Setting the Mood

Here at BatesMeron we love going into projects that give us a blank slate for creativity, but we need a device to corral all of our ideas. That’s where mood boards come in.

We use mood boards to capture the entire essence of a theme through fonts, colors, imagery and background tiles. They help us fuse ideas into one direction, allowing us—and our clients—to see the big picture.

Beyond being a delight to put together, mood boards do double duty as the thread that weaves every project element together. It informs all the collateral, from invitations to advertisements, and from videos to event materials. Mood boards are at the very heart of our large-scale, multifaceted projects.

Each year, we put together a variety of mood boards for the Options Industry Conference, organized by the  The Options Clearing Corporation. Up to 18 months prior, we find out the top-secret location and then get started on mood board development, which includes research, music, pop culture—everything pertaining to that locale. This year’s conference is in Austin, TX, taking place April 30–May 2.

Our three different mood boards that we presented to the client—keep reading to see which they chose!

The clients then select their favorite mood board, and we take off from there to create programs, directories, postcards, advertisements, website splash pages and even a video that airs at the end of each year’s OIC to announce the next conference location.

We love seeing all of the hard work we put into our mood boards translate into pieces for OIC and we can’t wait to see how this year’s turn out. As for next year? Our lips are sealed, but we can’t wait to unveil what we have up our sleeves!