Mood boards: Scrambled temporality
Mood boards are very common in design practices but their potential as a research practice is often overlooked. This workshop reworks the use of mood boards as a collaborative research method.
A mood board scrambles temporality in the way it mobilises references from the past to imagine a forthcoming project. We will produce a series of both collective and individual mood boards to re-work references of the past, conventions of the present, and ways of orienting ourselves towards the future. We will explore the design of research methods to creatively engage with the collection, expand the mood boards formats, and investigate new ways of using references in design practice.
In contrast with speculative design, which focuses on future scenarios, we will look question the present. How can the mood board, as a research method, support designers to engage with successes and failures of the past when developing a project?
Informed by readings on temporality from affect, feminist, and queer theory, we will explore how our own experiences of the present shape the way we ask questions, situate our practice, and form design proposals.
Floriane Misslin (UK)
Floriane Misslin (they/them) is a researcher and design educator whose practice focuses on developing participatory and visual research methods. They are currently a lecturer at London College of Communication, a tutor at the MA Geo-Design Design Academy Eindhoven, and a PhD candidate in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths University of London (UK).
Misslin studied fashion design in Paris before developing a more critical approach to gender and visual culture at Design Academy Eindhoven. For their doctoral research, Misslin studies the production of fashion photography that challenges the distinction between womenswear and menswear, with a focus on the use of mood boards.
Misslin’s practice resides somewhere between sociology, visual and critical design, fashion, and gender studies. By questioning how research methods perform normative representations of social lives, Misslin explores the design of participatory and visual research methods attentive to complex and ambivalent social realities.
florianemisslin.com
