.png)
Creating a brand mood board is one of our first (and favorite!) steps in the branding process we use with our clients. Because the mood board we create together will inspire the design of your unique, compelling, and personal brand identity.
But designing a brand identity on your own can be quite difficult, especially when you don’t know where to start. If you haven’t already designed the visual elements of your brand identity, or are thinking about a brand redesign, creating a brand mood board is a surefire way to get some inspiration!
Want to learn how to create your very own brand mood board with Pinterest? Then keep on reading, friend.
What is a brand mood board? And how do you create one with Pinterest?
A branding mood board is a collage of visual elements that represents who you are as a brand.
Making a mood board isn’t just an excuse to play around on Pinterest. (Although, you can certainly use it as one if ya want...in fact,we’d encourage it!) The board you create can serve as the jumping-off point and overall inspiration for the visual design of your brand identity, too.
And Pinterest is one of the best tools for creating a mood board to inspire your brand identity because it’s a visual search engine AND a tool for bookmarking those visuals. So if you don’t already have an account, the time to sign up for one is right about now.
Start pinning!
The first step to creating a brand mood board is to start pinning everything and anything that inspires and resonates with your brand and biz. In other words, don’t pin something just because it’s your fave color. Everything you pin should contribute to the way you want your brand to feel and the way you want others to feel when they see your brand.
Remember that you’re creating a brand mood board. The end goal here is to have a variety of visual elements to inspire the design of your personal and unique brand identity. So be sure to pin various colors, fonts, patterns, and textures.
You don’t have to find things to pin directly on Pinterest, either. You can use their browser extension to pin images from any website you like.
It’s also really important that you avoid pinning other people’s complete brand boards or finished logos. Because if you use the brand board you create to design your brand identity, which will include your logo, it’s going to be really difficult to take something that’s finished and make it yours without it being too similar.
So instead, when you come across a brand you really like, think about what exactly it is that you like about it. Is it the colors? The textures? The way it makes you feel?
After you figure out what it is you like about someone else’s brand, look for more generic images that contain that specific thing.
For example, if you liked that someone else’s branding had watercolor elements in it, you can search for different watercolor brushstrokes to pin to your personal brand mood board for inspiration.
PRO TIP: Edit the description of your pins with the reason why you pinned them as you go. This will help you to get clear on the pattern behind your pins. And if this process takes you a while, it will help you to remember what you were doing and get going again faster.
Remove what doesn’t work.
At a certain point, you’re gonna have to stop pinning and finalize your brand mood board. But when is that point?
The secret is to keep pinning until you can see a pattern to your pins. Once you can see a theme, you can start to remove what doesn’t work from your brand mood board.
But don’t do this by deleting the pins that don’t work from your board! Instead, start a new brand board and add the pins from your old board that you want to keep. You’re going to repeat this process until you’re left with only 9 photos.
Try not to give yourself a complex about having a “finished” board if you don’t have a professional brand designer to help with this. You can always go back and change things up a bit later!
The key here is keeping those final 9 photos consistent with that theme you found…. or else your brand identity design is going to end up being wildly inconsistent. (And that’s one of the biggest brand identity mistakes you can make!)
Use your brand mood board as inspiration to design your brand identity.
Once you’ve created your brand mood board, you can use it as inspiration! Let those final 9 images act as a guide to designing the components of your visual brand identity.
For example, your color palette and fonts can come directly from your brand mood board.
With Canva’s free color palette generator, you quickly pop those pins from your board in there and create color combinations in seconds. And with Fontspring’s matcherator, you can easily figure out what fonts are in those pins, too.
But if you’re feeling stuck or overwhelmed, unsure how to make it all look cohesive and professional…. no worries, we gotchu! ;)
Whether you have a vision for your brand…. or NO vision for your brand (don’t worry, this happens more than you’d think!) — our team has a knack for extracting and expressing what’s unique and compelling about your business.
Click here to apply to work with us now because you deserve a brand identity that’s just as AMAZING as you are.