141. How do you create a mood board?
Wish you could capture your brand aesthetic? 🌅 This Brand Therapy episode will help! Hosts Phil and Lauren break down the art and science behind perfect mood boards. (Well, maybe not science, but there is a formula!) You'll learn how to define your brand's emotional message, select a leading color, and have everything you need to create an effective mood board all on your own. Enjoy!
Episode transcription
Phil
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build, and promote your brand. You know, last few episodes, we've given you some little mini episodes. We very intentionally tried to record a few episodes, at least try it, where we don't talk for 20/30 minutes we talked for less. And a few of you have said you actually liked it. It's a little mini episodes. So we're doing it again, today, we've got an episode that's less than 20 minutes long, and it's all about a topic that I think you're gonna find useful, useful, useful. Isn't it useful, Lauren? This is a huge part of our work and a huge part of the creative deliverable that we send, and you're revealing all the secrets to your kingdom of mood boards.
LaUren
I freaking love mood boards. If I could do only mood boards as my job for the rest of my life, I would be the happiest lady on the planet.
Phil
I actually remember the moment when I gave up this task and handed it over to you, and you were very excited about this. Back in the day, I used to do mood boards. I enjoy them, but it's not my very favorite thing to do. My very favorite thing to do is troubleshoot design, make a website. To take a flat concept and bring it to life on the internet brings me the equal amount of joy. Mood boards, it's a little conceptual for me. But you love this forward thinking, predicting the future thing, goal setting, you know, what is it called futurist is one of your top qualities.
Lauren
Yeah, first strengthsfinder. It's my number one strength. And I really feel like I'm operating in the zone, whenever I'm transporting myself 20 years into the future, imagining. And that's where mood boards are really great, because I can imagine the look and feel of clients that we work with and what I want that to be like, and then show that in a mood board. So my favorite,
Phil
Can I say one more thing before you get into the tangible, gritty how to do it tools, resources? In all of the many client projects we've had, a mood board that you've created has never been rejected. Ever, ever, never. Sometimes when we have two ideas, or multiple approaches and angles, you'll create two mood boards and let the client choose. But never still to this date, has a client ever rejected one of your mood boards, and that heavily inspires the design of the brand identity we create for that client?
Lauren
It's pretty cool. And, and I I don't necessarily think it's a matter of me being really good at mood boards or anything like that. I do have a system, which I'll be revealing on this call that I think helps make the mood board feel complete. So hopefully, I think that when clients see the mood board and can feel that every little part of the potential brand has been addressed visually, there isn't much room to contest anything. Because it feels like a complete little package. But anyway, before I get into some examples and tools and things like that, first maybe let's talk about how mood boards can inspire the branding process and why they're important. So Phil, since you actually were the one who started giving mood boards to clients, I want to know why did you start including mood boards on the brand audit recaps before I even worked with you.
Phil
Because you need a visual reference, even as a starting point to communicate to get on the same page creatively, artistically with a client, you need something tangible to reference what you might like. And this is why mood boards are so commonplace in anything creative, graphic design, brand identity development, etc. Because it's not about getting the design, right, it's about having a visual reference, where someone can identify instead of just discussing it abstract. It is almost like when you're reading a book, you're imagining the character in that book, when I go and read the same book and imagine the same character in my mind, what I'm imagining is completely different than what you're imagining. And that's fine for a book. But that doesn't work when we're trying to actually get on the same page. Right? It's like if a book becomes a movie, then we need to be on the same page visually. And that's why mood boards are like storyboards. Mood boards are used for costume design, set design, it gets everyone working on this on the same page visually. And mood boards are great because people can indicate what they like and also it's helpful to see what they don't like.
