Campaign Moodboard Colour, Type and Imagery: How to Choose Each

Key Takeaways

• Storyflow is where to make a brand campaign moodboard component by component: a colour wall of named swatches, a type wall with the real headline, and an image wall of labelled references, one row per direction, beside the brief on one board.
• Choose every component from the brief, not from taste: the brief's mood words set colour temperature and saturation, its channels set type sizes, and its audience sets casting and setting.
• Each direction pushes one of the three components hard and holds the other two to the brand's rules. Lead each of the three directions with a different component, and the client compares three real choices instead of three rebrands.
• Colour: five swatches per direction (brand core, one campaign accent, one neutral), each with a hex code, a role and a share of the layout, checked for contrast at 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text.
• Type: two specimens per direction, set in the real headline at real size, and a note on case, weight, size ratio and line length. The typeface rarely changes; its behaviour does.
• Imagery: 12 to 20 images per direction, each labelled with the one decision it makes (subject, light, setting, framing, styling or treatment) and what to ignore in it.
• A palette, a typeface or an image that works alone can still fail the direction. Test the three together in real formats before the client sees any of them.

How to Make a Brand Campaign Moodboard: 8 Steps for Colour, Type and Imagery

The board looked finished. Then the client said they loved the orange, and nobody could tell whether they meant the accent swatch, the jacket in image 7 or the sunset in image 12. Most moodboard advice stops at "add a palette, some fonts and images". The decisions inside each component are where campaign boards are won or lost, so this guide takes them one at a time, then puts them back together.

1. Put the brief on the board and underline its visual words. In Storyflow, paste the brief into a document beside the walls and pull every mood word, channel and mandatory into one note.
2. Write the fixed list. Logo, core colours, typefaces and any photography rules the brand guidelines set. In Storyflow, this note sits above all three direction rows so nobody flexes what is fixed.
3. Choose which component leads each direction. Imagery leads one, colour leads one, type leads one.
4. Build the colour wall. In Storyflow, give each direction five colour swatches: the brand core, one campaign accent and one neutral, each named, with its hex code, role and share.
5. Build the type wall. Two specimens per direction, set in the real headline at the size it will run, with the case, weight and spacing noted.
6. Build the image wall. Keep 12 to 20 images per direction and caption each with the decision it makes and what to ignore in it.
7. Test the three together. Rough each direction into three formats from the media plan and check contrast, legibility and light on each.
8. Present one row at a time and record each decision. In Storyflow, presentation mode steps through the walls one at a time, and the decisions go into a note on the board with the approver's name and the date.

The rest of this guide is the detail behind steps 3 to 7. For the full brief-to-approval sequence, including how many directions to show and how to run the meeting, read how to make a moodboard for a brand campaign.

The Storyflow 1-of-3 Rule

The rule, defined

The Storyflow 1-of-3 Rule is our editorial recommendation, not a research finding: in each campaign direction, one of the three components (colour, type or imagery) leads and departs from the brand's defaults, and the other two follow the brand's rules closely. On a Storyflow board, the leading component's wall in each row carries a heading that says so ("LEADS: COLOUR"), so the client knows where to look.

Why one component, and not all three

A campaign has to look like the brand and unlike the last campaign at the same time. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, summarised by the ANA, treats colours, logos, fonts and shapes as distinctive brand assets, judged by how many people link them to the brand and how uniquely. A direction that changes colour, type and imagery at once throws away every one of those cues, and it reads as a rebrand. A direction that changes one keeps two anchors, so the audience still knows whose ad it is.

Why the other two hold

Holding is not standing still. A held component still makes campaign decisions inside the rules: the held palette chooses which brand colour leads, the held typeface chooses its case and scale, the held photography style chooses its subject. What it does not do is introduce something the brand guidelines would refuse: a new typeface, a new core colour, a photography style the brand has ruled out.

Lead each direction with a different component

The rule's best use is building three directions that are genuinely different. If all three directions are led by imagery, the client chooses between three photographers. If one is led by imagery, one by colour and one by type, the client chooses between three ways the campaign could feel, which is the decision a moodboard exists to get.

When to break it

Break the rule for a brand relaunch, where the point is to change the identity, or for a sub-brand or limited edition that the brand team has agreed may look different. Break it too when the brief explicitly asks for "something that does not look like us". In each case, write down who agreed, because the brand guardians will ask.

