I used to think inspiration struck randomly.
You’d be working on something, hit a creative block, then frantically Google “good landing page examples” or “color palette inspiration” hoping something would spark an idea. This emergency inspiration hunting wasted hours and usually produced mediocre results.
Then I noticed something about the creators I admired. They never seemed to start from zero. Their work had a consistent aesthetic quality that suggested they weren’t improvising. They were drawing from something.
I asked a designer friend how she always nailed the visual direction so quickly. She pulled up what she called her “vibe files”—organized collections of websites, designs, and examples she’d been curating for months. When starting a project, she’d browse these collections for 10 minutes, let the aesthetic soak in, then design with clarity.
She wasn’t searching for inspiration in the moment. She’d been building her aesthetic intuition gradually by collecting and organizing examples of excellence.
That conversation changed everything. I started building what I now call “link moodboards”—visual collections of web inspiration organized by aesthetic, feeling, and purpose. Not just for active projects, but as ongoing cultivation of creative taste.
Six months later, my creative process was unrecognizable. I wasn’t staring at blank canvases anymore. I was synthesizing from abundant, organized inspiration. My work got better. The process got faster. And I actually enjoyed creating again instead of dreading the blank page.
This practice became so central to my work that when I built stashed.in, I designed it specifically to support link moodboarding. Pinterest-style visual boards, but for any web content. Because every creator deserves this advantage.
What a Link Moodboard Actually Is#
Let’s clarify terms, because “moodboard” means different things to different people.
Traditional Moodboards vs. Link Moodboards#
Traditional moodboards are image collages. Designers gather photos, textures, color swatches, and typography samples on physical or digital boards to establish visual direction for a project.
These work well for branding and visual design. But they have limitations:
Static and project-specific. You create a moodboard for one project, then start fresh for the next. Little continuity or accumulated wisdom.
Image-only. They’re great for visual inspiration but useless for articles, tools, code examples, or conceptual content.
Labor-intensive. Creating a good traditional moodboard takes hours of gathering, downloading, and arranging images.
Not reusable. That perfect example you used three months ago? You’d need to remember which project folder it lived in.
Link moodboards solve these problems. They’re living, evolving collections of web inspiration that grow with you over time.
The Three Types of Link Moodboards#
Through experimentation, I’ve found three distinct types that serve different creative needs:
Aesthetic Moodboards organize by visual style. “Minimalist Design,” “Bold Typography,” “Dark Mode Done Right.” These shape your visual intuition by immersing you in consistent aesthetics.
Conceptual Moodboards organize by ideas or approaches. “Great Onboarding Flows,” “Clever Pricing Pages,” “Compelling About Pages.” These show different solutions to similar creative problems.
Project Moodboards are temporary collections for active work. When designing a dashboard, you create a “Dashboard Redesign” moodboard with all relevant inspiration. It’s focused and time-bound, then becomes an archive after launch.
Most creators benefit from all three types. The aesthetic ones develop your taste long-term. Conceptual ones give you reference libraries. Project ones serve immediate needs.
Why Links Work Better Than Screenshots#
You might wonder: why not just screenshot things and save images like traditional moodboards?
Links preserve context. You can revisit the live site, see how interactions work, explore related pages. Screenshots are frozen moments with no depth.
Links stay updated. That website you loved? If they improve it, you benefit. Screenshots become outdated immediately.
Links include metadata. The URL, page title, and your saved notes provide context that screenshots lack. Six months later, you’ll know why you saved it.
Links are lightweight. Thousands of links take megabytes. Thousands of screenshots take gigabytes. Your moodboard stays fast and portable.
Links respect creators. When you reference someone’s work by linking, they get attribution and potential traffic. Screenshots are extractive.
The best of both worlds? Visual previews of links. You get the browsability of image boards with the functionality of actual links. This is exactly how stashed.in works.
How Link Moodboards Transform Your Creative Process#
Once you start maintaining link moodboards, several things shift in how you create.
You Stop Starting From Zero#
The blank page is terrifying because you’re trying to generate ideas from nothing. Your brain spins trying to imagine possibilities from pure abstraction.
