What is a Mood Board? 

A mood board is a visual representation of a brand’s aesthetic and style. It typically includes images, colours, typography, and other design elements that are intended to convey the overall look and feel of a brand. 

But don’t be mistaken… Although it can sound like a pretty ‘nice-to-have’, a mood board is a powerful tool and a worthwhile investment when created intentionally.

How do mood boards create stronger brands?

One of the biggest challenges (and rewards) of branding can be translating the vision inside a client’s mind into a final suite of branded assets. The mood board is one of the first and most essential steps in this process as it works to curate inspiration, document ideas, and build a shared vision through a collaborative process.

In a nutshell, mood boards:

Help to establish consistency: By creating a mood board, a brand can ensure that all of its visual elements are cohesive and consistent. This is important because it helps to build recognition and trust with customers.

Aid in decision-making: Mood boards can be used as a reference point when making design decisions, such as choosing colours or typography. This helps to ensure that all design choices align with the brand’s overall aesthetic.

Facilitate communication: Mood boards can be used to communicate a brand’s aesthetic to others, such as team members, agencies, designers, or clients. This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Inspire creativity: Mood boards can be used as a source of inspiration for new ideas and concepts, allowing the team to explore different possibilities and come up with fresh, innovative designs. We have had many “a-ha!” moments whilst working on clients’ mood boards.

Whilst we LOVE creating mood boards, we’ve found that our clients love them, too, as they are able to see fragments of their ideas, and ours, coming together to form a bigger picture. The mood board also provides context for the work to come, as a logo on its own doesn’t constitute a brand. When a new logo is placed alongside the mood board, however, the client can get a sense of the wider landscape of the brand identity we are about to create for them.

Building trust between client and designer

Once the Discovery Call is completed for a new branding project, the mood board is often the first deliverable in our scope of work. At this point, clients are excited and, if they’re being honest, possibly a little nervous about whether their designer is truly in sync with their vision and goals and is able to deliver a brand identity that will work for them.

We find that the mood board phase of the project is excellent for building trust, open communication, and providing some peace of mind that we’re on the same page. We are able to demonstrate that we’ve understood the brief, and that we’ve considered your brand’s vision, goals, strategy and target audience. We are also able to demonstrate that we have the expertise, knowledge and skills to bring your vision to life.

Establishing a creative direction

Developing a mood board in the spirit of collaboration is key. We will have many valuable ideas to contribute, of course, but we also value and honour our client’s visions for their brand. We can discuss any inspirational materials that have been collated, and include them where appropriate.
Through this process of collaboration we aim to establish an overall creative direction for the brand. This will include sourcing examples of imagery, texture, typography, colour, iconography, illustration and graphic treatments we feel may be in alignment with your brand.

The mood board phase is also excellent for weeding out any ideas that won’t work, or are simply unappealing.

Our philosophy is that by exploring ideas that are both in alignment with initial discussions, and those that may appear out of the box (we call them wild cards), we are able to get a better feel for where we want to land.

By speaking candidly about the mood board inclusions and conducting revisions, we arrive at a mood board that will set the tone for the rest of the visual identity.

Return on investment and the true value of a mood board

The mood boarding process can be undervalued or even get overlooked due to a false belief that there’s no return on investment. Again, this aligns with the misconception that a mood board is simply a collection of pretty pictures.

Whilst a mood board in and of itself doesn’t have a direct return on investment, what does is brand consistency, efficient design workflow, and effective collaboration. All of these are aided by a mood board and underpinned by consensus around what the brand should look and feel like.

When there is confusion, indecision, and too much scope for misinterpretation, branding and marketing initiatives become an up-hill battle. There is disagreement, excessive back-and-forth in both design revisions and communication, and the brand becomes diluted. All of this is costly, and all of this can be avoided with a well thought-out mood board and Style Guide.

Based on extremely positive feedback from our clients on the mood boarding process, we encourage all businesses to include this vital step in their branding process. It helps both designer and client gain clarity on the creative direction for the brand, build trust, minimise confusion, and set the brand up for success from the start.