Read the Brief for Colour, Type and Image Clues

The words that decide each component

A brief rarely says "use a warm palette". It says "the end of a long summer day" or "for people who have just moved to the city". Each of those lines implies colour, type and imagery decisions. Pull them into one note before you collect anything, because a component chosen from taste and justified afterwards is the one the client argues with.

Mandatories set the floor

The brief's mandatories (logo position, legal lines, product in shot, colours the client's retailer requires) cut every component's options before taste enters. Write them on the fixed-list note. A colour direction that cannot place the logo on its accent field is not a direction.

Channels decide the formats you will test

List the formats the media plan buys: outdoor, vertical video, feed posts, a web hero, print. Each one tests a component differently: outdoor tests type at a distance, vertical video tests imagery in a tall crop, print tests colour on paper. If you know the formats now, you choose components that survive them.

The brief as walls, with the first swatches already beside the insight: colour chosen from the words, not from a feed.

Colour: How to Choose a Campaign Palette From the Brief

Start from properties, not meanings

"Red means passion" is the weakest way to choose a campaign colour. Wikipedia's survey of colour psychology notes that no specific colour attracts all audiences and that colour meanings vary by culture, product and context. Choose by properties instead: temperature (warm or cool), value (light or dark), saturation (muted or vivid) and contrast between swatches. "The last warm evening of summer" is warm, mid to dark, muted, with gentle contrast; a festival campaign is vivid with hard contrast. Properties are arguable and testable, and meanings are not.

Sample the palette from the hero images

Once the image wall has its three strongest pictures, take the colours from them rather than inventing a palette and hoping the photographs match. In Storyflow, the colour picker's eye dropper samples any colour on your screen, in browsers that support it, and a colour swatch element holds one colour with its name, hex code and RGB value. Sample three or four candidates from each hero image, then cut. Sampling from the light areas of a photograph gives you neutrals; sampling from the subject gives you accents.

How many swatches: five per direction

In Storyflow, give each direction five swatches: up to three brand core colours, one campaign accent and one neutral. Five is enough to show a working palette and few enough that the client can hold it in mind. More than five per direction and the client stops seeing a palette and starts picking favourite colours. If the brand has a single core colour, the fifth swatch is a second neutral, not a second accent.

Roles and shares, not just swatches

A palette without roles invites the client to imagine the accent as a background. Give each swatch a role and a share of the layout: base, support, accent, neutral, text. A common working split is roughly 60 percent base, 30 percent support and 10 percent accent, which keeps the accent rare enough to mean something. Write the share on each swatch's note, and roughly match it in the roughs, because a client approves the proportions they see.

Each swatch connected to the photograph it came from: the client sees why the colour is there.

Brand Palette vs Campaign Palette

A brand palette says what the brand always looks like; a campaign palette says what this one campaign adds and which brand colour leads. In Storyflow, the brand palette is saved as brand colours in the colour picker, and each direction's campaign palette sits as swatches on its own colour wall.

The campaign accent is the main decision

Most campaign palettes change one thing: the accent. Choose it from the hero images or the product, give it a name the team can say ("Late Light Amber", not "orange 2"), and give it a strict role: headlines, the product, the call to action, nothing else. The accent's share is where the leading component shows: a colour-led direction may push the accent to a large field; an imagery-led direction keeps it to a 10 percent detail.

Which brand colour leads is a campaign decision too

A brand with a green and a cream can run a green-led campaign or a cream-led one without changing a single code. Choosing which brand colour carries the base is a real decision that guidelines usually leave open, and it is often enough difference for an imagery-led direction.

When a campaign may add a second accent

Add a second accent only when the campaign has two audiences or two products that need telling apart, and say so on the board. Two accents chosen for taste look like a palette that could not decide.

Colour: Label Every Swatch and Test It Before the Client Sees It

The swatch label format

Every swatch carries the same five facts, in the same order: name, hex code, role, share and where it may not appear. "Late Light Amber, #D98A3D, accent, 10 percent, headlines and product only, never a background." A hex triplet names one of 16,777,216 screen colours, according to Wikipedia's article on web colours, which is exact for screens and says nothing about paper.