Link moodboards give you concrete starting points. Open your “Landing Page Inspiration” moodboard before designing. Browse 15 examples. Notice patterns in what works. Let the good examples prime your thinking.
You’re not copying. You’re absorbing patterns, then synthesizing your own approach. This is how taste develops.
Research on creativity shows that innovation rarely comes from pure originality. It comes from novel combinations of existing ideas. Link moodboards give you rich material to combine in new ways.
Your Aesthetic Becomes Coherent#
When you randomly search for inspiration each time you create, your work lacks consistency. Every project feels different because you’re pulling from unrelated sources.
Link moodboards create aesthetic coherence. When you consistently browse and add to your “Clean & Minimal” collection, that aesthetic becomes internalized. Your work naturally develops a consistent visual language.
This isn’t limiting. You can maintain multiple moodboards for different styles. But within each aesthetic, your work becomes recognizably yours.
You Recognize Quality Faster#
Early in your creative journey, you can’t always articulate why something works or doesn’t. You just have vague feelings.
Curating link moodboards trains your eye. As you collect excellent examples and note what makes them work, you develop criteria. “Great landing pages have clear value props above the fold,” “Dark mode needs careful contrast management,” “Micro-interactions should feel inevitable, not flashy.”
These aren’t rules you memorized. They’re patterns you internalized by collecting and analyzing examples. Your taste becomes more refined and articulate.
You Create Faster#
This is the practical payoff. When you have abundant, organized inspiration readily available, creation accelerates.
No more “let me spend two hours searching for good examples.” You already have them. No more “I’ll browse Dribbble until something clicks.” Your moodboards are pre-curated.
I’ve timed this. Before link moodboards, I’d spend 30-40% of a design project searching for reference material. After? Maybe 5-10%, just browsing my existing collections.
That time savings compounds across every project.
You Build a Reputation for Taste#
When you share your link moodboards publicly, something interesting happens. People start recognizing your curatorial voice.
“Check out [your name]’s collection of [topic]—it’s the best curation I’ve seen” becomes a compliment you hear. Your ability to identify and organize excellence becomes its own form of creative value.
This matters for careers. Being known for great taste opens doors that pure execution skills don’t.
Building Your First Link Moodboards#
Ready to start? Here’s a practical framework for building link moodboards that actually serve your creative work.
Step 1: Identify Your Creative Domains#
Don’t try to moodboard everything. Start with 2-3 areas where you actively create.
For me, that’s:
- Web design and interfaces
- Writing and content structure
- Product strategy and positioning
For you, it might be:
- Photography and visual storytelling
- Video editing and pacing
- Social media content and hooks
- Branding and identity
- Code architecture and patterns
Pick the domains where you create most often or want to improve most urgently.
Step 2: Create Aesthetic Moodboards for Each Domain#
Within each domain, create 2-4 aesthetic moodboards reflecting styles you’re drawn to or want to master.
For web design, mine are:
- Brutalist & Bold (high contrast, experimental layouts)
- Warm Minimalism (clean but approachable)
- Dark Mode Excellence (sophisticated dark interfaces)
- Playful Interactions (delightful micro-animations)
These aren’t every possible aesthetic. They’re the ones I personally reference and want to develop skill in.
Your categories will differ based on your taste and creative direction. That’s perfect. These are personal moodboards, not universal taxonomies.
Step 3: Seed Each Moodboard With 10-15 Examples#
Don’t wait to start “until you find enough good examples.” Begin with what you already know.
Spend 30 minutes per moodboard finding 10-15 solid examples. These become your foundation. They don’t need to be perfect. You’ll refine as you go.
Where to find initial examples:
- Bookmark folders you already have
- Sites you’ve admired and can remember
- Curated galleries (Awwwards, Dribbble, SiteInspire for design)
- Articles in your field that showcased examples
- Recommendations from creators you follow
The key is getting started, not achieving completeness.
