What Is a Career & Vision Mood Board and career planning (2024)

Last Updated on July 17, 2023

Acareer mood boardis a great way to get clarity on your career goals and what you need to do to achieve them. It can help you decide if the position or industry you are considering is a good fit for you, and give you ideas on how to improve your current career situation.

bout how to design a career mood board below!

What Is a Career Mood Board?

A career mood board is a board that you use to collate your job and career ideas and goals so that you can use what’s on the board to shape how you go about planning your future career development plan.

A mood board can include whatever you want it to but typically you would include things such as:

• Images and photos of jobs you are aiming toward (see how to get free stock photos to use)
• Words or quotes that inspire you
• Pictures of anything that inspires you and will help you be positive each day
• You can include graphics also of what you’d do with your time or money if these are part of your overall career/work-life balance. You might want to become a digital nomad, for example, so a picture of working on your laptop by the beach could be included.
• Think also about your work-to-life balance. For example, are you working towards a career that frees up more spare time to dance? Include a picture of you dancing!
• Have the goal to work three months a year from Spain? Include a photo or image of Spain!

Your mood board in essence can be whatever you want it to be as it is YOUR inspirational board and space.

By the way, the term ‘Mood board’ is also sometimes written as one word, i.e. ‘Moodboard’, particularly when the term is used for digital boards.

You might also hear the term ‘vision board’ used.

Mood Board Examples

You could choose to have a career vision board that is just a bunch of handwritten notes if you wish because it is really whatever works best for you.

You design your board in whatever way will help you best.

You might, like many people, prefer a mix of images, text, drawings, and anything that helps you have a clear vision and helps to inspire you.

Likewise, your career board might be images you decide to draw if you are a creative person such as if you are an artistic soul looking for a career change in the arts sector.

There is really no limit to the style and types of design that a mood board can have.

The key is that your career mood board helps to give you clarity and helps to inspire you.

How to Create a Career Mood Board

You really have two main choices when creating your own mood board.

The first option is to create one yourself physically, i.e. to create one that you have in your office.

The second option is to create a digital one. So let’s look at these two options further.

a) Create a Board Manually – Get the Scissors Out!

If you want to create a mood board non-digitally (i.e. so that you can hang it up in your office) you can either create it on Canva as mentioned below and then print it, or simply buy a cork board and start adding things.

So, all you need to do is grab a pair of scissors and cut out anything you want to tape onto your board.

You might, for example:

• cut out some images that you like and that inspire you
• cut some sample pieces of materials and pin them to the board
• add some small drawings of other ideas

b) Digital Mood Board Using Canva

One of the easiest and most effective ways to create a moodboard is using Canva.

You can use the free version of Canva and this is totally sufficient (although I use the paid version these days just because I like the extra features).

Digital moodboards are especially useful:

If using a digital board, then you can also include sound or video too!

If you prefer, you can also create digital mood boards with other commonly used software programs, such as MS Word or PowerPoint, or with Google Slides.

C) Using Pinterest to Build Your Career Mood Board?

As you will appreciate, a mood board is really a visual representation of ideas and items that inspire you and that you like and might want to re-use.

Given that these boards are visual, they are perfect for also doing on a site such as Pinterest because Pinterest is primarily a visual search engine (see us on Pinterest here for an example).

The mood board can also exist as a virtual space, such as if you choose to use Pinterest and then make a board and collect Pinterest pins that motivate and excite you, into your board.

See an example here of what I mean regards amood board on Pinterest.

Best Moodboard Apps

There are a number of mood board-related apps that you can also use on your smartphone and other devices. Here are some of my favorites:

GoMoodBoard – is one of the most popular board apps. You don’t need an account to access it and it is fairly easy to use. I have used it in the past. However, because I use Canva now, I don’t need the app anymore but it is decent to use.

Pinterest – as discussed earlier (and although not an app per se) you can create mood boards on your iPad, smartphone, or any other device, using a Pinterest account (and that is free to set up by the way). Pinterest is fantastic for graphics and design ideas.

Mural – is especially good if you are interested in group collaborations and creating a team mood board. Using Mural, numerous people can contribute to the board design.

No matter what your job or what you are studying though, if you want to use a mood board it can be incredibly helpful.

FAQs

What is the best layout for a moodboard?

You can design your mood board any way you want to as there really are no rules.

The board is for you, to inspire yourself and to give you ideas, and only you know the best way to do this. So, whatever helps you to organize your own ideas and helps you is good.

What should a mood board look like?

Similar to the layout, the look and feel of your board should be whatever you want it to be. It is ultimately for you to use so add things to the board that can help you in your work or studies.