Check contrast on every text pair

List every pairing that will carry words (headline on base, body on base, call to action on accent) and test each one. The W3C's contrast minimum guidance asks for at least 4.5:1 between normal text and its background, and 3:1 for large text, defined as 18 point, or 14 point bold. Its non-text contrast criterion asks for 3:1 for the graphical objects needed to understand content. These are web accessibility standards, and they are also a good floor for any screen format: an accent that fails 3:1 against the base will fail on a phone in sunlight too. In Storyflow, write the ratio for each text pair on the colour wall, so the check is visible when the client chooses.

Check it for colour vision deficiency

The US National Eye Institute's page on colour blindness says about 1 in 12 men have colour vision deficiency, and red-green is the most common type. If a direction's idea depends on telling a red from a green (a sale tag against foliage, a warning against a go), a significant share of the audience will miss it. Check the pairs in a greyscale preview: if the accent and the base become the same grey, the contrast is carried by hue alone.

Check it on paper if the campaign prints

Screens show colours that ink cannot. Wikipedia's article on gamut explains that RGB colours outside the CMYK range must be converted to approximations when printed. Bright, saturated accents are the usual casualty: the vivid orange on the board prints duller on the poster. If the campaign prints, ask the printer or the design lead for a printed proof of the accent before the client approves the board, and write the print code on the swatch once it exists.

How a palette fails

• The accent becomes the background in the first layout, because nobody wrote its share.
• The palette was sampled from one famous campaign image, and the client recognises it.
• The colours fight the product: a cool palette around a warm-coloured product makes the product look wrong.
• The palette works on screen and dies in print, or works in daylight photographs and fights the night shots.

Swatches with names, hex and RGB values on the board: the label every colour needs before it is presented.

Typography: How to Choose Type for a Campaign Direction

The typeface is fixed; its behaviour is the campaign

Most brands fix their typefaces in the guidelines, and a campaign that swaps them asks the brand team for an identity decision. What a campaign may choose is behaviour: case (capitals, sentence case, lower-case), weight, the size ratio between headline and body, letter spacing, line spacing, alignment and how the type sits on images. A type-led direction pushes behaviour hard (headlines at five times the body size, tight lines, capitals); an imagery-led direction keeps type quiet so the picture carries the idea.

Three conditions for a campaign display face

Add a campaign display face only when all three hold: the type is the idea (a type-led direction, a poster campaign built on words), the brand team agrees in writing, and the face is licensed for every medium the campaign uses. Keep the brand text face for everything below the headline. A display face carried into body copy is the fastest way to make a campaign hard to read.

Two specimens per direction: the headline and the line under it

Show two type specimens per direction: the headline set in the real campaign line at the size it will run, and the supporting line or body copy beneath it. Never show an alphabet or "Aa" alone: the client cannot judge a typeface from letters, only from words they will read. On paid plans, a board's wall titles and headings can use a chosen font, and fonts can be uploaded, so the type wall's heading can be set in the campaign face itself. For a specimen with real body copy, set it in your design file and place the exported image on the type wall.

Notes the type wall needs

Every specimen gets a note with five facts: typeface and weight, case, size ratio to body, spacing, and the format it was set for. "Brand serif, regular, sentence case, headline 4x body, tracking 0, set for the 48-sheet." Without the format, the client approves a size that only works on the screen they saw it on.

Typography as its own wall, next to the palette and the photography it has to sit on.

Typography: Size, Distance and Line Length by Format

Type is judged at the size and distance it will be read, and every format changes both. Choose the type behaviour per format, and show at least the hardest format on the board.

Outdoor: legibility at a glance

Outdoor type is read in seconds, so weight and spacing matter more than personality. Display typefaces for signs and posters often have high x-heights so they can be read from farther away, as Wikipedia's article on x-height notes, though some research it cites suggests a very high x-height may make word shapes harder to recognise. Test the headline by shrinking the rough to the size of a thumbnail: if you cannot read it there, a driver cannot read it on the road.

Long copy: line length and size

For any format with more than a line of body copy, line length decides readability more than the typeface. Matthew Butterick's Practical Typography recommends an average of 45 to 90 characters per line, including spaces. A web hero or a print advert with 140-character lines reads as a wall, whatever the face.

