Stylescapes - What Is It & How To Create One

0:00stylescapes are a great way to minimize client provisions and get your work approved Faster by your client how let me show you today I'm going to talk to you about stylescapes what they are why they matter how are they different from mood boards and how do you create one essentially stylescapes are a more detailed and elevated version of a mood board It's a combination of images text patterns packaging textures and other things that will help your clients and you actually get a very good feel of what the brand is going to look like so I'm like a mood board which tends to be a collection of inspirational photos

0:42that reflect the general feel of the brand a stylescape really focuses on more specific examples so besides inspirational photos it could include typography examples a full purpose color palette pattern ideas basically a full creative direction for a branding project in my case I tend to present three different style Scapes with different feels different personalities to my client so that then they can choose the direction will pursue and I can then go and design their brand concept based on that direction so let's jump into figma and look at an actual style Escape together that I created for a client all right so here we are in figma and I'm going to show you an

1:22example of a real client badass rebellion and I'll show you these three Styles caves that I created for them which one they ended up choosing and then I will also show you how did that translate in a visual identity and website so here we have a mood board that I created after our strategy call basically on that call we jumped into Pinterest and we just looked at a couple of images and selected a couple of images that my client liked I wanted to understand what is their vision of their brand if they have one clients don't always have one but in this case we had some good suggestions but as you can see

2:00from this smooth board there isn't really one clear Direction there isn't really one creative direction to follow we as designers can see some patterns for example that there was a dominance of cysts and serif fonts that there are a lot of different curved lines here and here in the pattern we can see some hand-drawn elements here but then when it comes to the colors it's a little bit all over the place there's pinks there's yellows there's beige there's blue and then there's also pastel colors here and here it's it's a little bit confusing and it's very confusing for your client too because your client is not a

2:43designer and most probably they're also not a creative so it's hard for them based on a mood board like this to really Envision what the creative direction of the brand is going to look like that's where stylescape really becomes useful because in addition to inspirational images it also has a full color palette fun suggestions and other design elements that really create a detailed image detailed creative direction for the brand so before we look at the starscapes I created for the client let's look at some of the foundations of a stylescape typically a stylescape has a horizontal layout mine is 5400 by 1080 it's basically 5 1080 by

3:211080 squares next to each other but I've also designed vertical style Scapes the reason why most allscapes are horizontal is to make it easier to print it out lay down on the table and present it to the client on an in-person meeting however most of my clients are overseas and I know that they're looking at the creative Direction on their screen on their phone on their iPad or on their computer so create whatever works best for you and the client the most important thing to remember is that a stylescape has lots of different elements that create a good visual representation of what the creative direction for the brand is going to look

4:04like so astalski would have color suggestions fonts suggestions maybe already chose it's hype hierarchy and you can show how it's going to look like on the website images patterns client Avatar to really help humanize the brand collateral examples digital applications Etc the purpose released create a visual aesthetic that could then be carried on in producing the visual identity so now let's look at the three different styles caves I created for this client what I would love for you to do is to look at the starscapes and try to to guess which one did the client ended up going for one thing that you need to know before

4:44you make that choice is that badass Rebellion is a business run by three female psychologists and they work with middle-aged women to help them for midlife their motto is that midlife is not the end it's only the beginning of a beautiful life ahead so now that you know the target audience for this brand which of these directions which of these Styles case do you think the client chose to then translate into their visual identity keep that number in mind because what I want you to do is at the end of the video when you see the reveal to leave a comment and let me know whether or not you guessed right but no

5:25cheating all right so was it stylescape number one number two or number three now let's look at Starscape number one so with this one we went for a very modern very hip very cool looking um creative Direction one thing I knew before I started designing those Styles cases that the clients wanted a very vibrant looking brand they wanted vibrant colors with a little bit of sass so this translated into all three of the creative directions but they still have a very different look and personality to each of them this first soundscape as I said is very modern it's very hip and I wanted to play around with the idea that

6:04even though our target audience is a little bit older we can create a very young looking brand inspired a lot by the modern tech startups we see those colors often in that industry or female owned communities uh to try and balance it out so this creative direction is very inspired and driven by typography typography plays a big role in this creative Direction but I also wanted to balance out the clean typography and add a little bit of imperfection to it with handwritten hand-drawn elements so you can see it here for example we have little hand-drawn elements to as I said add this idea of imperfection because

6:48one thing that my client helps their clients with is to feel imperfectly perfect right and I wanted their brand to translate that as well with hand-drawn elements so in this soundscape we have a color palette we have fun suggestions I also wanted to show them how those fonts could translate to their website with their call to actions could look like that we can highlight certain elements in their text as well we also have those curved lines here that we're actually inspired from the mood board that we saw earlier I wanted to show them how we can play with typography again to create a logo then I show them an example of a pattern

