Branding From the Inside Out: Translating Your Essence into Visual Language
How visual storytelling, intuition, and moodboarding can help you design a brand. A conversation with designer Emma Storm ahead of her open session on July 16: 🎨 Your Voice, Your Mood Board.
This conversation isn’t about “building a brand” in the traditional sense, or beating the algorithm for occasional virality. It’s about reconnecting with your essence, especially in moments of change.
If you’re in the middle of a transition — personal, creative, or professional — this conversation is for you.
In preparation for our upcoming session inside the Clarity Journey, I sat down with designer Emma Storm to explore how visual language can unlock emotional clarity, creative flow, and a deeper sense of self.
What follows is a thoughtful (and wildly inspiring) look at moodboarding, intuition, and the magic of letting your feeling lead the design.
Emma’s approach is intuitive, expressive, and deeply personal. She believes that fonts, textures, colors, and composition can speak volumes — especially when words fall short. Ahead of her session, we sat down for a conversation on visual storytelling, embodied branding, and how to design a personal brand that feels like home.
What makes moodboarding such a powerful tool for gaining personal clarity — especially during times of transition or reinvention?
If branding feels abstract, then moodboarding is how we interpret the abstraction.
Each image, texture, visual, and feeling gathered hints at an interconnected collection of distinguishing features to help recognize and differentiate a brand as its own.
Through the freeform expression of moodboarding, one gathers impressions and flashes of insight without having to make a final decision. This allows our creative brain to flourish and express itself without filtration — thus providing clarity.
Have you ever had a juicy story you can’t wait to tell? You start thinking about how to set the scene, build the tension, and land the perfect climax. In this process, you filter what details to leave out and what bits you will emphasize and leave in. Sometimes there’s so much bubbling to the surface you get overwhelmed and wonder if you’ll ever be able to capture it all in the story you will tell. You may even be left speechless.
This is like branding. Moodboarding is how you index the information and your ideas to capture what it is you are most looking to express.
Can you share a moment when a client’s moodboard unlocked a deeper understanding of their story or identity?
My client owns a gem of an authentic Contrology studio called Pasche Pilates. Together, we created her first brand and website.
The project direction used to capture the mood and overall vision of the project showcased mirrors, form, reflection, light and dark, and portholes — all used to express bringing greater harmony to one’s body. These concepts are seen in the organic shapes and porthole feel to the imagery. Additionally, there’s lightness and airiness mixed with shadowy depth in the color and brand imagery to represent all the layers one feels through a personalized Pilates experience.
Without a moodboard, we would not be able to filter abstract feelings through concrete imagery — and in turn capture such personal clarity in the brand.
Fonts, colors, and imagery often say what words can’t. How can we use these elements to express who we really are — emotionally and energetically, not just aesthetically?
An important aspect I keep in mind in my work is branding represents the feeling one gives more than just what the visual itself is.
That’s why it’s important not to start by copying what’s trendy or what your competitors are doing. Instead, start by tuning into your own intuitive response.
Intuition — which can be garnered through something like moodboarding — will ultimately tie a brand together before the designing and defining of one's tone of voice ever takes place. How will you know it’s your intuition? In the moodboarding process, you avoid choosing existing branding, fully formed designs, and extensively comparing yourself to others.
Your branding is an impression. It is a translation of the specific, personal 3D feelings — your services, products, and person — into a 2D landscape limited by letters, colors, shapes, words, and not much else.
How to feel your brand, not just think about it?
Your brand speaks for you when you’re not in the room. If you focus only on how it looks — choosing a single color, typeface, or image based on personal preference (i.e., “this is my favorite color, so it’s my brand color”) — you risk missing the deeper feeling and message behind your work.
When you choose a classic, timeless, or editorial-feeling serif over a clean, modern, playful, or whimsical sans-serif — ask yourself, why? Explain it to yourself.
If you go with bold colors like deep blue and neon yellow, or fire engine red and mandarin orange, versus muted tones like cornflower blue, buttercup, terracotta, or mint — why? Explain it to yourself.
Branding is feeling translated visually.
The energy and emotion behind what we do isn’t just in the individual visual elements — it’s in how we tie them together with intention.
For someone just starting to explore their own visual identity, what are 3 creative prompts to get unstuck and reconnect with their voice?
Here’s where I recommend beginning:
1. Breathe into it.
Start with an exhale. Then two quick inhales and another long exhale. Close your eyes. Ask yourself: What do I really want this to feel like?
2. Turn feeling into image.
Follow that question with: What do those feelings look like to me? Let your intuition respond.
3. Zoom in.
From all the inspiration you’ve collected, choose only three images. Then write down:
The feeling each image gives
A color you’d pull from it
A shape or icon you’d design from it
A typeface that matches that mood
If you feel stuck, ask yourself: What do I actually like? Eliminate the “shoulds,” comparison, assumptions, and choosing for the sake of choosing. Remember: this is your visual identity. You’re allowed to love it.
When we close our eyes, tune out the external visuals, and ask ourselves what we truly want, we create an instant embodiment — and by extension, magnetism — toward what is meant for us.
When you are just starting to explore your own visual identity, it is such a ripe and exciting time. Remember to create the experience you want to have. And when it gets overwhelming, remember to enjoy the process.
Branding should feel like you. And it should feel fun. Now, go create.
This session is an open event, offered as part of Nest & North’s Clarity Journey — a guided experience designed for those navigating life transitions and creative reinvention. Over the course of six sessions, we move through storytelling, creative practice, and personal narrative — all within a supportive, intimate circle.
Each act is an invitation to reconnect with your essence and explore who you're becoming, both personally and professionally.
As we move through the Clarity Journey, we’re not just uncovering the stories that shaped us — we’re learning to express them.
In our second act, we step into the realm of voice and expression — and for this, we’re thrilled to welcome branding and web designer Emma Storm for a hands-on, sensory-rich session designed to bring your inner world to life.
🗓 Session: Your Voice, Your Mood Board
🎙 With: Emma Storm
📅 Date: Tuesday, July 16
🕗 Time: 8:00–9:00 PM EST
📍 Location: Zoom
This free session is capped at 18 spots to keep it intimate.
🎟 Join Us Live: July 16, 8PM EST
Session: Your Voice, Your Mood Board with Emma Storm
In this playful and illuminating Zoom workshop, Emma will guide us through a series of creative prompts to help us:
Translate our voice into visual language
Understand the energy behind our aesthetic choices
Build a mood board that feels like us — not just looks good
Whether you’re clarifying your brand, your story, or simply your next step, this session is here to help you see what’s been inside you all along — and let it take form.
We’ll see you there.
With warmth,
Laís