Lauren
I remember working for a corporation years ago, before I joined PPC, it's so interesting in organizations to see the different visual languages that everyone has. So for example, we had one boss who was obsessed with things being and I quote, cutting edge. Let's make this website really cutting edge. Let's make this poster really cutting edge. Well guess what cutting edge is not something that everyone pictures the exact same way. Cutting edge could mean 1000 different things. And the poor designer, I remember was almost hanging on the end of a dog's wagging tail just trying to figure out what cutting edge meant. And if a mood board had been created before all of these creative projects were taken on, I feel like things probably would have resolved themselves much faster, instead of just trying to guess what cutting edge meant.
Phil
Absolutely.
Lauren
Okay, so let's first just start talking about some examples of how mood boards can also help you with websites and brand development. I think in case we've got any developers listening to this episode, or if we've got someone who isn't gonna be hiring a designer, but instead of going straight to a developer for their website, it's really, really critical to have a mood board prepared, particularly for websites if you do not have a brand. And the reason for this is because websites are ideally kind of the amalgamation of every part of the brand coming together. And you're going to be just basically going back and forth trying to figure out what a page should look like if you don't have a general sense from a mood board. So I think that's an example in particular, where if you don't have a brand, at least have a mood board to help inspire everything else that you're creating.
Phil
Totally, that's good advice.
Lauren
Some tools, my very, very favorite tool for creating mood boards is Pinterest. I know that there are lots of sites out there that'll pull together mood boards for you, and you just have to click shuffle or pick a color and then you get a mood board back. That's fine. But I do think that there's something irreplaceable about the process of compiling your own mood board and putting the pieces together yourself. Instead of having a computer spit them out for you. Do you use any other sources for images fill with mood boards besides Pinterest,
Phil
Pinterest is a good starting point, you can use Google Images. Just be careful if you're publishing this mood board anywhere you don't have permission to use those images. If it's something you're doing internally, technically, you still don't have permission, but if what you're creating isn't going anywhere, then no one is going to see it for copyright infringement, you just have to be careful, but I grabbed things from Google Images if I know literally what I need to reference. Or if I want something more creative, I'll go to websites like behance where there's a lot of really good cutting edge graphic design.
Lauren
Another tool that I like to consider when doing mood boards for personal brands is related to color theory. There's this organization or methodology that was created in the 80s called ‘Color Me Beautiful’ and basically what it is, is it creates a color schemes that compliment your hair color, your skin tone and your eyes and recommend basically a palette of colors that you should use based on your own coloring. And the reason why I find this beneficial is because for a personal brand, you're gonna have photos of yourself so you want to have colors that are flattering to your natural coloring. As an example, I'm basically have soft colors in terms of having fair skin and also light hair. And if I have a really loud warm color like bright orange near me, I do not look good. I need a softer or peachy, cooler tone of orange I can't do bright, glaring orange because I'm just gonna look sick. And we all have those colors that just don't look good with our natural complexion. If you're creating a mood board for someone else, or for yourself, look at their photo and try to figure out using those color theories what color what season they would fall under and use that to inspire the colors that you select for your mood board. That's probably my greatest secret when I'm putting these mood boards together, I'd say.
Phil
I love that. What color am I not supposed to wear? I think gray, which is a color I'm wearing right now while we record this.
Lauren
Not necessarily gray because neutrals are okay with everyone. But for you, you're the opposite of my coloring. You have all over warm skin tone and then you have dark hair and dark eyes. So you're considered to be fall. You look basically great in all the colors. I look bad in and vice versa. So for you, you should be steering away from pastel colors, particularly cool pastel colors. You would look better and more of a warmer tone blue like a blue with some greens or even brownish colors to it instead of a powder blue, which looks best on me.
Phil
Got it? Got it. Okay, that makes sense.
Lauren
There's someone I'm obsessed with on Instagram, Wonder Wardrobe. And she's on YouTube, she's so she has 10s of 1000s of subscribers. She's great. But she does a really good job of breaking down color theory I highly recommend. She's my favorite.
So putting together the mood board. If you're putting together one personally, I definitely recommend the first image should be one of you. It doesn't have to be a good image, but again, we want to be sensing how you look, when wrapped around the other inspiration images that have been sourced.