Step 4: Add Context Notes to Everything#
This separates useful moodboards from link graveyards. For every saved link, add a note about what specifically caught your attention:
- “Perfect balance of white space and content”
- “The color transition on scroll is subtle but effective”
- “Their value prop is the clearest I’ve seen for this space”
- “Animation timing makes interactions feel inevitable”
These notes capture your thinking in the moment. Six months later, they help you understand what past-you found valuable.
On stashed.in, I do this in the save flow: find example, click save, preview generates automatically, add one-sentence note, choose which stash, done. Takes under 15 seconds.
Step 5: Choose Visual Headers Thoughtfully#
If your moodboarding tool supports it (stashed.in does), give each collection a header image that captures its aesthetic.
My “Warm Minimalism” stash has a header with soft colors and lots of breathing room. Just seeing the header reminds me of the aesthetic I’m curating.
My “Brutalist & Bold” header is high-contrast with experimental typography. The header itself sets the tone.
This visual identity makes your moodboards feel like distinct spaces, not generic lists. You navigate by recognizing aesthetics, not just reading labels.
Step 6: Build the Daily Capture Habit#
Here’s where most people fail: they create moodboards, then forget to maintain them.
The secret is making capture part of your daily routine. When you encounter something excellent online, save it immediately. Don’t wait. Don’t plan to “process things later.”
My routine: Morning coffee while browsing. Whenever I find something worth remembering, I save it to the appropriate moodboard with a quick note. Takes 10 seconds per save, maybe 5 minutes total per morning.
This daily micro-habit compounds. In a month, you’ve added 60-100 examples. In a year, your moodboards are rich, diverse repositories of excellence.
Advanced Link Moodboarding Techniques#
Once your basic moodboards are established, these advanced techniques multiply their value:
Create Comparison Moodboards#
Sometimes the insight isn’t in individual examples but in comparing approaches.
I have a moodboard called “Pricing Pages: High to Low Touch.” It contains SaaS pricing pages arranged from self-serve (Stripe) to high-touch enterprise (Salesforce).
Browsing this collection shows patterns in how pricing complexity matches sales motion. This comparison creates understanding that individual examples don’t.
Other comparison moodboards:
- “Homepage Evolution” (same companies over years)
- “Before/After Redesigns” (transformation examples)
- “Mobile vs. Desktop” (responsive design approaches)
- “Onboarding: Simple to Complex” (different activation strategies)
Build Process Moodboards#
Most moodboards capture finished work. But process moodboards capture how creators work.
I collect:
- Articles explaining design processes
- Videos showing coding workflows
- Twitter threads about writing routines
- Case studies revealing decision-making
These aren’t inspiration for what to make. They’re inspiration for how to work. Just as valuable.
Maintain Anti-Moodboards#
Controversial idea: create moodboards of what NOT to do.
My “Dark Patterns to Avoid” collection contains examples of manipulative UX, aggressive upsells, and user-hostile design. Studying bad examples is educational.
My “Overdesigned & Unusable” moodboard shows beautiful sites that fail functionally. This reminds me that aesthetics serve purpose.
These anti-moodboards calibrate your taste by showing boundaries. They’re as instructive as positive examples.
Create Project Moodboards With Time Limits#
When starting a new project, create a dedicated moodboard just for that work. This focuses your inspiration gathering.
Important: Set a deadline for when you stop adding to it. Maybe two weeks. This prevents endless inspiration gathering that delays actual creation.
After the project ships, the moodboard becomes a historical record. “Here’s what influenced our design decisions” is valuable documentation.
Share Selectively for Feedback#
Make some moodboards public to get feedback on your taste and curation.
Share a moodboard with the note: “I’m trying to understand what makes great [X]. Here are my favorite examples. What am I missing?”
The responses often surface examples you’d never find alone. Your moodboard becomes collaborative.
Other moodboards stay private. Not everything needs an audience. Some moodboards are personal taste development, messy and exploratory. That’s fine.
How Stashed.in Supports Link Moodboarding#
When I built stashed.in, link moodboarding was the primary use case because it’s how I personally work.
Visual-First Organization#
Each stash has a header image that establishes its aesthetic. Saved links show as cards with visual previews. The entire experience is designed for browsing and recognizing, not just searching.
