Lesson 7: Building a Moodboard

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0:00 Okay, creating a mood board. Now, we really try to take on as much of the creativity as we can. Uhm, however, we can't get inside your head.

0:12 When it comes to building your brand, website, marketing, there are so many different directions. We can go and really the mood board is our best way to figure out how to get inside your head without actually going inside your head.

0:24 Uhm, and this helps us figure out what you like, dislike, your style, your brand in a visual way. So what is a mood board?

0:33 A mood board is a visual tool that communicates your vision, mission, values, and culture through imagery. A mood board is a visual brand representation of your brand.

0:41 In we are going to draw from this for your logo, color palette, typography, website, your marketing materials, everything. It should be a simplified view, it should not be super complex, it should be a very sort of clean, cut and dry, uhm, view.

0:56 And also, this is a starting point, this is not, you're not building your brand, this is just brainstorming, this is just you saying, I like that, that needs to go in my brand.

1:07 Uhm, I don't like that, that, that needs to stay out of my brand. Uhm, and this is what we do.

1:12 This do with our clients to help get inside their heads, but I still think it's a good exercise, even if you are just DIYing your website or DIYing your marketing.

1:20 So, how you're going to create a mood board, is you are going to collect images that represent the positive brand and look you aspire your firm to have.

1:28 When you see images that give you that ah-ha moment, save them. Create a mood board that embodies your aspirations. So, as you're collecting images in all these different places, I really want you to feel like, yes, that represents me.

1:41 That represents my brand. Second thing is to consider is you want to try to collect images that fit into a few categories.

1:48 So, you want to try to collect images, um, with colors that you like, fonts that you like, patterns, logos, websites you like.

1:55 This is really going to give you that comprehensive feel when you look at your mood board as a whole. Um, a few popular places to look Uh, the two that I kind of recommend, um, that I feel like you have the best shot at finding a bunch of images really easily is Pinterest.

2:10 Pinterest can be great for branding elements like colors, fonts, web designs, and more. Um, and then once you're in Pinterest, you can type in things like professionals.

2:19 Professional brand, modern color palette, um, you know, traditional logo, things like that. And then Landbook is also a great place.

2:28 It's sort of like the Pinterest of web design. You can find a bunch of web design layouts, um, to get some inspiration and feel like and, you know, see what you like and don't like.

2:38 The next thing is you want to keep your mood board within 15 to 20 images. If you like, 100 images on your mood board, that is going to be, one, overwhelming.

2:48 Two, you're probably going to have a lot of images that conflict with one another and it's not going to feel consistent.

2:55 Which brings me to number four, shoot for consistency. You want to have a consistent mood and cohesive visual representation, um, with what the look and feel of your brand should be.

3:05 Now, I realize this all may feel a little bit like I am so confused right now, but I'm going to show you some examples at the end of this presentation that'll kind of help put it all together.

3:14 And then lastly, for each image, really make note of what you like about it. For example, do you like the color scheme, the fonts, textures, patterns, um, you know, the design layout?

3:25 Really kind of get specific and look through each piece and figure out if there's a way that they can all kind of go well together.

3:31 Now, I'm going to present some mood boards that, um, we've worked with at Mediabooks to kind of help give you, again, that idea of what they could look like.

3:43 So, Here. Here is a prior mood board actually done by a client. And as I scroll through, you can kind of see, like, it's very light tones.

3:53 There's some elements of blue, maybe a little bit of gold in some places. It kind of has a very sparkly look.

3:59 Ah, relaxing, uhm, not whimsical feel, but just a very peaceful feel to it. And what, what you would see is, well, I'll use another example actually.

4:10 Uhm, this is actually MediaBooks' mood board. This is what I created when we did our rebrand. Our brand doesn't look a whole lot like this when you look at it as a whole, but as you inspect each image, you're going to notice that there are elements.

4:24 So, there's like this dark green and blue, and then a pop of gold. Our brand colors have green, blue, pops of gold.

4:31 There's a little pop of gold right there. Uhm, again, I was pulling a lot of, like, different greens and blues and gold to try to get just, like, the right shade.

4:39 Uhm, and then, yeah. More, kind of, brand photography. Really trying to figure out, okay, what do I want it to look and feel like?

4:46 We are kind of a group. We're creative brand, so I want some, like, collaging. You'll notice some of our brand photos have that. And then, also, we are virtual, so I wanted a computer working at a desk.

4:57 That sort of thing. Uhm, over here, there's some collage elements where photos are, like, overlapping each other. We have collages.

5:03 We have a lot of that in our, uhm, website and design. And this, actually, we didn't use at all. This was a logo, uhm, that I just really liked, but we ended up not, uhm, not using it.

5:16 We do have a font that's somewhat similar to this, but it's not, uh, I would just say in, like, terms of serif, uhm, but it's, it actually doesn't look too much like that.

5:27 So, like I said, I mean, your mood board's a starting point. It's supposed to kind of help you just figure out, uhm, what direction you should start going with your brand.

5:34 Another mood board, so this is actually the mood board, uhm, the original mood board of media books before we had our re-brand in 2022, uhm, we went by the name ProAdvisor Marketing and our brand colors.

5:48 It was like a neon purple and a neon blue and black, uhm, and the whole thing was like helping you stand out.

5:54 And so it was a very bold brand, uhm, it was a great, it was a fun brand, but, who knows?

6:00 So we, uh, we needed to change. And you can kind of see, like, this is very different from, from this.

6:06 And you may, like, as I look through here, you may be like, okay, that looks nice. It just looks like a standard, like, bunch of pictures of websites and stuff.

6:14 But when you compare it to, like, these different ones, you can see, like, an actual overall feel to it. And once you compile all your photos together, you're gonna also be able to see which ones stand out.

6:27 Like, if I'm looking through here, for example, this one kind of stands out too much and I would lose this one.

6:32 But the rest of the images actually go, this one kind of stands out a little bit too. The rest of the images actually go well together.

6:40 This is another mood board created by a client. She wanted a very bright colors, uhm, like happy, cheerful, uhm, a really like, sunshiny yellow, uhm, kind of like a sea foamy turquoise blue, uh, some peach and then she really liked the geometric shapes, so, uhm, a lot of those geometric shapes in there

7:02 . And then I have one more, yeah, this is another brand we did, uhm, they had a very simple mood board, which is totally fine, they just wanted something professional, uhm, masculine, very traditional, that sort of thing.

7:14 So, I hope this kind of gives you an idea, uhm, there's no, like, set rules, again, this is supposed to be a visual representation.

7:20 And help you kind of, like, a good practice to just figure out design-wise what you like.