Phones: the smallest screen is the real one

Most campaign type is read on a phone. Set the feed and video roughs at phone width and judge them there, because a headline that looks elegant on a desktop monitor can be eight pixels tall in the feed.

Typography: Licences and How Type Fails

Check the licence covers every medium

A font licence covers specific uses, and campaigns use many: print, web, apps, broadcast, video, social. A typeface licensed for the brand's website may not cover a TV spot or an app. Open-source faces are often simpler: the SIL Open Font License lets you use fonts in books, posters, artwork, logos and websites. Whatever the source, check the licence before the client approves a direction that depends on the face, and note it on the type wall.

How type fails on a campaign board

• The specimen shows an alphabet, so the client approves a typeface they have never seen in a sentence.
• The size was judged on a desktop monitor, and the headline disappears on a phone.
• A display face carries the body copy, and nobody reads past the headline.
• The type fights the image: busy photographs under thin type, or a calm photograph under shouting capitals.
• The new face was never licensed for video, and the film needs re-typesetting after approval.

Imagery: How to Choose Pictures That Decide Something

The six decisions every campaign image makes

A campaign image is chosen for one decision, not for being beautiful. There are six: subject (who or what, and casting), light (time of day, direction, quality), setting (where), framing (how close, from where), styling (wardrobe, props, colour in the frame) and treatment (grade, grain, contrast). Each image on the wall earns its place by making one of the six clearly. An image that makes none of them is a mood, and a mood belongs in the research folder, not on the board the client approves.

Describe light in numbers the shoot can use

"Warm light" means three different things to a client, a photographer and a gaffer. Name it in terms the crew can reproduce. Wikipedia's article on colour temperature lists tungsten studio lamps at about 3,200 kelvin, vertical daylight at 5,500 to 6,000 K and an overcast sky at 6,500 K. The golden hour is the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset when daylight is redder and softer, and the blue hour falls just before it at dawn and just after it at dusk. A label that says "Light: golden hour, low and behind, no fill" is a shot the photographer can plan.

How many images: 12 to 20 per direction

In Storyflow, keep 12 to 20 images per direction on the image wall: at least two for each of the six decisions, and no more than the client can compare in one look. Collect two to three times that many first, and cut. Fewer than 12 and a decision goes unanswered (usually casting or styling); more than 20 and the client picks favourite pictures instead of a direction. The image count by direction is covered in detail in its own guide.

Mix sources, and record each one

Campaign boards that come from one inspiration feed look like every other board from that feed. Mix photographers' portfolios, film stills, magazine archives, museum collections, your own location scouting photos and past work. Record the source of every image, because the board will leave the building. The US Copyright Office's copyright basics explain that protection starts as soon as a work is fixed in a tangible form, and that using a work you do not own needs a licence or permission, an exception such as fair use, or a public domain work. Creative Commons licences marked NC permit only noncommercial use, which rules them out of a commercial campaign.

Generated images fill gaps; they do not set the standard

AI-generated images are useful for a scene no reference shows: your product in your location at dawn. They are risky as the main evidence for a direction, because they can promise locations, casting and light the shoot cannot deliver. Use generated images to fill a gap, label each one as generated, and cut them as hard as found images.

Images grouped by the decision they make, with the palette they produced beside them.

Imagery: Label, Sequence and Cut

The image label format

Every image gets a caption in one format: the decision, what to take, what to ignore. "LIGHT: low sun behind the subject, no fill. Ignore the location." "CASTING: friends in their late twenties, not models. Ignore the wardrobe." In Storyflow, an image caption stays attached below its image when you move or resize it, so the label travels with the picture.

Sequence the wall in the order the eye reads it

Put the strongest image top left and the six decisions in a fixed order across every direction: subject, light, setting, framing, styling, treatment. When every direction's image wall reads in the same order, the client compares light with light and casting with casting, instead of scanning three different layouts. Keep the rejected candidates in an image stack at the edge of the wall, collapsed, so you can open them if the client asks "did you consider".

The cut, in four tests

• One job: if two images make the same decision, keep the stronger one.
• Producible: if the budget, season, location or talent cannot deliver it, cut it now.
• Not famous: cut any image the client will recognise as someone else's campaign.
• Consistent light: within one direction, do not mix tungsten interiors and midday exteriors unless the contrast is the idea.

