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Episode
16

How to Use Mood Boards in Logo Design

An interview with
Mariah Althoff

Introduction

What is a mood board, how do you create one and how can they be used to improve your logo design process and client communication? In this podcast, Ian chats with Mariah Althoff, a freelance brand identity designer, to find out.

We also learn how Mariah started her business, and how she’s created a number of clever sales funnels that include Training Courses, Pinterest and Email Marketing.

Mariah Althoff Interview Transcription

Mariah Althoff: A mood board is essentially just a group of images that are combined, that will evoke some sort of aesthetic or visual style or mood, that will serve as a basis of inspiration for the entire project or brand or whatever you’re working on. These images can really be anything. They can be photographs, or logos, or colour palettes, fonts, patterns, textures. Sometimes even I’ll use interior design, photographs, or fashion shoot images, et cetera. Just really anything that resonates with your overall vision, so that it’ll give you inspiration and evoke like a desired aesthetic that you can refer back to at any point.

Ian Paget: That’s a really great overview. Thank you. How would you go about creating a mood board? What tools are you using or would recommend?

Mariah Althoff: Yeah, so when I first start a big branding project or even just if I’m really stuck on a project and I want a mood board for it, I will always start in Pinterest actually. There’s tons of places you can get inspiration from. You could even make like a physical mood board with just like magazine tear outs and images like that. But I found using Pinterest to be really helpful. I will just start by … I go hog wild on Pinterest and just pin everything that I really like, or that resonates with me or has any … is in the direction of where I foresee the project going or that really sparks an interest in some ideas, things like that. I just pin everything that I like to one board.