Building a Moodboard For Your Brand With Clarity

Building a moodboard for your brand is one of the first steps in branding identity design, as well as many other activities and projects that will take place in your business.

If you read the post 5 Steps To Create a Strong Brand Design, you’ve seen a reference to moodboards there. I’ll break it down in this post.

Fashion designers usually pin pieces of fabrics in different colors and textures, along with croquis, initial sketches, and photos throughout a wall.

They do that to have a visual of all the things inspiring them during the creation of their new collection.

A branding design process uses the same method to create a moodboard that will inspire the strategy, design, and development of a brand.

Building a MoodBoard or a Vision Board?

A moodboard sets the mood for a certain project.

So, if we are designing a new brand identity or planning a branding photoshoot, we can create a moodboard to inspire the upcoming work.

A vision board, on the other hand, is an inspiration for a vision -something much bigger!

If you read my post about creating a powerful Brand Mission Statement or any other brand strategy posts and podcast episodes, you will start to grasp the difference between each touchpoint of a brand -including a brand’s vision, mission, purpose, design…

A vision board will align and support your grand brand vision, while building a moodboard is, usually, something done on a project-specific basis.

Tip: Pinterest is a great place to find inspirational images!

What Goes in a MoodBoard

A moodboard can be made of as many or as few pieces as you feel the need to have in it.

There are really no special rules to be followed when creating your board. If you can, do a physical vision board and pin or tape the images to your wall.

It makes the process much more fun and pulls you deeper into building your branding vision.

Here are some of the things that can go into it when you are building a moodboard:

Refining The MoodBoard

Once you have gathered all the inspiring pieces, you’ll probably need to slim it down.

You’ll want to make your theme obvious and make sure you only have images that complement each other, setting the perfect mood and reference for your branding (design, message, etc).

Once this step is done, my friend, you’ll have a moodboard! Something to always go back to and get inspired during your branding process.

The moodboard purpose isn’t only to inspire the design and styling of your brand. It inspires your purpose, goals, helps identify your ideal audience, and much more!

Digital Moodboard Layouts

The most common type is putting several images together, where they stay inside a square or rectangle -with asymmetrical images inside.

I share a lot of moodboards on my Instagram and invite you to go check them out, for inspiration! But there are no rules and we can create a board as we desire! It’s becoming popular to create a board that consists of images in square shapes only — which is super practical, as it saves loads of time and is great for minimalist brands.

A helpful resource to help you build your brand's identity: Design Your Visual Identity workbook