{"id":2822,"date":"2021-04-03T17:43:06","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T17:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bemoreyouonline.com\/?p=2822"},"modified":"2023-12-05T15:52:58","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T15:52:58","slug":"brand-mood-board-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bemoreyouonline.com\/brand-mood-board-what-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand Mood Board: The key to creating a consistent & beautiful brand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A brand mood board is a design tool that tells a visual story about your brand. <\/strong>It will help you create and maintain a consistent, beautiful look for your brand. Mood boards are key to designing the visual aesthetic of your brand’s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They include everything from type inspiration to colour palette, texture and patterns – all things that contribute to the overall vibe of your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating a mood board for your brand is an essential part of your brand design; it forms the foundation of your visual brand identity, simplifies your design decisions, and leads you towards that cohesive, consistent brand identity you’re craving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What is a mood board?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A mood board is the design inspiration for your brand, a collection of imagery that expresses how you want your brand to look and feel; it includes colours, fonts, textures and even words associated with the company’s personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mood boards have been used by creatives and designers to guide their creative process they were developed for communicating emotional qualities between designers and clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been found that looking at images can simultaneously produce a sense of both detachment and engagement (Grimshaw and Ravetz, 2005<\/a>, Taussig, 1993<\/a>) and combine rationality with emotionality (Belova, 2006<\/a>), fostering a cognitive as well as emotional engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, mood boards bridge the gap between logical business aims and emotional and intangible design psychology. They give us a holistic, big-picture view of what we’re trying to achieve through the design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Calm<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mood board vs brand board<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A brand mood board is different from a traditional style guide or brand board because it’s not meant as a strict guideline for designing your brand but rather an inspirational jumping-off point for creativity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your mood board is the starting point in designing your brand identity. A brand board is the finished article that contains your brand logos, sub-marks and icons, final brand colour palette, brand patterns and illustrations, brand typography or fonts and images for visual direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See this example of the mood board I created for Forest tails<\/a>. As you can see the Brand style guide includes elements of the mood board but includes the logo suite, sub mark and icons, the full colour palette and typography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"mood
Example of a Brand Mood board <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Brand
Example of a Brand Style board <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

When should I build a mood board?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although most people make the mistake of starting their brand exploration with a mood board, it’s not the first step in your branding journey. Before you start to gather inspiration and create your mood board you need to sit down and do the brand strategy<\/a> work that underpins ‘why’ your brand should and feel a certain way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you’ve created your brand strategy<\/a> you can expand on your brand essence and start to pull together visual inspiration that fits with how you want your brand to look and feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you have created your brand you can use mood boards to inspire and guide different creative projects in your business including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n