Branding Inspiration - Colors, Mood Boards and Logos | Lindsay Marsh | Skillshare
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Branding Inspiration - Colors, Mood Boards and Logos

teacher avatar Lindsay Marsh, Over 500,000 Design Students & Counting!

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Class Promo

      0:38

    • 2.

      Logo Inspiration

      2:58

    • 3.

      Mood Board and Color Inspiration

      4:30

    • 4.

      Creating Your Mood Board in Canva

      4:15

    • 5.

      Creating Your Color Palette

      2:56

    • 6.

      Applying Your Color Palette in a Logo Design

      5:08

    • 7.

      Ready to Dig Deeper Into the Logo Design Process?

      0:35

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About This Class

I wanted to create a class that can help you jump start your brand creation process. I wanted to show you what fantastic logo design and branding looks like. This class is short, but packed full of branding that will encourage you to raise the level of expectations for your own brand or logo design.

I even teach you how to create mood boards and create your brand's color palette. Most of all, I made this a fun dive into the branding and design process with tidbits of advice and guidance along the way. So let's learn together! 

I also offer a wide variety of classes that can help you get started in your brand creation journey. Feel free to check out my profile to find a class that matches what you are looking for. 

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Meet Your Teacher

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Lindsay Marsh

Over 500,000 Design Students & Counting!

Teacher

I have had many self-made titles over the years: Brand Manager, Digital Architect, Interactive Designer, Graphic Designer, Web Developer and Social Media Expert, to name a few. My name is Lindsay Marsh and I have been creating brand experiences for my clients for over 12 years. I have worked on a wide variety of projects both digital and print. During those 12 years, I have been a full-time freelancer who made many mistakes along the way, but also realized that there is nothing in the world like being your own boss.

I have had the wonderful opportunity to be able to take classes at some of the top design schools in the world, Parsons at The New School, The Pratt Institute and NYU. I am currently transitioning to coaching and teaching.