7:29then how this could be applied to their social media assets an example of a decorative element for the pictures on the website and you can see throughout we have those hand-drawn elements that just add a little bit of personality to the brand and as I said adds this little touch of imperfection to to an otherwise very clean looking brand so that's for Creative Direction number one for stylescape number one with style skip number two I wanted to go a little bit in a different direction in a retro Direction but not retro to the point where it feels old school just read for enough to feel it fun and inspiring we

8:13also have a very different color palette here and the blue acts as a grounding collar badass Rebellion although they are very sassy they're full of Personality they're also here to support their clients and they have this very grounded nature to them so this is exactly what this color the role that this color plays in this creative Direction without it the brand would feel very loud and very in your face and probably a little bit too much for what we're trying to accomplish here so you can see how the blue actually acts in the brand how it's incorporated into their call to action and we're not going

8:50for a very bright blue here we specifically chose a very common blue that plays well with the other colors other important elements in this creative direction are those stickers that you can see here and right here as well this is the Retro element that I told you about I thought it would be fun for this creative direction for this stylescape to actually create a series of branded stickers that the client could use on their social media on their website but also in person with their clients for their events and their live Workshop it's something that they can send to clients and something that it's just a little fun element to the brand

9:29so we have some stickers here and then we also have these banners uh here that I thought could be fun to replicate on their website as well as announcement bars or something like that so what I wanted this Starscape to reflect is power its energy it's fun but at the same time it's support and groundness and finally with the third style skate we have a very different personality once again we're introducing a complete different color palettes that focuses a lot on the greens we use very rounded shapes again even the call to action buttons have those very rounded corners but you can see that typography still

10:13plays a an important role in this creative Direction but the general feel of the brand is very different it's very happy it's very Lively it kind of feels like a big belly laugh you know it feels like a breath of fresh air it's much lighter it doesn't have the sassy the same sassy elements but it has this very supportive reassuring side to it so we as I said we're going with a different color palette here you can see that the typography is very clean and more rounded so if you look at the typography form style Escape number two for example even though it's a Sans serif it's quite

10:58a heavy Sans area to really show All That Power and personality that this creative Direction has whereas in this case we're going for a very rounded font that feels just very light and very flowy another big part of this creative direction are color blocks and big rounded shapes that we can use as part of their of their brand in general what I went to this creative direction to feel like is to feel very safe very approachable very light with the hope that this inspires the client's target audience to feel the same through the work that my client does so there you go these are the three starscapes I created

11:43for the client now at this point the goal for myself and the client is to choose the creative direction that we want to pursue it doesn't mean that I'm gonna jump straight into designing sometimes we still need to refine some elements maybe work on on the collar palette a little bit more look for some more inspiration so it's really a collaborative process with the client to get just the right creative Direction before I start designing so as promised I'm gonna tell you which creative Direction the client ended up choosing and how did we translate that into the visual identity and the website but before that once again look at these

12:24starscapes and try to guess which one did the client choose and then in the comments let me know if you guessed right the client ended up going with stylescape number two they personally love the look and feel of this creative Direction but they also thought that their target audience will feel very connected to it as well they love the idea of the stickers they love the blue color to balance out the pinks and in general this really felt like like them now let's see how that creative Direction actually translated into visual identity and and their website so this is their final brand board and you can see their final logo here at the

13:06bottom there the sub Mark a Randle here with their tagline from dead last to badass you can see the different stickers we created together we ended up creating some more as well as some hand-drawn illustrations as well and also just a little artwork of their tagline again here at the bottom and this is how we translated the visual identity to their website so they have quite a lot of written content which meant that we had to be careful with how we actually designed the website to ensure that it's easy to read and easy to digest the brand has very vibrant colors which we have to be careful with

13:45so it doesn't feel overwhelming so our goal was to create a very airy and very light site but still include all of the brand elements and still have that Sassy badass personality that we're going for so you'll see some familiar things here for example the header font is the font that I suggested in the stylescape so we brought it over but we also added an additional handwritten style font to add to that badass Rebel sassy personality that the brand has I also sprinkle their brand acid throughout the page just so it looks a little bit funkier a little bit more interesting and you will find that those banners we also brought them

14:25over from the style skate because the clients really enjoyed it and finally as you scroll down you'll also find how we apply the stickers so here for example we use them for custom check marks but here at the bottom we just added them as additional decorative elements on the site so as I said stylescapes are great to help the client visualize their brand and get a better feel for it before you start designing personally it really helped me reduce revision requests and ensure that I deliver a very strong and in-depth concept following the one concept method based on the client preferences so are you using stylescapes

15:01in your design process or maybe that's something you're considering doing in any case share your thoughts in the comments and check out our brand Mastery course to become an even better brand designer the link is under this video and I will see you in the next