- [Instructor] Language is the single most powerful
communication method in the history of man.
But even words can fail to communicate
what is needed to solve a visual creative problem at times.
When this happens, you can turn to using mood boards.
A mood board is a visual presentation method
most commonly done in the collage format,
consisting of gathered images, texts, and sample objects
based on a specific topic or theme.
A mood board conveys a general idea
or imbues the look and feel desired
by visually showcasing potential styles, color
and aesthetic attributes
that a project may want to consider.
Most professional creatives tend to think visually.
It's wire industry has historically been titled
visual communication.
So mood boards are a great way for a client to self-collate
and communicate with a designer.
A mood board can help isolate
and establish a visual aesthetic.
So let me show you the mood boards that the two clients
in this course provided to me.
The first one is elevated culture.
To help establish the aesthetic
and where he wanted to go involving the personality
and the visual appearance of elevated culture,
Omar provided this mood board to me,
and this is going to help me
to establish various characteristics.
As I look at this, different characteristics come to mind.
It's sophisticated, it's stylish, it's chic.
There's a graphic tone to it and it's modern.
And some of the colors are informing me as well,
black and gold specifically,
and it's authentic to an African-American culture.
So these are all great attributes to kind of give me an idea
and tone of where I can go,
how I can start the creative process moving forward.
And this is why you want to use a mood board.
A mood board can help define clarity, communication
throughout the creative process.
So when it comes to Cascade Lakes,
this is a mood board I didn't get from them initially.
This is one I had to request after the first round
of design directions.
And I'll explain that more coming up.
But once again, this does relate
and communicate different ideals.
A geographic theme, mountains, trees,
the Cascade Lakes region of Oregon.
There's symbolic graphics going on here.
There's linear tones being reflected in the styling.
That's the big one.
Modular, meaning the graphic lives on its own
outside the type for the most part.
Simple type structure and letter forms
and a monogram reference.
So these are all things that are going to inform me
on the aesthetic look and feel of where they want to go.
Remember, the creative process isn't perfect.
Whether you use mood boards early on
in the creative process to guide design direction
or later in the process
to help resolve communication and revisions,
it's a time-tested design thinking method
you can benefit from.