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Class Promo: I wanted to create a class that helps jump start your branding process. I wanted to show you what fantastic logo design and branding looks like. It's glasses short but packed, full of branding that will encourage you to raise the level of expectations for your own brand and logo design. I even show you how to create new boards and color palettes to kick start your branding inspiration, so let's learn together. 2. Logo Inspiration : When we talk about brands, we have to talk about logos. One of my favorite types of logos is ones that use negative space. The's logos do not ignore the background. They embrace it. They use elements of the white space left over in the background to create something very unique. It's not obvious at first glance, but once the user sees it, they can't unsee it. Take, for example, the classic FedEx logo. You see the arrow? It seems really obvious after we find it. But I looked at the aesthetics trucks for years and never saw the arrow until someone pointed it out. Take, for instance, this discount logo not only is the in unique, it also makes up the percentage sign which ties back into the main branding can even apply animation to this kind of clever double meaning. Take. For example, this time logo that uses the colon is the I letters become objects and objects become letters. Negative space convey. Be very simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can put a simple letter box and be able to have something much better than just having the letter stand. Loans. This one's one of my favorites. It actually uses a picture of a rabbit and simplifies it a little bit to make a really cool symbol. I love this one because there's two different levels here. There's the negative space that's created with the end that creates a very readable think word. But there's also think. Think about it. You have to look a little bit longer to kind of see the meaning of the logo. I love that double. This is a really quick local example I created to kind of show the negative space and the double meaning in action and see the end in the logo. But do you also see Z that, along with the negative space created at the top of the end with the zipper, you have this double meaning with Z and the end and a little bit of negative space? Both of those elements put together make this logo a little bit extra special. I love to see letters make up objects as well. This is probably one of my most favorite leg was of all time. The local name is paranoia, but you see this little bit of a J that comes down below the eye. It's kind of like we're paranoid, like what kind of ceased seeing something? But we're not really I love it so much. Some double meetings and symbols are obvious on some Take a few seconds to kind of realize it, but I think the ones where it takes a few seconds to realize it I think they mean more when you find it. This is not just a scribble Lee script be, but it also makes up the outline of a banana. Who's gonna forget a logo like this? This is pretty neat. I think this is why this method works so well on branding. I found the majority of these local inspirations on a website called dribble dot com. The R i B b b l e dot com So go check it out for your own logo inspirations. 3. Mood Board and Color Inspiration: we're looking for branding inspiration. Look no further than nude boards, mood boards, air beautiful collections of photography textures and voters and color palettes. Before you start designing a logo, picking out typography and picking your headline photos. Mood boards are a great way to source all your inspirations and ideas for your brand through a picture of a plant or nature that seems to inspire something for your future brand. Is there a product? Appel. Oh, a couch. Anything that kind of inspires textures, colors and geometric patterns. Is there a rock that has beautiful hues of orange and brown? She would adapt to your color scheme or palette for your brand. Let's say we're in charge of developing a brand for a men's luxury shoe company. We want to start sourcing our photos. And when we develop a Brad, we really want to get into the mindset of the kind of consumer we're gonna be reaching. Where did they get to be interested in what kind of things resonate with them? These are the things we need to include in our mood board. Are there textures that kind of inspire this mindset or this personality they may have a world traveler. Do they appreciate art? What kind of architecture do they like? What kind of hotel would they like to stay in? And we use all this to create one unified Mood board that will be the source of inspiration for our branding, typography and color palette. For several programs I used to create mood boards. One of them is Canda, which I'm demonstrating right here. I'm able to kind of drag and drop things to kind of figure out what matches the best with what I'm wanting to accomplish with this brand. Once we figure out the right combination photos, I use a really great website from Adobe called color dot adobe dot com, and it's free for anybody to use. But I can actually import to Mood Board in, and you could actually find color inspirations from the different photos that you kind of curated is being ableto pick color palettes. Not at random, not because they go well together, but because there's some kind of inspiration for those colors. So where will this woman live? How does she decorates her house? What's her couch like? Does she like to cozy up to a big, thick wool blanket that she loved coffee with beautiful flowers. Does she appreciate nature? And she relaxed. Chill. Does she take photos of food? Is she a foodie? Does she appreciate the taste and rich textures of food? All these little things. They come together to really help us source or photos and come up with a brand that resonates with who we went to Target and the person who is really gonna be purchasing this brand mood boards air great inspirational kick starters as it provides the basis for color palette. So the mood