Brand Mood Board: How to Design a Visual Identity that Works

Congratulations! You know what to sell, have a core team, and are ready to roll. But before introducing your business, it is essential to establish your brand identity first—how it looks, sounds, and feels to people.

Figuring out your brand from the get-go is crucial to compel your customers to buy. Today’s buyers are more likely to support a business they can relate to.

And while branding is an exciting stage as your business takes its creative form, it can be overwhelming. You wonder, where do you even begin? Here’s where a brand mood board is handy in your design process.

A brand mood board is also a nifty way to ensure consistency in your visual design elements.

Say you’re planning to redecorate your living room. Before hitting the furniture shops, check and collect designs and styles on Pinterest, magazines, and other online shops. Doing so ensures that you narrow down the look you want and only buy pieces that align with it.

Now, apply that to branding!

Let's delve further into the benefits of a brand mood board.

Brand mood boards are a great way to get inspired and have your creative juices flowing. But it can do so much more than that!

Giving direction

Kicking off the creative process is often a struggle because you are unsure how to begin and where to end. It’s excruciating as the mind wanders like a toddler, pulling ideas---good and bad—and leaving us confused.

A brand mood board addresses that pain point by organizing your thoughts. It provides a bird’s eye view of where you are in your process.

It allows you to see which elements fit the overall narrative you are trying to convey. In effect, you achieve clarity in your objectives and have direction for your entire project.

Fuels creativity

No one is immune to creative blocks or the inability to think creatively. It can happen to branding professionals and designers, too. And sometimes, a little spark of inspiration is enough to fuel that much-needed creativity.

If this sounds like you, you can always refer to your mood board and collate everything you think resonates with your idea. Add things like news clippings, objects, textures, pictures, fonts, and whatever relates to the brand design you want to create.

A mood board allows you to make your ideas feel more tangible. It’s also easier to present your vision to your teammates, ensuring that everyone is on the same page!

Time Saving

In addition to giving you direction, a brand mood board cuts through the noise and saves you time in your creative process.

Your brand mood board evolves as you go. Starting from a broad perspective, it narrows down the essentials you need to create a brand identity that is consistent and cohesive with what you want to present. It also makes decision-making easier as the mood board becomes a quick reference for your team.

Refining your brand identity

Creating a brand identity is not as easy as picking things you like that are aesthetically pleasing. A brand identity entails crafting visual elements that inject the brand’s personality and, as much as possible, are unique. Luckily, this is achievable with a concise mood board that captures the essence of your brand.

You can also ensure that the tone, style, and mood align with your brand archetype. Taking a page from the theory of personality by Carl Jung, brand archetypes include the outlaw, caregiver, ruler, jester, innocent, and sage, among others. Each archetype addresses specific unconscious human desires.

Overall, a brand mood board is a powerful tool that can optimize your creative efforts. Done right, it effectively captures the emotions and message you want to convey to your customers at a glance.

In creating a mood board, you can put anything and everything you desire. Let’s explore the essentials of solid branding fundamentals.

1. Colors of Your Choice

Your brand colors are one of the defining elements of your brand design. Bright, pastel colors signal warmth and feminine touch. Vibrant colors evoke happiness and excitement. Put simply, colors have a psychological impact you may want to consider.

It’s best to narrow down the feelings you want your audience to experience and choose the colors accordingly. You can also categorize your palette into primary and secondary.

Your logo, shop interiors, and elements you want to appear prominent can use primary colors. The rest can take a step back with the use of secondary colors. Ensure your color palettes are harmonious or complimentary to avoid visual clashing.

2. Typography or Your Fonts

An effective way to express the emotional tone of your brand through writing is by picking a typography that fits. Opt for rounded sans-serif fonts if you want a modern and fun vibe. Or stick with classic serif fonts like Times New Roman for a professional and classic look.

Aside from ensuring that texts are legible, a brand’s typography creates a more dynamic visual communication with your audience. Examples of brands with iconic typography are FedEx, Coca-Cola, and Disney.

3. Images and Illustrations

Photos and illustrations are an excellent way to represent the vibe or mood your brand is going for. You need not replicate them to a tee, but they give you a solid reference of how you want your brand to look and feel.

