How do you start designing without brand guidelines?

I once received a brief from a client that went something like: “We don’t have brand guidelines yet, can you do the app interface design first? Just use our company colours as a starting point.”

Without brand guidelines, how would we know what the visual design layer should communicate? With wireframes in hand, here’s how I set about tackling the visual exploration stage of the User Interface (UI) design.

Determine the tone and personality

Using adjectives to explore visual directions, I was able to inject personality to a design’s look and feel. This helped to kick-start discussions around what the visual design could look like, emotions it should invoke and the type of message it has to communicate.

If the app was a person, what type of person would it be?

Will the app be a sociable, innovative and fun-loving person who is playful in nature and explores his surroundings with curiosity?

Or will the app be an orderly, steadfast and trusting person who you can count on to be there when you need her the most?

Create mood boards for each personality

When putting together mood boards, I threw in a mix of photography, typography, UI design, animation, colour palettes and quotes to represent the personalities of different visual directions. The smaller the thumbnails, the better. It allowed stakeholders to mentally visualise the potential design without focusing too much on the details.

InVision was a great tool for putting together the mood board.

These mood boards helped the team facilitate discussions on whether a potential design direction could resonate with the target audience and align with the business objectives.

Originally published on my website at melvinlim.design