board I created here for this feminine brand, I'm gonna be able to pull that into adobe color and pull out these beautiful kind of grays and neutral tones. Once we put together our inspirations, we also develop a color palette. We really dive a little bit deeper into branding process. You get into fonts, symbols, anything now else that will really help us put this whole brand package together. I couldn't do it any other way, and I couldn't do it in any other order. Going out of order messes up with the whole branding process Brand's lack inspiration if they weren't originally inspired by something to begin with when it all comes together with a unifying thread, a theme and an idea, I think people really see three authentic nature of your branding process. It's really important. A great website to check out is Pinterest dot com. Just type in mood boards and press search, and you'll be able to find some really great inspiring mood boards to get you started. And a lot of these mood boards aren't just us where photos put together, but they use type and other things and there to kind of create a really cool mood board. You're here because you need inspiration, a kick in the pants to get started. So go ahead and create that mood board, and I give you permission to be authentic Hafun and create an amazing brand. 4. Creating Your Mood Board in Canva: Okay, So let me show you how to actually put together you Marie board in Canberra, you canoes, photo shop or illustrator to put together and mood board. But I recommend Can va because not only is it free to use, it's also very easy to drag a drop photos. And that's not always the case with voter shop. And this comes with some preloaded templates as well. So what I like to do is I open up a new document when I do mood boards. I like to do perfect squares because it's a lot easier to load your templates that way. So anything that's gonna be a square dimension. So this Social Media graphic is 800 bite on pixels. Let's go ahead and load that end, and we're just going to simply go to elements and then go to grids. And when I do mood boards, I like to do ones with varying sizes of photo so I can do textures and different things at different sizes. So I'm just gonna go ahead and pre select one of distracting it over, and since we have a square dimension, it loads perfectly. We don't have to do any adjustments to the photo grid. So I went ahead and pre uploaded a bunch of photos to use for a photo board. Um, and let's go ahead and dragsholm in. So I'm gonna be creating my mood board. I kind of like this gold color. So I like to drag colors into the smaller squares. Let's say I like the silver as well and let's us go ahead and start dragging and dropping so that really like this. And whenever a photo doesn't fit perfectly, all you to do is double tap and you'll be able to adjust and then do the check mark. So I want to kind of figure out a combination of things I want for my new board. Things I'm so inspired by nature. I need to have people shot. Kind of my persona of the brand I want to create. This woman could also put products in here that you admire things you like. Actually think I like this one a little better because it's got that golden there. Make that a little bit bigger. Yeah, click OK, something, a lot of purples and golds and greens, so I think that might be kind of an inspiration for the color palette will end up developing for this brand. What else? Hollis. Drag this in. We already have our person shots. Let's drag. You don't have any kind of home to core, so I have to nature five. Too many nature photos. I'm very inspired by nature for this one, but let's swap out one or something a little different. Maybe I could just do this texture of wood. That's kind of my mood board I've developed so far. Of course, it's really easy to drag and drop these and rearrange them. If I want to crop this a little more zoom or and on the purple, that's what I'm kind of going for here. That purple purple flower click. OK, I really like the muted tones of this photo. That's why I picked it. See, that's probably pretty good. I really like her scarf. I love the texture of that. So I'm gonna keep that in here. You zoom in a little bit more on that type. That's kind of type I want to go for. So could soon. And I don't want her fingernails. Let's zoom in a little bit more on this photo So we're really getting that brick texture really like the brick part of this photo. So let's accentuate that. Perfect. So we have our mood board. All we have to do is go to share, and we're gonna be able Teoh export it as a JPEG or can download it as a J pick or P and G . So I'm gonna go ahead and down letters a J peg, and then I'm gonna load it into adobe color and I'll be able Teoh, find my color palette. 5. Creating Your Color Palette: Okay, so I am actually a color dot adobe dot com. This is a fantastic free resource. So let me go ahead and import the mood board I just created in Canada. We're gonna be able to select the perfect color palette for a brand. So let me go ahead and load it in, so I just downloaded it. Okay, so ah, let's go ahead and drag. All you have to do is drag these little icons around. It's gonna have one for each photo, and it's gonna protect the average most predominant color in that photo. So for this one, it shows that beautiful yellow are deep, burnt orange kind of color, more of a brownish hue. So I really like that. Some of them, sometimes I do a default that works really well, but they do the most dramatic colors of photo, so you might have a combination that's a little bit too jarring. So let's do some adjustments to figure out what are we inspired by the most in this photo. I definitely think we have two of these of the gold. I don't think that's necessary. Let's find one really nice gold hue. So let's go ahead and just shift that over here for a second. So I'm gonna go ahead and find what I think is a really nice gold hue. There's also this orange that I really like. Maybe we can have two shades and a lot of times the branding you don't wanna have too many colors