Maintaining a consistent visual presence is hard. Creating a quick brand guide can help you ensure everyone in your organization is maintaining a consistency in all of your marketing materials.

Here's how to get started in 4 simple steps!

1. Pick 1-2 fonts

You do not need to be a typographic guru to know what fonts look good together and what ones don't.

The first font you choose should be something that you would want to use for headers on your print and web materials. We often time encourage people to choose something with a little more "character" but that is still easy to read. Make sure it "goes" with your logo or is even the same font you use in your logo. Look through MyFonts.com or Google Webfonts and search by the key terms or core values you defined in your branding process.

The second font you choose should be something that is even easier to read and will work well as body text across your print and web materials. Choosing a font family that is flexible and has thin/narrow options, bold, extended and black will get you the furthest. 

2. Create a color palette

2-3 colors is fine, you do not need a huge assortment to feel visually cohesive. Actually, less is more. Assume that white and black are automatically in your palette and thus not addressed here. Think back to your headers, what color are they on your print materials or website now? Are they the same in both places? If not, they probably should be. Overall, it is good to pick 1-2 brighter colors to use for accents and then think about something additional that is more neutral. Also consider using lighter and darker tones of the same color (hue) you are already using...lightening up (adding white) to your header color and then using it for a sub-header is a nice way to have something feel cohesive without needing to choose an additional color. A great place to try things out is Colourlovers.com -- again make sure everything you choose goes wtih your logo as well. If you already have a blue and gray logo, those should be 2 of your colors. If you are wanting a change...then that is a different conversation and see our article on revitalizing your brand.

3. Texture 

Not everyone likes or wants texture, but it should be considered either way. If you already know you want your colors and backgrounds to be flat, that is still a texture...ie. flat, smooth, clean, etc. Or maybe you want a little more of a grunge feel, or something else that has a tactile or 3-D quality to it. A nice place to try out background textures and patterns is SubtlePatterns.com -- yes this is focused on websites, but it at least gives you a way to try out what you might like or not and then you can apply a similar pattern to your print materials.

4. Imagery 

Choose 1-3 main photos and/or illustrations and another 4-7 images that you can use interchangeably but are consistent across all of your materials. Often times you can even just pick one main image plus your logo and get pretty far with that "defining" your brand. But, you will still need a few more to use in print and social media. Visit istockphoto.com, flickr or even just Google and type in your key words and see what images come up. If you do not want to purchase stock photos or images, you can hire a designer to create custom artwork for you.

Get Feedback on Your Visual Brand

Feedback and revision is critical to any process. The same is true for building a visual brand or language that speaks to your audience.

Stakeholder interviews are a great way to get feedback from your audience. But, make sure that you're asking the right questions! We can guide you through it. Download our full guide to conducting stakeholder interviews.

A mood or vision board can be a lot of things, but the most successful are small collages that end up feeling a little like an art therapy exercise. 

Building a brand is hard.

Mood boarding is a great way to help you and your team build a visual language that both communicates clearly and is engaging to your customers or constituents. 

In this post, we'll walk you through the 4 simple steps to have a strong visual language.

What is a Mood Board?

If you're like most people outside of the design industry, you might not have heard mood boards.

A mood board is a collection of images, words, fonts and colors that as a collection, are meant to evoke a feeling from the person that views them. If you're like most people outside of the design industry, you might not have heard of mood boards, but I am sure you made a collage at some point in your youth... 

Mood boards can be created in a lot of different ways.

If you are a more tactile person, you can grab a bunch of magazines and paste (collage) words, images, and color swatches onto a piece of paper. If you feel like your grammer school self, cutting and pasting, you are doing it correctly.

Mood boarding is meant to help open your ability to brainstorm and help you figure out new ways to communicate...well, whatever you are trying to communicate.

Most people spend a lot of time thinking and writing to come up with ideas, mood boarding opens the other side of your brain and engages your visual creativity.

Note: If you like to work digitally, software programs like PhotoShop, Illustrator, PowerPoint or Word can be very useful. Use google search images/fonts or a stock photography website to pull ideas. to be able to collect your pieces and arrange them. Here are some quick tips on creating visual consistency to find online inspiration.

IMPORTANT: Mood boards aren't website designs. Sometimes people get confused with this.

Why a Create a Mood Board

At Rootid, we use mood boards in our project process to help clients better understand, gain cohesion and communicate their brand. 

According to the Content Marketing Institute, brands drive emotions, and emotions drive consumer decisions.

So, since the purpose of moodboards are to generate a gut reaction from the person viewing them, it is an extremely effective way to move through your (re)branding process and/or to check that your branding is properly aligned with your core values and goals. 

The bottom line: Pinpointing the emotions that your brand evoke is extremely important. So, spend the time and focus needed to get it right.

How to Create a Mood Board

We usually begin the process by discussing the core values, mission and goals of an organization—isolating keywords or phrases and then visualizing these concepts through collage. Step-by-step instructions below:

Step 1: What are 5-8 short statements or phrases that describe you, your organization or company?
When answering this question, it's important to focus on individual words or 2-3 words—don't create long statements, that will not help you isolate and evoke clear and strong feelings. 

Step 2: Look for imagery, fonts, colors and textures visually depict your core values.
This is meant to be a conceptual exercise so don't limit yourself to things you would actually use. Follow your gut. Maybe you see a random image of twig surrounded by bright red leaves. This does not fit into your color palette, you are not an environmental organization, but something about it "feels" right. Use it, the reason why may become more clear when you share you mood board with others.

Step 3: Make a collage.
You can use any tool you want. Scissors and paste, PhotoShop or even Microsoft Word. 

The key is that you need to be able to collect, move the pieces around and edit/delete/remove elements as you go.

Begin by grouping like elements together and see if any common themes or patterns begin to emerge.  Maybe that is by color or maybe something more conceptual and/or abstract that is based more on a 'look' or 'feel' that seems to fit together. Again, it is ok (and even good) if you can't put your finger on why what you are doing seems to be making sense. The more you feel like a kingergartner matching shapes and colors the better.

You may end up with a few different mood boards and this is ok.

Step 4: Take your collages to other people for feedback.

Begin by sharing you mood board without a lot of explanation. Allow the person you are sharing with to discover ideas for themselves, this will help you know if you are communicating your core values clearly. Once they have given you their initial impressions, share your keywords and short phrases—describe what you used and why and see what they say. You do not need to be a color theorist to know if red feels more agressive than blue....feedback from others will help you know if you are on the right track.

Conduct Stakeholder Interviews to Get Feedback

Remember that your mood board and brand are targeting an audience: customers, donors, constituents or whoever else. We have had many clients share their mood boards with those they are serving as well as board memebers or any other stakeholders. The more feedback they got, the better they were able to know whether or not they were communicating effectively.  

Our recommendation is conduct stakeholder interviews to ensure your mood boards speak to them. Check out our stakeholder interview guide to make sure you get the information your need.