How imagery fails

• The board is all subject and no light, so the shoot gets the casting right and the look wrong.
• One famous image anchors the direction, and the client asks for that campaign, including its budget.
• The images were chosen at desktop width, and the hero crop fails in vertical video.
• Generated images set a standard of location and light that the real shoot cannot meet.

Portraits, settings and styling arranged by decision: an image wall the photographer can read without you.

How the Three Components Combine Into a Direction

Check each pair, not just each component

A direction is not three good walls next to each other. Check each pair. Colour and imagery: does the palette come from the photographs, and would it look natural in the shoot? Type and imagery: does the headline sit on the image with enough contrast and quiet space? Colour and type: does the text colour pass contrast on the base and on the accent? A palette, a typeface or an image that works alone can still break the direction when the three meet.

Rough three formats per direction

Put each direction into three formats from the media plan, usually the hardest outdoor or vertical format, a feed post and a web hero: one borrowed image, the real headline in the brand type, the logo in its fixed position, the palette at its shares, and ROUGH in the corner. In Storyflow, place the roughs on a fourth wall at the end of each direction's row, so the client sees the components and then the result.

The combined test

Show a direction's roughs to someone who has not read the brief, for ten seconds. Ask them to name three of the brief's mood words, and to say which brand it is. If they get the words and not the brand, the direction has pushed too many components. If they get the brand and not the words, it has pushed none.

Template: The Colour, Type and Imagery Sheet

Copy this sheet onto the board for each campaign, one column per direction. It is filled in here for Ferrow Cider, a fictional cider brand, for a summer campaign called "Late Light". The brand fixes its wordmark, Ferrow Green #2E4A2F, Cream #F3EBDC, a serif for headlines and a grotesk for body copy.

How to use the sheet

Fill in the fixed column first, from the guidelines. Then fill in the "leads" row of each direction before the rest, so each column has a clear centre. A row where all three directions say the same thing is a held decision; a row where they all differ is where the client is choosing. If every row differs across directions, at least one direction is pushing more than one component.

Worked Example: Ferrow Cider's "Late Light" From Brief to One Direction

Ferrow Cider and its agency are fictional, and the example is illustrative. The brief asks for a summer campaign that moves Ferrow from a pub drink to a drink people take outside after work, across outdoor posters in two cities, vertical video, feed posts and a web hero. Its mood words are "unhurried", "warm", "after hours" and "earned".

The board

The brand team builds one Storyflow board. The brief sits in a document on the left, with the fixed-list note above three rows. Each row is one direction, with four walls: colour, type, imagery and roughs. The leading wall in each row has a heading that says "LEADS". The creative lead, the designer and the photographer edit the board at the same time in the last week, and the brand manager comments after signing in.

Orchard Hour: imagery leads

The image wall carries 18 pictures: golden-hour orchards, friends at a table after work, hands passing a bottle, a dog asleep in long grass. The labels name the light ("low sun behind, no fill"), the casting ("real friends, not models") and what to ignore. The colours come from the photographs: Late Light Amber is sampled from the sun on the bottle. The type stays in the brand serif at a calm size, so the pictures carry the idea.

Russet Field: colour leads

Russet, a deep red-brown taken from the apple skin, fills 60 percent of every layout. The photography is simple and close: product and hands on plain surfaces. The colour wall carries a contrast note for Cream on Russet, which passes for body text, and a printed proof of Russet is requested from the printer before the meeting because the poster runs in print.

Say It Late: type leads

The headline "Stay for the late light" runs in capitals at six times the body size, in the brand serif's bold weight, over wide blue-hour landscapes with low horizons that leave room for words. The type wall carries the headline at three formats and a note that the bold weight is already in the brand's licence.

The decision

The brand manager chooses Orchard Hour and asks to borrow the Russet colour field for the outdoor posters only. The decision note on the board reads: direction Orchard Hour; outdoor borrows Russet at 60 percent; type unchanged; approved by the brand manager, with the date. The team exports the board as a dated PDF for the record, and the image wall becomes the start of the shot list on the same board.

Once the direction is chosen, the image wall turns into the shoot plan on the same project.

