How and Why to Make a Brand Mood Board

Have you ever heard of a mood board? Maybe you’ve seen pictures of them- pretty cork bulletin boards with pictures cut out of books and magazines. Some brides do it for their weddings, new homeowners do it for a new home, expecting moms may do it for their nursery.

But did you ever consider making one for your brand?

Think about it- why do the above mentioned people create those boards? FOR INSPIRATION!

They want to be able to look at the board and say, “Yes! I like THAT thing; I want to use it for MY thing.”

Maybe they’re looking at colors, or decor, or flowers. Maybe they started off looking for one thing, and then it morphed and now they have all of these ideas and a whole new slew of ideas for things that they KNOW will enhance their wedding/home/nursery/whatever.

Do you see where I’m heading with this?

Creating a mood board for your business is a great way to help you stay consistent with your content creation- both visually and in your communication style.

It can give you inspiration when you are lacking, it can give you a fresh perspective when you’re stuck, and it can even give you brand-new ideas and a whole new direction to explore!

Do I have your attention?

If this sounds like an amazing plan, I have a few steps that I think will help you create a mess-free mood board (no cork boards, scissors, or push pins necessary!) and, as a bonus, you’ll never misplace it.

(or, you know, spill coffee on it… ahem).

And, you can use a tool that you’re probably already all-too-familiar with- PINTEREST!

A Pinterest mood board is definitely the way to go in the 21st century. There are hundreds of thousands of images to fit every style, every aesthetic, every niche. I seriously doubt that you can be so niched down that Pinterest won’t be a help for you.

So, how do we get started? (If you already have a Pinterest account, skip to step 3!)

Create a Pinterest account. Go to Pinterest and sign up with an email address or with Facebook or Google.

2. Go through the steps to add in your interests- if you want this to be strictly a business account (as an aside, I do recommend having separate personal and business accounts on Pinterest), think about who your business serves and how you can bring value to them. Perhaps fill out your “interests” from the perspective of that ideal client. This will just load your feed with ideas and inspiration from the get-go!

Once your choose your interests (or clients’ interests), they’ll show up at the top of the page like this-

3. Next is the fun part! Think about 4-5 adjectives that you think describe your business. For example, for my own brand, I would choose- clean, modern, feminine, personable, creative.

Now, go into the search bar at the top of the page and start searching for your brand adjectives + words like branding or aesthetic; for example, I might search “clean creative aesthetic” and get these results-

Now, try to look at this from your ideal client’s perspective (but keep your own preferences in mind, too!) Save any pin that catches your eye for any reason, be it the aesthetic, colors, font, image use of space, whatever. This isn’t the time to be picky! If it catches your eye, PIN THAT SUCKER. (Pin an image by hovering over it and clicking the red Pin button on the top right.)

Spend about 30 minutes doing this- mixing and matching your brand words, looking at related pins (by scrolling down from a pin when you click on it), and picking out everything that catches your eye. At the end, you’ll hopefully have about 50 pins to look at.

4. Now, go to your mood board and view it as a whole. (Pro tip- I like to zoom out to make the pins smaller and fit more on the screen at once!)

Look at all of the images you pinned and try to pick out some similarities and consistencies. Here’s my board (which I just created for this blog post). Look at it and tell me if you notice any consistencies! (Don’t worry, it’s not a quiz- I’ll tell you my answers in a second!)

Looking at my board, I notice a few things-

a lot of white space (and space that isn’t technically white but is neutral and can still be considered white space)
simple geometric shapes- circles, squares, triangles, straight and clean lines
pastel and neutral colors- no one particular color particularly pops out at me when I look at this image, which shows me that these colors are pretty consistent (but imagine, for example, how glaring a bright red pop of color would look against this palette)!
a very modern, minimalistic style- there is no clutter, no unnecessary elements, etc.

So what’s next?

Okay, so you have your amazing Pinterest mood board all set up, and now you’re fired up and inspired and ready to take action. Where can you go from here?

Well, you can…

Go onto stock photo websites (Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, etc.) and search for your brand words. Use the pictures that pop up in your marketing and branding. Post them to your social media to create a consistent and cohesive feed.
Make a color palette for your brand! You can check out I made to see how.
Ask your audience for their thoughts! Show off your mood board in a social media post or Story. Talk about some of the images and why you chose them. Ask your audience for their thoughts and opinions- do they think that the styles you picked out match what they’ve seen from you? Do they resonate with the style and colors? What would they add and take away? etc.
Use it as inspiration. When you’re feeling stuck, head back to the mood board and look over it. Do you see something you could post about? Maybe a photo you pinned reminds you of something you love doing, or something you owned as a child, or a lifelong dream that is yet unfulfilled? Those are all things you can write about and relate back to your content via your personal brand!

If you’re happy with your mood board but still feeling stuck on where to go next with your business or brand, I recommend checking out my DIY Branding Kit! Inside, you’ll find pre-made logos, color palettes, font pairings, social media templates, and more!

I hope that you found value in this exercise and that you enjoyed building your personal mood board! If you’d like to show it off, feel free to post it on Instagram and tag me @rebeccafletcherdesigns so I can check it out, drop some love, and cheer you on!