that are that are two different. You want to kind of have some shading. We have a darker color, but in the same, um, color family. When have a lighter version and that works really well of advertisement, you only have to juggle winner two colors of different shades as opposed to juggling three or 45 different, totally different colors, says it just makes more for more cohesive add development. So I really love these purples. I like these different shades. I really like how they go well with the gold. And I really like this neutral color that I got from this brick that I really liked. And there's also the silver if there's might be one that works there, but I really like this brick. It's a little bit, um, has some warmer tens, almost a stone color. So I really like this one. I think we can maybe mess with the yellow a little bit. I really like this a lot, so I'm pretty happy with it. Um, I can actually take a screenshot of this, so I'm just gonna take a screenshot. I have a Mac, so I'm just doing command shift four, and I'm able to kind of snap a screenshot of this entire page. And what's great is I can bring this into illustrator and photo shop, and I can actually use the eyedropper tool to be able to select this to start kind of creating my logo, mark. So now that we have our inspiration for a mood board, we have our color palette selected. I can now create a logo. 6. Applying Your Color Palette in a Logo Design: so I'm actually in Adobe Illustrator. You could actually do this in a lot of different programs. You can actually do it in canvas. Well, and I teach at Canada class and an illustrator class, so you could be able to dive a little bit deeper into these programs with my classes. But I just want to kind of show you where I go after I developed my mood board. Now I have my color palette. And so I I designed this little logo that I had in an earlier video, and I converted it to Gray scale, and I wanted to kind of use this as kind of inspiration for my color palette. I want to show you how it can apply it to a logo mark. So I'm gonna just start kind of messing around with the colors to kind of see what works best. So I really like this purple. I think purple is going to be the dominant color with this orange maybe being kind of that secondary compliment color. And with the gray kind of being background extra something Ah, I could use. That's not just playing white. I can use this nice warm gray so I'm gonna go ahead and highlight and to start to experiment. Just have the eyedropper tool. And this is just a screenshot I brought in. And this is just what I've already kind of done before. I'm gonna go ahead and click on this purple and I can already start to I've done this for so long. I can already start to see kind of some potentials with colors. But I wonder if I could do that Gray who? That doesn't work out. See, it's nice to have two shades who have kept two shades of each so I could have this nice softness to this is Well, let me actually make this. Let me zoom in just a tiny bit. And if you want to get technical with color, do 300%. You want to get technical with the adobe color, you can actually open up adobe color. Double click on whenever you ah selected your color palette. Guess you double click and find hex codes. It can also get the art RGB values so you can put that right into illustrator right over here, and you could find the exact color match instead of doing the eyedropper tool. It's a little more exact. So let me play around. I wonder if black or maybe even white I like that. Let me do the lighter shade or the darker. Now it's too dark, too dark. But I wonder if I could do the sub line text. I almost wonder if What if I do a lighter shade? So we're just playing around here with different options, using their color palette. It's kind of nice. I like this so far. Like that lighter shade. I definitely want to make that. That is the darker shade. Let me bring this. Make this a lighter shade. That is the lighter shade. Okay, How's the gray look? Oh, well, like that. Need to incorporate this kind of gold mustard, orange color. I wonder if that will work right there. And what I like to do is create a couple of different options. So I'm gonna actually reduce the size and see how this looks at a much smaller size. Sometimes that can help me. So we kind of switch these around. Do that has some potential. Here, let me make this the lavender, the lighter color. Let me actually make that white and let me make this a neutral color. Mm, kind of like I like this right here. That's an option as well, so it can continue to experiment. Let's do one more for practice. We actually move these over to the side, so I go over the pin tool and typography and everything in my other classes. I teach. So if you're interested to dive a little deeper, you can. Okay, let's do that neutral. Let's make that within the same Shea. Just just darker. Kind of like the Purple tax. But let me do a lighter color, and you may find out when you get to this process of colors not working out for you, you can bypass that color. This is when you're doing your logo Mark and the colors aren't working. It's just not driving, you know, change up the color. So let's say I like the purples. I don't really like these two color. That's fine. We can try out some different colors or go back into adobe and try to pull out another color we think will go well with purple. So this is kind of a quick example. If you want to dive a little deeper toe logo design else have a local design class where I get into ah, adobe illustrator and half fun. I also have a can of a class and you can learn how to do look. Good sign, Camba. Just like this arm. So hopefully you've enjoyed this. 7. Ready to Dig Deeper Into the Logo Design Process?: feeling inspired. Yet have you created your mood board in your color palette already and ready to start with the logo design process, I offer a local design class that goes into the process of how to create a local and adobe illustrator. I also offer array of other design courses, so check it out on my profile.