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Discovering a new brand identity can be a fun process for many business owners. Graphic designers aren’t the only ones who find it enjoyable to look at color schemes, font pairings, and inspirational stock art. Many business owners start by creating an inspirational vision board. There are plenty of ideas for vision boards, but it can be overwhelming to figure out how to make an inspirational one for a business start-up.

I’ll start by saying my process of creating an inspirational vision board was a bit backward.

I probably made my vision board last compared to many of the steps you would typically take with developing a brand identity. I had created a logo, color scheme, and chosen my fonts before putting together a vision board.

That said, I found creating a vision board helped me be more precise when developing my business start-up and clarified the direction I wanted to take with my brand identity.

I considered creating a vision board earlier; however, I found the process somewhat overwhelming. There were too many variables to consider, and I still didn’t have a clear thought of what my small business would be about, so I put it off until I could make better decisions regarding my business.

Brand identity inspiration covers many topics, so here are seven ideas that I think about when creating an inspirational vision board for other business start-ups.

Who are your clients?

I found it easier to focus on who my clients were and what they did when it came time to create my vision board. As a rule, I identify my ideal clients as ‘creatives’ but I narrowed down my list and searched for artisans and determined many possible jobs where my clients could found and reached.

Not only did this show me what my clients did, but my search results also showed and clarified how and where they created their products. My clients tended to have uncontemporary working environments and might have abnormal working conditions regularly compared to my organized and clean atmosphere.

Your clients’ environments aren’t meant to deter your selected style of images or morph your vision board into something different than what it is. Still, it’s intended to focus your business on your client, rather than yourself. Appealing to your clients is a much better use of your time than determining how you should feel about your business style.

Identify keywords

Determine what your business will provide and write up a list of keywords you would like to associate with your start-up. These can be keywords that describe your services, your business’ aesthetic, how you want clients to feel, etc. 

Knowing your keywords will allow you to search for images that fit your inspiration easily. These don’t have to be long-term keywords, but you might want to elaborate on these short-term keywords and develop them into long-term keywords for the future.

I would use these keywords to search for photos on royalty-free stock photo websites. This way, you will have plenty of variety, and the images will be high-quality. Plus, it will allow you to look for stock photos that you might be able to use on your site in the future!

Imagine your environment

Everyone’s environment is different. You might want your business start-up to lead you on solo-adventures across the world. In contrast, your competitor wants to grow into a local legend and leave a legacy for future generations. Each environment is perfectly fine.

Imagine working on your business start-up in your ideal environment. Searching for inspirational keywords that reflect the prime habitat for you to accomplish your goals is part of what makes your business important to you. You’ll want to include that in your inspirational vision board so you can reach that goal as you grow your business start-up.

The environment you envision can also be flexible. You might have a few places you can see yourself working, and that’s ok too. Just make sure they fill you with contentment and joy when creating your vision board to get the maximum effect.

Composition matters

Look at how the photos you select for your mood board are framed and determine how you want to view your subjects. Your inspirational mood board’s photo selections don’t have to have a rigid viewpoint in place, but each should have similar characteristics. 

Are your subjects focused from a viewpoint above? Where is the subject positioned within the photo? What are some similar themes amongst the images you’ve selected for your inspirational mood board?

Again, while it’s not particularly significant as you develop your mood board, you can still be thoughtful about your photo selection and retain common elements that will impact your brand identity later on for your business start-up.

Find one color

Your brand identity will consist of a few different colors when you develop a color scheme for your small business. To reduce some of the anxiety of picking multiple colors, choose one color to focus on when creating an inspirational mood board. 

This color can be anything, as far as your subject matter, but it should come reasonably close to the color you want for your brand identity to revolve around. Find your perfect color and see if similar photos have colors that you enjoy incorporated into their color scheme. 

When you find a photo that resonates with you or you finish your inspirational mood board for your business, import it into Adobe Color to determine possible color combinations for your brand identity. It might not give you the exact replications of what you were hoping for, but it will narrow down some options and lead you in the right direction.

Categorize your style

This category will likely be somewhat similar to the composition idea I referred to earlier to teach you how to create an inspirational vision board for your business start-up. Hang in there with me, and I will make my point.

The composition of your photo is different from your photo selection style based on how you feel. You can see that some pictures focus squarely on their subject, but it can have other types based on the lighting, coloring, busy-ness, etc. It’s relatively easy to make a different photo with similar characteristics based on the style a photographer wants to convey.

Determine how you want the style of your photos to envision your business start-up’s brand identity. Your business’ style can evolve over time, but determine where you would like to see your brand’s style to go and how to show your business’ style through your photo selection.

Catalog your resources

If you haven’t read any of my other blog posts or seen my Instagram feed for a while, you’ll need to know, I’m somewhat addicted to books and reading in general. I regularly post books and magazines that I find inspirational or helpful to my business or personal lifestyle.

When creating my inspirational vision board for my business start-up, I wanted to bring in the books and magazines that inspire me. Those resources have helped shape my business, and how I want to improve my ideal client’s life, so I included it in my stock photo selection. 

If you gain inspiration from your Instagram feed or a particular Instagram profile, add those inspirations to your vision board. Having inspirational goals will give you more motivation and inspiration as you grow your business start-up. Just remember to use other profiles as inspiration and don’t try to mimic their path to success.

Learning how to make an inspirational vision board for your business start-up can help you learn more about where you want to take your business in the future. It will help solidify a brand identity for your future business.

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