A mood board is a collection of images inspired by a certain theme, topic, idea, or story. The combination of curated images, words, patterns, textures, and their composition within the collage convey the creator’s feelings or inspirations about the topic.

A costume designer collects research images to start to imagine what their designs might look like — including colors, shapes, textures, and words that are important to the characters or the story, images from/of a certain time period, and more. Some designers make mood boards that they continually refer to throughout the design process.

Decide on a story, concept, or topic for your mood board. Students can all use the same story, choose from a small selection of stories, or each student can choose their own. Of course, we recommend using Make Way For Ducklings! You can also use a concept such as ‘wonder’ or ‘progress,’ or a topic such as ‘my future’ or ‘our classroom.’

Students collect their set of images that represent the topic, their feelings about the topic, and their ideas for conveying the topic to an audience. Students curate their images in a meaningful arrangement.

Mood boards can be tangible or digital. For tangible mood boards, students will need construction paper, scissors, tape or glue, and sources for images such as magazines, old books, or images they can print out. Fabric and paint swatches also work well! You might also want to provide markers and other design materials such as colorful tapes or stickers. Digital mood boards can be created as a slide show or using a platform such as Google Slides, Padlet, or Jamboard.

After students create their mood boards, ask each student to describe the ideas in their mood board and the reasoning behind the images they selected. Students could also write ‘designer’s statements’ describing the motivations for their choices and how their choices represent the topic of their mood board.

The below costume design challenges offer different ways to bring students into a costume designer’s thought process. Use one, two, or all three as you see fit!

1. Make Way For More Animals: To begin this challenge, you might want to watch or look at images from the workshop production of Make Way For Ducklings and listen closely to the way Kevin Hutchins describes combining inspiration from the book with modern fashion in his interview. Put yourself in Kevin’s shoes. If you were using Kevin’s style of design to add more animal characters into the world of Make Way For Ducklings, how would you costume those animals? Represent your ideas in sketches, research images, or full designs. For example, what would a rabbit character look like in the world of WFT’s play? Or a squirrel? There is one dog in the play — what about another type of dog? What other animals might you choose to add — fish, turtles, swans, geese? Let your imagination run wild as you add these new animals into the world of our workshop production! Perhaps later you’ll write a scene of these new animals interacting with the Mallards.
2.  Time Travelers: Select a story that takes place in a certain time period. Imagine that same story happening in an entirely different time period. How would you costume the same characters if they existed in a time with different fashions, styles, and forms of dress? Sketch, or use writing to describe, costumes for characters from the original story in a new time period, being sure to capture each character’s personality in the newer or older clothes you choose.
3. Capturing A Character: According to costume designer Kevin Hutchins, a costume gives the audience information about the character before that character opens their mouth to speak. It is as if the costumes themselves have lines that communicate to the audience about that character. Select a character from a story that your class is reading or studying. Write a list of key scenes or moments for that character that capture the character’s arc, or the way in which that character grows and changes over the story; pick 3-5 moments total, making sure that the beginning, middle, and end of the story are all represented. Sketch, or use writing to describe, how you would choose to costume the same character in these different moments. How might the character’s clothing reflect their journey through the story? What can their clothes tell the audience? Use evidence from the book or story to justify your choices.