Do This in ChatGPT or Claude

You can build most of the three walls from a chat. ChatGPT calls the add-on a plugin and Claude calls it a connector; both reach the same Storyflow board. This route runs on your assistant's own model and plan and uses no Storyflow AI credits. It is separate from the in-app Storyflow AI, which runs inside Storyflow on Storyflow AI credits, builds a moodboard from its "Build a moodboard for my project" workflow, and looks at an image's pixels when you select it (up to 24 at a time).

Install in ChatGPT

Open the Storyflow listing and select Install plugin. Sign in to Storyflow, choose which projects ChatGPT may use, and decide whether it may also make changes; read access is always on. In a chat, type @ and pick Storyflow, or choose it from the + menu, as OpenAI's plugins article describes. Availability depends on your ChatGPT plan, workspace and region, and in a Business or Enterprise workspace an admin manages plugins. The connection ends after 30 days and ChatGPT asks you to sign in again. The ChatGPT moodboard, ChatGPT colour palette and ChatGPT brand board pages cover these jobs from the ChatGPT side.

Connect in Claude

In Claude, go to Customize, then Connectors, select Add and then Add custom connector, as Anthropic's custom connector article describes. Name it Storyflow, enter https://mcp.storyflow.so/mcp and sign in. On Team and Enterprise plans an owner adds it under Organization settings first. Every assistant's setup is on the Storyflow MCP page; the Claude moodboard and Claude brand board pages show this job in Claude.

Prompts for colour, type and imagery

Pick Storyflow first, then paste. Replace Ferrow Cider with your project.

1. "Read the brief on my Ferrow Cider board. Make a table with four columns: the line in the brief, and the colour, type and imagery decision it implies."
2. "Build three rows of walls named Orchard Hour, Russet Field and Say It Late, each with walls titled Colour, Type, Imagery and Roughs, and a heading on the leading wall of each row that says LEADS."
3. "Add a five-colour palette to each Colour wall: Ferrow Green #2E4A2F and Cream #F3EBDC as given, plus one named accent and one neutral for each direction, with a note giving each swatch's role and share of the layout."
4. "For each text and background pair on the Colour walls, calculate the contrast ratio and add a note flagging any pair below 4.5:1 for body text or 3:1 for large text."
5. "On each Type wall, add the headline 'Stay for the late light' as a heading and a note with the case, size ratio to body, spacing and the format it is set for."
6. "Add these reference pictures to the Orchard Hour Imagery wall from the image addresses I paste below, each with a caption in the form DECISION: what to take. Ignore: what to ignore."
7. "Count the pictures on each Imagery wall of my Ferrow Cider board and flag any wall outside 12 to 20."
8. "What changed on my Ferrow Cider board since Monday, and who changed it?"

What lands on the board, and what does not

Walls, headings, notes, tables and colour palettes land on the board, and pictures arrive from image addresses. A photo you attach in a ChatGPT chat does not reach Storyflow, so ask the assistant for an upload link for the board and add your own location photos there. AI image generation is not available through the plugin; it runs in the in-app AI on Pro and Max. The plugin cannot read board comments. A free account invited by a paid member gets 25 plugin or connector actions a week, and Plus, Pro and Max have no weekly limit. The guide to a campaign moodboard with ChatGPT or Claude runs this route end to end.

What to check by hand

Look at every picture yourself; an assistant cannot judge taste or fit. Check every hex code against the brand guidelines, and recheck any contrast ratio the assistant calculated with a contrast checker before you rely on it. Check the rights on any picture a client might want to use. Check that each direction really leads with a different component, because an assistant asked for three directions tends to make three variations of one.

The same moodboard, reached from ChatGPT through the plugin or from Claude through a custom connector.

Where to Build It: Storyflow vs a Design File, a Slide Deck and an Inspiration Feed

Storyflow comes first in this comparison because it is our product and because the brief, the colour, type and image walls, the roughs and the decision sit on one board the client opens by link with no account. The rest are ordered by how often teams use them for this job. The guide compares kinds of tool rather than brands on purpose.

A Storyflow board

A Storyflow board is best for the stage between the brief and an approved direction: the brief, three rows of component walls, the roughs and the decision note share one canvas, and the image wall becomes the shot list afterwards. Its real limit for this job is typesetting: body copy on the board uses the board's own text styles, so detailed specimens come in as images from a design file, and there is no colour management or print proofing. Choose a different kind of tool when the specimens must be pixel-exact typesetting reviewed by a type-literate design team.

