The most common question that people ask us is: "How do I start my own brand?! Where do I even begin?"
The answer we give most often is "Start with a M O O D !" A mood board will help you organize your thoughts and identify what your personal taste is. It's SO IMPORTANT to follow your own instincts/taste and fight against the urge to be like someone else. The most successful brands were started by people that forged their own creative path. You might be asking "But isn't making a mood board just copying what someone else has done?" NO! It is only a starting point. You will use it as a tool to bring out your own creativity!
Here's one of the ways we like to do it:
- Go out and grab some magazines and books! We know. PRINT?! What’s that?? But there’s something so nice about printed images IRL.
Digital mood boards are great too, but sites like Pinterest often dictate the mood for you through an algorithm. So we prefer the old school way. 📖 - Cut out anything that grabs your attention. Don't be picky about whether or not things 'match' or have a similar vibe. Just pull as much as you can!
- Once you have a TON of images, go back through then and see if you can find any common threads. Color, shape, texture, fonts, illustrations vs. digital art, nature, architecture etc. Starting making piles on the floor or on a table.
- Create working names for the piles in a notebook or in your head. "This is my terracotta color pile...this is my eye makeup pile..."
- Take one of your piles and start arranging it on the floor. Move things around until you're happy with the way it looks.
- Tape the images on a wall in the same configuration they were in on the floor.
- Take pictures of the moodboard on the wall from different angles.
- Once you feel like you have enough, repeat with one of the other piles or take a little break and enjoy the moodboard for a few days!
- Save the mood board images on your phone/computer with the names that you wrote down in your notebook.
- You will reference the moodboards later when you move into the branding phase.
