Brand Strategy
Branding – The Importance Of A Mood Board
April 18, 2018 - Brand Strategy
Have you ever wondered why some brands appeal to you right from their logo through to all their viewable content across channels?
It’s because you understand the language. And just like alphabets make words that are the building blocks of English , a moodboard creates anchors to visual language that make a brand.
And as we all know, a brand is NOT just a logo.
The Beginnings Of A Strong Brand
So you have an idea – an outstanding business plan that makes sense to execute in today’s market. And you feel the excitement of sharing this with EVERYBODY. And then you stop short. How are you going to communicate this perfect little brain child of yours?
Always begin with a moodboard.
Allow yourself to explore images, patterns, colors, typography, illustrations and textures that inspire you to develop your business. If you believe your business has a fresh and innovative offering, look for elements that will continue to inspire that feeling. This becomes your base point for development. Zeitgeist uses Pinterest as a tool to gather these ingredients – something that would be hugely beneficial to a rookie too.
Identifying The Communication Process
Depending on how creative the Client is, we choose to either create a tangible mood board for interaction, or a digital mood board to confirm direction. Based on your resources and preferences you can do the same. I personally prefer a board that I can touch, to drive the senses even deeper.
Then, begin to arrange your elements to make sense visually. Perhaps you decided to club categories together, perhaps you prefer to jumble things into what works for you mentally. The idea is to get you to start feeling like your business is being rooted into something visually communicative for your target market. If you feel the board is getting too heavy, it’s okay to remove a few elements, or if you feel right about it, split them into two, to analyse two potential directions. There is no wrong or right. This is just conceptual.
Now you have your anchor. As you develop your brand remember to keep looking back at your moodboard to draw continually from those elements that inspired you to begin with. If you stay rooted to the same colors, typography and imagery, you will begin to see your Brand speaking its own language to your potential market.
From Design Brief To Mood Board
Today Zeitegist shares two digital mood boards with distinct directions, based around the design brief for SmartFarm, that nudged the Client into choosing a clear road map going forward.
Hope this helps! Happy Designing 🙂
The Design Brief
SmartFarm represents a marriage between agriculture and technology.
The brand language should be ‘Young’, ‘Fun’, ‘Relevant’ and ‘Flexible’.
The brand identity needs to appeal to both, B2B and B2C market segments.
INSPIRATION 1
The mood board that follows brings together a collection of images, colours, patterns and art that render an uncompromising, more corporate but approachable feel to the brand language:
INSPIRATION 2
This collection of images, colors, patterns and art brings a more congenial and sophisticated yet friendly feel to the brand:
Madhuri Rao,
Founder & Chief,
Design Strategy
1 Comment
MartinSobby
Hellow my name is MartinSobby. Wery good art! Thx 🙂