The next thing that I think of is what is that main leading color going to be for the brand. And this is a bit kind of woowoo. But you sort of need to think about the essence of the brand and what emotional response you're hoping to get. Our client Ramon, for example, he's got this burst of energy. He's super lively and vibrant. He wants to inspire innovation and among CEOs and other corporations, so color like red really suits Ramon, because he's all about action. Our client, Kate Geagan, she's a dietitian who specializes in sustainability. And since what she does is so related to the earth, and our natural resources, it wouldn't make sense to choose red for her, she needs something that feels a bit more organic. So we chose a leading blue color that's very peaceful and kind of reminiscent of nature, and then accented it with green, which obviously has major tie ins to sustainability. I usually will go on Pinterest, and I will just look and scroll and scroll and scroll in my home feed and see what images come up that I like, if I really really respond well to an image, I'll use that as the launching point for everything else that I'm sourcing. But for the most part, I'll just kind of have a color and mind and then find an image that properly features that color.
Phil
Sometimes you tell the client what that color is. And sometimes you don't you let it be a surprise until we share it.
Lauren
That's true. I mean, we all have colors that we love. Oftentimes, if I can't quite figure a client out, I'll ask them to pull out their 10 favorite pieces of clothing in their closet, and then jumble them all up and put them on the floor and take a picture. And then you can be inspired by colors that way, because those are colors you naturally choose to put on yourself.
Phil
Yes, another great little secret tip. Oh, yeah, going.
Lauren
Okay, so then basically, the rest of it is like putting a puzzle together. So you don't want to have too many colors. That's the key here is we want to have one neutral, one leading color, and then one kind of accent poppy fun, unexpected color. But no more than that. As soon as I introduce more colors than that the mood board starts to feel very, very cluttered. And we want it to be focused.
And then what I do is I start kind of thinking about all the elements of a brand and sourcing an example for that. So I want to have two typography examples in action. One is print like a business card. One is digital, like a website, you can find all of them on Pinterest.
I want one kind of atmospheric or environmental shot, which captures maybe your favorite coffee shop or a landmark in the city they live in or just something that kind of speaks to who they are and what inspires them, then you want to make sure it works within that ecosystem of the mood board.
And then I always want to include an example of a logo mark to inspire the direction, because if you're going to be choosing a complex seal, or shield that's very different from a more minimalist, geometric logo. And usually I would recommend having about 10 images total. So you’ve got to edit and you’ve got to be selective. There are a lot of times where I'll put images in and then take them right out after I feel like they're the ones. So don't be scared to edit yourself as you go along the journey.
Phil
That's all part of it. I love the example of or the description of each type for the mood board. I think that's really smart. To not have too many colors, that also translates because I don't make the mood boards but I make the websites after colors have been selected. And even in a platform like Squarespace you have three colors, plus a light and a dark, which is usually white, and black, the white and the black. So you have three colors, essentially. So it's very interesting. That you focus on those three to really convey the brand color three, max, don't have too many colors and don't have too many images in your mood board because the more you have, the more confusing it's going to be. I think limiting yourself to 10 images is key.
Lauren
What we'll do is on the blog of the website, by the time this is posted, we'll have a blog post up with examples of mood boards that we've put together. Actually from brand audit recaps for our clients and along with a little description of why we made these decisions.
Phil
Ramon is in there, Kate Geagan is in there and we have a few other examples you can see from mood board to brand identity.
I love this episode it's a quickie but it's great and packed with good information. So let us know by the way if you like these shorter episodes on social media. I'm @philpallen
Lauren
I’m @thelaurenmoore
Phil
#brandtherapy to continue the conversation and while you're at it and by the way, someone did one today left a review, go to iTunes click on our podcast Brand Therapy and go to reviews, five star. That helps other people discover this podcast that we work very hard to create for you. Quick little episode we hope you enjoyed it, Mood Boards. You know we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. We will see you then right here on brand therapy.
Lauren
Bye.