This matters because moodboards need to be pleasant to explore. If your inspiration library feels like a database, you won’t use it. If it feels like a gallery, you’ll browse regularly.
Flexible Privacy Controls#
Some of my stashes are private experiments. “Early Brand Ideas” contains half-formed concepts that aren’t ready for external feedback.
Some are public resources. “Best SaaS Landing Pages” is curated specifically to help other designers and I share it freely.
Some are password-protected. My team has access to “Competitor Analysis” and our shared project moodboards, but they’re not public.
This flexibility means I can organize naturally without worrying about everything being presentation-ready.
Collections, Not Hierarchies#
A single link can live in multiple stashes. That excellent product page might belong in “SaaS Design,” “Pricing Page Examples,” and “Conversion Optimization.”
In folder-based systems, this creates duplicates and confusion. In stashed.in’s collection model, it’s natural. The same link appears where relevant, giving you multiple paths to rediscover it.
Context Notes Built Into the Flow#
The save experience specifically prompts for context. You can’t just blindly save URLs. You’re encouraged to add at least one sentence about why it matters.
This small friction point (which takes 10 seconds) transforms raw links into useful moodboards. Future-you will thank past-you for those notes.
Common Link Moodboard Mistakes#
Having helped hundreds of creators build moodboards, here are the patterns that consistently cause problems:
Mistake 1: Creating Too Many Moodboards#
Twenty different aesthetic categories sounds comprehensive. In practice, it’s overwhelming. You’ll never remember which one to check.
Start with 3-5 moodboards. Let them grow and split naturally when they reach 50+ items and distinct subcategories emerge.
Mistake 2: Saving Without Context#
Bare links with no notes about what caught your attention. Six months later, you’ll have no idea what past-you was thinking.
Always add at least one sentence. What specifically is excellent here? That note is the difference between a useful moodboard and a mystery link graveyard.
Mistake 3: Never Browsing, Only Searching#
Moodboards only work if you regularly browse them. If you only search when desperate for inspiration, you’re missing the value.
Schedule weekly browsing time. Just 15 minutes wandering through your collections. This is when patterns emerge and aesthetic sense develops.
Mistake 4: Copying Instead of Synthesizing#
Moodboards exist to develop your taste, not to copy directly. If you’re just cloning what you see, you’re using them wrong.
Browse for patterns and principles, then create your own synthesis. “These five examples all use [technique], so I’ll try a variation that [twist].”
Mistake 5: Private by Default#
Many creators keep everything private out of self-consciousness. But sharing moodboards serves others and improves your own curation.
Start with just one public moodboard. Share it in relevant communities. The feedback loop improves your taste and helps others simultaneously.
Your Link Moodboarding Practice Starts Today#
Don’t wait for the perfect system or comprehensive collections. Start small and build from actual use:
Today (30 minutes):
- Choose your moodboarding tool (stashed.in or similar)
- Create 3 moodboards for aesthetics or approaches you want to develop
- Find and save 5 examples to each with context notes
This week:
- Add to your moodboards daily (5 minutes during morning coffee)
- Notice what patterns emerge in what you’re saving
- Browse one moodboard before starting any creative work
This month:
- Create a project moodboard for your current work
- Share one moodboard publicly and ask for feedback
- Notice how your creative process changes
This quarter:
- Let your moodboards naturally split or merge based on actual use
- Build advanced moodboards (comparisons, process, anti-examples)
- Document how your taste has developed by reviewing old saves
The goal isn’t building perfect archives. It’s cultivating aesthetic judgment through deliberate curation over time.
Start with one moodboard. Ten good examples. Context notes on each. That’s enough.
In six months, you’ll have rich inspiration libraries that make creation faster, easier, and better. Your work will reflect accumulated taste, not emergency inspiration hunting.
Every excellent creator has inspiration systems, whether they call them that or not. Now you can build yours deliberately.
Begin today. Save something beautiful. Note why it’s beautiful. Watch your creative instincts sharpen.
Your link moodboards are waiting.
