When you're developing a brand, it's important to have a clear idea of the overall look that you want to achieve. Is your brand’s tone bright or muted, bold or soft, playful or classic, or somewhere in between? A mood board is a visual tool that helps explore the visual feel of the brand. It can include colors, fonts, graphic styles, patterns, and imagery. When placed together, they create something that gives the viewer an idea of the brand’s essence.

Mood boards are sometimes created early in the brand design process. It’s used to help inspire the logo design and efforts that follow.

At MOD-Lab, we like to create a mood board after a logo design direction is selected. This article shares more about our process, examples, and the value of a mood board.

The Brand Design Process

We offer small and medium sized branding efforts and leave the deep dives to larger brand partners. We start with a little bit of thoughtful research. Conversations with our client partners and stakeholders help us define goals, audience, and needs. Then we begin our logo sketches and, over a number of presentations and feedback exchanges, we hone in on a chosen design direction.

This is when our mood board work kicks in.

The design of the mood board is our initial test of how the brand comes to life through color, fonts, imagery, and design elements. The mood board informs the brand style guide and serves to inspire the activation of the brand to all sorts of design assets and projects that follow.

Bringing the Brand to Life

With a chosen logo design ready, a mood board enables us to begin to play with and apply that logo design to other parts of the visual brand.

A well done logo is a visual tool that can help tell the story of the organization. Its elements should be reflective of the orgs mission. With this, you have a strong foundation to inspire the brand visuals.

We explore photos, type, and colors that go with the logo. We then apply them to different design scenarios to help explore how best to bring the brand to life.

A mood board, at this point in a brand design process, has the following goals.

1. To help the brand design team explore the visual brand in different circumstances.
2. To excite and engage client partners in the process. To elicit critical feedback from them early and use it to refine the visual brand.

The Value of Mood Boards in the Branding Process

Regardless of when a mood board is created, it offers significant value to organizations.

1. Provides a Clear Vision: A mood board helps to establish a clear vision for the brand's look and feel. It guides subsequent design decisions and ensures that everyone involved in the process is working towards the same goal.
2. Offers Inspiration: A mood board inspires new ideas and approaches that may not have been considered otherwise. By gathering together a wide range of visual elements, stakeholders may discover unexpected combinations or new ways of representing the brand that they hadn't previously considered.
3. Facilitates Collaboration: During the design process it gives stakeholders something rich to react to. Once completed, it help ensure that everyone involved in the process is on the same page.
4. Creates a Consistent Visual Identity: A mood board helps establish a consistent visual identity for the brand.
5. Streamlines the Design Process: By establishing a clear visual direction from the outset, it helps streamline the design process for future projects.

Mood Boards and Your Organization

Whether you are learning about brand design or seeking a partner for your organizations next look, keep a mood board in mind. We have found it to be a valuable resource in our branding process. It engages our client partner to share their best feedback. This builds trust and facilitates better collaboration. As a finished product, it's a great resource to support a consistent brand expression in future projects.

If you have any questions about mood boards or our brand services, please don’t hesitate to contact us.