A design file

A design file, the place to build exact roughs once the direction is chosen, holds the brand's colour and type styles to the pixel. Its limit for moodboarding is that the brief, the reasons and the labels live elsewhere, and three loose directions take longer to sketch there than to arrange on a board. Choose a design file for the roughs and the final assets, and place exports on the moodboard.

A slide deck

A slide deck is right for presenting one approved direction to a wider audience in a fixed order, and for teams whose procurement process needs a deck file. Its limit is comparison: three directions with four walls each become twelve slides the client cannot see side by side. Choose a slide deck for the roll-out presentation after the Storyflow board is signed.

An inspiration feed

An inspiration feed is the fastest place to discover references, often on a phone. It cannot hold swatch roles, type specimens, captions with decisions or roughs, and popular images recur on many boards. Choose an inspiration feed for collecting, then cut and label the keepers on the board.

A whiteboard app

A whiteboard app suits a live session where the strategist, designer and client sort references together. Its limit is structure: without component walls and labels, a workshop board sprawls. Choose a whiteboard app for the sorting workshop, then build the directions on a board made to be presented.

A desktop reference viewer

A desktop reference viewer is the fastest way for one person to arrange and cull hundreds of images on their own machine, including offline. It holds no palettes, specimens or client link. Choose one for the private cull, then bring the keepers to the board.

Mistakes and Fixes

Mistake 1: A palette taken from one photograph's dominant colours

Automatic extraction from one image tends to return muddy mid-tones. The fix: sample by hand from three hero images, choose by property (temperature, value, saturation), and cut to five.

Mistake 2: An accent with no share

The client imagines the accent as a background, and the first layout uses it that way. The fix: write the share on the swatch ("10 percent, headlines and product only") and match it in the roughs.

Mistake 3: No contrast check until production

The direction is approved and the text fails on the accent. The fix: write the contrast ratio for every text pair on the colour wall before the meeting.

Mistake 4: An alphabet instead of a headline

"Aa" and the alphabet tell the client nothing about how the campaign will read. The fix: set the real campaign line at the size it will run, in two specimens per direction.

Mistake 5: A display face nobody licensed for video

The film arrives and the type has to be replaced. The fix: check the licence for every medium in the media plan before the face goes on the board, and note it on the type wall.

Mistake 6: Mixed light in one direction

Tungsten interiors next to midday beaches make a direction nobody can shoot in one look. The fix: name the light in each image label, and keep one light per direction unless the contrast is the idea.

Mistake 7: Three directions that change everything

All three directions push colour, type and imagery, and the client sees three rebrands. The fix: lead each direction with a different component.

Mistake 8: Components judged one at a time

The palette, type and images each pass, and the direction fails because the headline cannot sit on the photograph. The fix: rough three formats per direction and check each pair of components on them.

Mistake 9: Generated images as the main evidence

The direction is approved on a scene the shoot cannot produce. The fix: use generated images only to fill a gap, label them as generated, and keep real references as the core of each image wall.

Generated product shots are useful for a gap; label them as generated before the client sees the wall.

What Storyflow Does Not Do for a Campaign Moodboard

Storyflow is built for choosing and approving a direction and planning what follows. For the components themselves, these limits are real:

• No colour management, CMYK conversion, spot colour library or print proofing. Hex and RGB live on the swatches; print codes come from your design lead or printer.
• Project fonts apply to a board's wall titles and headings on paid plans; detailed type specimens with body copy come in as images from a design file.
• The eye dropper works only in browsers that support it.
• No format templates or automatic resizing for roughs; draw them on the board or place exports from a design file.
• No approval status, version compare or proofing mark-up on images. Record decisions in a note with the approver's name and date, and keep a dated board PDF as the record.
• No native desktop or mobile app; Storyflow runs in the browser and is best built on a laptop.
• No AI image generation through the ChatGPT plugin; in-app AI image generation is on Pro and Max.
• Storyflow is paid-only during early access. Plus is $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly) with the in-app AI and unlimited uploads; anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free, without the in-app AI. Prices are on the pricing page.