Quickly Create a Minimalist Mood Board for Urgent Banners

NetEase UEDC defines a mood board as the collection of colors, images, videos, or other materials related to a product and its thematic direction, intended to evoke specific emotional responses that guide visual design decisions and inspire designers.

The mood board is indispensable in our workflow, especially for banner and activity‑page designs under tight deadlines; a ten‑minute mood board can help determine color schemes, composition, imagery, and typography.

Below is a streamlined workflow for creating a minimalist mood board, suitable for posters, banners, or pop‑up screens (example: a promotional pop‑up for a membership‑card‑for‑phone‑credit campaign):

1. Extract primary keywords

2. Generate divergent keywords

3. Search for visual assets using the keywords

Typical sources include Huaban, Behance, Dribbble, Pinterest, Pexels, 500px, Pixabay, etc.

Note: For this activity, the color palette should convey the event’s atmosphere while aligning with the brand colors, so orange‑yellow and red were chosen as the theme colors.

4. Assemble the mood board and finalize the visual direction

At the end of the article, a free color‑palette tool called "colorcube" is offered; it allows users to upload an image and directly export a Photoshop swatch, providing on‑the‑fly screen color picking.