Say you are about to launch a luxury perfume brand that is elegant, bold, and feminine. You may want to find images of flowers and fashionable women that reflect the features of your products. You could also add perfume bottle designs and illustrations to draw inspiration from.

4. Other Visual Inspirations

You can add anything on your mood board as long as they are on-brand. Think of textures and patterns that can be injected into your website's UI design or brand packaging. You can include keywords, quotes, and excerpts that align with your brand message, too.

Check out some brand mood board examples below.

Before you start a brand mood board, a deep knowledge of your target audience—what they want, their lifestyle, and their buying behavior—is crucial. Knowing your buyers can guide you as you create a brand mood board in six easy steps.

Step 1: Collect On-Brand Images

Scour for inspiring images that can help you hone your brand design. You can download from websites and download high-quality images from Pinterest, Pixabay, and Unsplash for photographs and stock images.

It’s good to start with images that represent or evoke strong emotions you want your brand to convey. If you already have existing images and design drafts, you can add them to the board, too.

Step 2: Identify and Incorporate Your Colors

Once you have your colors set, you can create a color palette. Think of incorporating them into your mood board design by using the primary color as your background. Secondary colors can be for copy and other details you need to highlight. Or better yet, choose images that already have the colors you want.

It helps to add little notes of what each color represents or its objectives. For instance, your main color is for grabbing attention to your brand name and CTAs or calls to action. Your accent color maintains harmony among other colors and is adaptable to your design.

Step 3: Add Words and Quotes that Resonate

Texts are a great addition to inspire creatives, especially if they are words of wisdom from iconic figures that resonate with your brand personality. You can even add keywords, descriptive words, and phrases.

Having a brand tagline and a brand message on the board could serve as your team's constant reminders of what you want your output to convey to your customers.

Step 4: Sprinkle Other Relevant Associations

Did we forget anything?

Feel free to add other relevant assets to your brand mood board, such as texture and pattern samples, icons, logos, and other images. Animations, video clips, and sounds create a more dynamic and immersive presentation, too.

Step 5: Assemble Everything into a Single Brand-Specific Image

It’s time to organize your mood board!

A mood board should not be a mishmash of random things. That said, we suggest assembling assets according to importance.

For instance, taglines, color palettes, logos, and images can take front and center. Keeping your mood board as simple as possible makes it easy to understand. And to make it even better, why not add descriptions of each element?

For example, you can create an anatomy of your font or add an explainer for your color palette and logo design. And finally, declutter assets that do not align with your vision.

Step 6: Gather Feedback and Refine

Now that you’ve completed your mood board, let's see what others think.

Working too closely on a project can cloud your judgment, so it helps to have different perspectives from your colleagues and relevant stakeholders. Take every criticism as a chance to develop your brand mood board to perfection.

Are you on the fence between a digital or a physical brand mood board?

Whatever your needs are, it is best to pick the format that effectively translates your design, fits your design process, and achieves your goals.

Digital Mood Board

Digital mood boards are great if you’re looking for convenience. There are tons of design platforms online like Canva, Pinterest, and Vistacreate, that allow you to craft mood boards for free. They also have templates you can easily tailor to your needs, like adding a menu opening or expanding to more details for a less cluttered look.

These design platforms are great for beginners or anyone not well-versed with professional design software like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The best part is collaboration is a breeze. Many platforms allow multiple users the ability to share and work on the same project. Thus, feedback is shared and modifications are done in a jiff.

Physical Mood Board

Not everyone is a fan of digital mood boards. Physical mood boards are often humongous, whereas their digital counterpart is confined to a screen. For this reason, creatives are pushed to be more decisive since it takes more time and effort to craft and revise.

Physical mood boards also provide a more tactile experience — a rather fun and different experience in a digital-first world. You can touch and see actual materials or samples in real time, which is beneficial when designing your brand package.

Despite how tedious the process is to make a brand mood board, it is definitely worth it. A brand mood board can help zero in on your objectives, clarify and amplify your brand message, and create a cohesive brand design. Plus, it aids your team with a reliable visual reference whenever difficult decisions are needed.

While you can DIY your brand mood board, consider partnering with a reliable brand design firm to tailor a brand that fits your business.