
- Collaborative features
- Web Clipper
Cons
- Limited features in the free version
- Customization options are not as extensive compared to dedicated moodboard tools
Free option that fulfills the basic need of a mood board / Premium solo: 12,99$ monthly / Premium team: 49,99$ monthly
Ledavio Design
Inspiring visuals in one place
Ledavio Design is an online mood board platform which lets you develop and organize visual ideas alone or in a team. It offers a diverse range of content, including photography, typography, and designs from various creative fields. By integrating with popular image databases such as Unsplash and Shutterstock, Ledavio offers users access to a wide variety of inspiring visuals in one convenient place. Ledavio is still in alpha version but here are some pros and cons. What sets Ledavio apart is its use of AI technology, delivering accurate and relevant search results. Ledavio is still in alpha version but here are some pros and cons.
Pros
- User-friendly interface and tool, with intuitive navigation and many features to organize and customize your mood boards
- Intelligent Image Search from a variety of image databases connected to the platform such as Adobestock, Unsplash, Pixabay and more
Cons
- Inability to integrate videos
Free limited options / Premium: 4,99$ monthly
Kive
Centralized space to develop and organize visual ideas
Kive is an innovative online mood board platform that revolutionizes the way creatives work. Designed for graphic artists, designers, photographers, and more. Powered by AI tagging, Kive offers fast and accurate search capabilities, eliminating the need for manual sorting.
Pros
- Collaborative features with shared workspaces
- AI-powered
Cons
- Cluttered search engine due to user-submitted content, making it difficult to find high-quality images.
Freemium / Pro: 12$ per month / Business: 20$ per month
Designspiration
A visual bookmarking tool for creatives
Designspiration offers designers and creatives a valuable source of inspiration and serves as a visual bookmarking tool. Its collection encompasses a wide range of design projects, such as graphic design, typography, photography, and architecture. The platform boasts robust search features that facilitate exploration of specific design styles, themes, or concepts. With the “Collections” feature, users can save, organize, and curate their favorite designs into mood boards.
Pros
- Seamless navigation and browsing across categories and collections.
- Browser Extension feature allows users to easily save images from any website to their Collections, and beyond images to save links, notes, screenshots, etc.
Cons
- Lack of original or exclusive content compared to platforms that prioritize the creation and sharing of original designs.
Free / Pro: $5 monthly
PureRef
Keep tracking of your images
PureRef is not an online platform but a powerful program for Windows, Mac, and Linux that allows you to keep track of your images. It is more than just a tool, as it offers a wide range of features that can be used for gathering inspiration, making mood boards, or collecting reference images. You can drag and drop files from your computer or directly from web browsers, making it easy to import images from anywhere. Best thing about it, that it can be used for a wide range of purposes. It is perfect for artists, designers, photographers, and anyone else who needs to keep track of their images and create custom mood boards. A good idea for a tools for creatives.
Pros
- Easy import and management of visual references (images, screenshots, sketches) for convenient inspiration gathering and organization in moodboarding
- With PureRef, users can pin notes, annotations, and additional details directly onto their visual references, enabling them to capture ideas and design considerations alongside their moodboard visuals
Cons
- Lack of built-in collaboration features
- Video files are not allowed
Limited free trial for 5 days / $5 monthly
Visualist
User assistant for organizing visual inspiration
Visualist is a user-friendly platform designed to assist users in organizing visual inspiration, creating captivating moodboards, and mixing unique color palettes. Users can leverage AI-generated suggestions and recommendations to enhance their creative projects. The platform’s intuitive interface allows for seamless creation, sharing, and collaboration within a workspace tailored to boost productivity. Visualist empowers users to streamline their creative process, providing them with the freedom to focus on their artistic vision while benefiting from the intelligent assistance of AI technology.
Pros
- Easy to collect, organize multiple mood boards and share them
- Color detection system allows you to determine the dominant color of your mood board and generate tags
- Browser extension to collect pictures and drop them into visualist
Cons
- You can’t upload in GIF or MP4 formats
- You will not be able to export a mood board, you may only share it
Free with limited file storage / Hobby : $4 monthly / Pro : $30 monthly
Canva
A multifactorial design tool
The most used platform by all kinds of professionals and students, Canva has become an unavoidable tool for design and mood board creations. With its user-friendly mood board maker, Canva is a multifactorial design tool that provides a wide range of pre-made templates, graphics, and fonts to help you create your perfect mood board without design skills. In addition to this, Canva allows you to customize your mood board with various colors, backgrounds, and layouts. In a few words, Canva stands out as one of the best ideal tools due to its extensive features, user-friendly interface, and the fact that the free version offers a plethora of options, making it very accessible and easy to use even for beginners. Considered by a lot as one of the best tools for creatives
Pros
- Collaboration features
- Export options including PDF, PNG, MP4, and GIF in the free version
- A wide range of built-in images, illustrations, and graphics is available on the platform
Cons
- Limited selection and customization options for templates, graphics, and fonts
- Potential lack of originality due to widespread use and pre-made templates
- Performance issues including slow loading times and occasional glitches in the web application
Free for solo and team work / Premium solo use: 109,99€ yearly / Team premium: 240€ yearly
“Big Boss” for creatives
Pinterest is another great source of inspiration for any mood board for your design ideas. Although not specifically designed for moodboard creation, Pinterest is a widely-used platform for gathering and organizing visual inspiration. Pinterest offers a vast collection of images, designs, and ideas that you can easily save to your own “Pinboards”. You can also save images from the web, and arrange them in a visually appealing way. One of the most knowned tools for creatives.
Pros
- Video content available, but less qualitative
- The Pinboard system works pretty much as a mood board
- Easy to download images
Cons
- Difficulty in finding unique and niche content among the overwhelming amount of mainstream and repetitive images
- Difficult to differentiate between sponsored content and uploaded images.
Prices
It’s totally free
Moodzer
The collage maker tool for creatives
Moodzer has positioned itself as the ultimate collage maker, providing a seamless solution for organizing images into grids within seconds. While it may not serve as a source of inspiration or encourage creativity, Moodzer proves to be incredibly practical for those who already possess their desired images and seek quick and automatic grid organization. Moodzer’s basic interface facilitates ease of use, enabling users to swiftly generate a board with their selected images.
Pros
- Very easy interface to use and understand
- Beginner-friendly, you will only need to upload your sources
Cons:
- Limiting if you want to do more complex design of mood boards
- Inability to download videos directly from the platform
- No built-in image library or image sourcing capabilities
Free / Premium: 5$ monthly
Conclusion
Here are our best tools for creatives, some different platforms that could be helpful in any kind of mood board need, ranging from budget-friendly resources or platforms to the most professional and technical tools for creatives. This list is not exhaustive, and there are many other options available. Each tool comes with its own unique features and benefits, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your needs. We hope that our opinion is relevant to you and that you find it helpful for organizing and creating your projects. Regardless of which tool you select, the most important thing is to enjoy the creative process and let your ideas flow freely.
If you liked this article, we wrote other articles on same themes:
- Top 8 exceptional resources to find visual inspiration
- Top 10 Free Stock Videos Websites.
- Figma like websites for Moodboards
