Mood Boards

“What’s the point of doing a mood board?”


I was talking through my brand design process with my sister in law over the weekend and she helped me to realize that the purpose of a mood board isn’t as obvious I thought. So here’s my quick explanation:

In short: mood boards bring clarity.

A mood board is a collection of images, textures, colors and concepts that summarizes the brand we are working on in a “snapshot” format. The mood board helps us (the client and myself) to figure out the visual style and direction of the brand before we start work on the actual logo.

Designing a mood board wasn’t part of my logo design process at first. After including this step, we see much better results when designing logos for clients: more concepts are right the first time, and development the rest of the brand and website using the mood board as foundation leads to a more cohesive brand and smoother proofing and reverts process.