So, you’ve decided to embark on the exciting journey of creating a brand moodboard. Buckle up and get ready to dive into a world of visual inspiration, colors, typography, and textures! In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the process of crafting a brand moodboard that captures the essence of your business and resonates with your target audience. But first, let’s talk about what exactly a moodboard is.
What is a moodboard?
A moodboard is a visual collage or composition that brings together various images, colors, textures, typography, and other design elements to capture and convey the overall mood, style, and aesthetic of a brand. It serves as a visual representation of the desired look and feel, helping to establish a cohesive visual direction.
Imagine a big corkboard or a digital canvas where you pin or paste images, colors, textures, patterns, and even words that speak to you. It’s like a collage of visual goodness that captures the mood, style, and vibe you want to convey.
Creating a brand moodboard is a transformative process that allows you to visually communicate your business’s identity, values, and desired aesthetic. A brand moodboard serves as a guiding reference for your logo, marketing materials, website design, social media presence, and overall brand image. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the steps to create a compelling brand moodboard that captures the essence of your business and resonates with your target audience.
1. Define Your Brand Identity
Start by defining your brand identity. Before you do anything else, you need to understand your mission, values, target audience, and unique selling points. Consider how you want your business to be perceived and the emotions you want to evoke in your customers. This clarity will guide the creation of your brand moodboard.
2. Gather Visual Inspiration
Immerse yourself in visual inspiration to gather ideas for your brand moodboard. Explore various sources such as industry-related magazines, competitor branding, websites, social media platforms, and even unrelated creative fields. Look for colors, typography, imagery, textures, and patterns that align with your brand’s personality and resonate with your target audience.We suggest creating a Pinterest board and pinning anything and everything that reminds you of what your business is or what you want it to be. You can save as many images as you want, you can go through them later and narrow it down.
3. Determine Key Visual Elements
Identify the key visual elements that will represent your brand. This may include colors, typography, imagery styles, logo variations, and graphic elements. Consider how these elements will convey your brand’s values, tone, and overall aesthetic. Choose visuals that have a cohesive and harmonious feel when combined. These don’t need to be the exact fonts and colors you will be using for your branding, but should convey the same feeling. For example, choose if you want to go with a serif or a sans-serif font. Are you going with a muted, natural color theme, or something more vibrant?
4. Curate and Arrange Visuals
Select the most eye-catching visuals from your collection and bring them together. Whether you’re using digital tools or going old-school with a physical board, arrange your visuals in a way that makes you go, “Yes, that’s it!” Experiment with different layouts until you find the one that clicks. If starting from scratch is a little too much, just go to Canva and search “moodboards” for a gazillion different templates and you can just upload your chosen images from Pinterest and plug them into the already organized template. You can still move stuff around until everything feels just right.
Choosing Brand Colors
Choose one or two core colors that represent your brand’s personality and align with your target audience. Consider how these colors will work across different platforms and materials, including digital and print. Once you have your core colors, explore complementary colors that can be used to create a harmonious and visually appealing palette. Coming up with a cohesive color palette can be tricky even for experienced designers, but don’t worry, there are many easy to use tools that can help. Coolors.co is a color palette generator that’s completely free to use. You can also use something like Canva’s color palette generator that will extract colors from a photo to create a color palette for you. Pretty neat!
Choosing Fonts
Explore typography options that convey your brand’s tone and style. Choose font families, weights, and sizes that align with your brand identity. Include a mix of headline fonts and body fonts, ensuring legibility and consistency across different platforms. We have a more in depth guide on how to choose and pair fonts here.
When selecting fonts, be mindful of the licensing terms. Ensure that the fonts you choose are properly licensed for your specific usage, whether it’s for personal or commercial purposes. There are many free fonts available, as well as paid options that offer more extensive font families and support.
Choosing Images
Select imagery that represents your brand’s values and resonates with your target audience. This could include photographs, illustrations, or graphic elements. Aim for visuals that evoke the desired emotions and align with your brand’s personality. Go through all the images you saved to your Pinterest board and save the ones that align with your brand the most.
Choosing Texture and Patterns
Incorporate textures and patterns that add depth and visual interest to your brand moodboard. Consider how these elements can enhance your brand’s identity and create a unique visual experience. Experiment with textures that align with your brand’s industry or evoke specific emotions. For example, a brand that has sustainability as one of their core values could add earthy, natural textures like wood or stone to their mood board to convey that message.
5. Seek Feedback
Once your brand moodboard is complete, you can share it with trusted colleagues or mentors and gather their feedback. Listen to their insights and suggestions to refine and improve your moodboard. Consider whether the moodboard effectively captures your brand’s identity and resonates with your target audience. Make sure to take everyone’s feedback with a grain of salt as they might not be your target audience and your choices might not resonate with them. For example, if your customers are single women in their 20s, your 60 year old dad might not love it. Just remember you’re not trying to appeal to everyone.
Our Facebook group is also made for this, share your moodboard with us and let us know a little bit about your brand and our community will be happy to give you some feedback!
6. Apply Your Brand Moodboard
Utilize your brand moodboard as a reference when developing marketing materials, designing your website, creating social media content, or crafting any visual representation of your brand. Ensure consistency in colors, typography, imagery, and overall style to create a cohesive brand identity.
Creating a brand moodboard is an exciting journey that allows you to visually express your business’s identity and connect with your target audience. By defining your brand identity, gathering visual inspiration, curating and arranging visuals, incorporating colors, typography, imagery, and textures, you can create a powerful brand moodboard that serves as a foundation for your business’s visual identity.