Who Your Visuals Hang Out With Matters

Whether you put stock in it or not, you may have heard that the Pantone color of the year is Mocha Mousse. What did you imagine when you heard the name? Probably a chocolate dessert. That’s good. Because if they had described to you that it was a mid-tone, reddish brown you might have pictured any number of other things, and generated an opinion about it. Already, the name Mocha Mousse has given you context on how to think about the color, possibly before you even saw it. And looky there, a picture of dessert right at the top of the page.

Context

With words and images, you can begin to control the context in which people see a visual and therefore how they feel about it. This is what moodboards are for. Every image you include influences all the other images on it. No one image does it all. Say you want to use a blue color that you feel signifies the right things for a project. But out of context, you can't do anything about someone's personal associations with blue. So you might start as Pantone did by naming it something – Innovation Blue, Fairy Woodland Blue – whatever makes sense with the project. Next you could put imagery next to it that reinforces the signifiers you’re using. 

This works to a point. Am I saying you should try to justify a visual that doesn’t make any sense as a signifier? No. No one is going to buy a hot fluorescent orange as a color for an ice company, regardless if you call it Chilly Mango. Wait, hell, I actually kind of like it. But there are plenty of signifiers that could go a lot of different directions depending on their context. Your brand is never ONE thing. It's a collection of signifiers. And it's up to you to build it.

Boardsmanship

I wrote about contrast a while ago. And how it’s not just a matter of literal dark and light, but a helpful idea to pull concept options closer together or farther apart. Because sometimes clients want to feel like they’re choosing between very different options (more contrast), regardless of the number of options. Then again, sometimes you’re narrowing down or need to close them in (less contrast). For example, if you need the client to focus on words, and the visuals are very different, it will be hard for them to make a choice that’s really about the words. 

These are aspects of Boardsmanship. There are decisions you may need to make to concept boards for the sake of the boards. Remember you are helping people manage choices and decisions. Maybe you need to use black and white images in one option to make it feel more different. That’s something that may or may not survive in the final. But it creates contrast with the other concept that uses full color images.

Very often, I find the need to simplify an idea for concept boards. How much information explains the idea, or gets them excited about the idea, without making their eyes glaze over? Is there anything in the boards that they might get hung up on? Sometimes this is unknowable. But edit. Remember that what you put on the page, you can't remove in the presentation, but you can always adjust what you say in the moment.