Moodboarding as a Web Designer: Using AIGA
What is AIGA?
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization dedicated to the professional world of graphic design. The institution aims to advance the design industry by providing resources, education, and networking events for designers nationwide.
Their Website
AIGA's website serves as a great place for designers to offer resources, articles, and events related to graphic and interactive design. Members who join can participate in mentorship programs, conferences, and more. AIGA has become one of the most prominent resources for professional graphic designers in the United States.
The Project
As a web designer, it is essential to understand the several steps and principles that go into creating a website. One must understand the feelings, aesthetics, and thoughts that the website aims to provoke through its organization's mission and goals. To understand this process better, I decided to reconstruct it into a small project. The purpose of this project is to construct a mood board that captures the potential sources of inspiration for the designers of the AIGA website.
What is a Mood Board?
A mood board is commonly used to provide an insightful window into the aesthetic and emotional direction behind a website's design. This mood board may include images, colors, textures, typography, and phrases. The chosen visuals endorse the intended mood, style, and overall theme that guide a designer's choices moving forward. By creating a mood board, the final website design will be intentional and specific.
AIGA’s Moodboard
For AIGA's potential mood board, I came to understand many of their goals and aesthetics. When reading through their website, I found several factors that they emphasize:
Professional development of designers
The greater understanding of the value of design
Graphic design resources & inspiration
Membership & Community
It was important for me that when constructing this mood board, I included visuals that represented AIGA's primary factors. It was also essential that I captured the overall aesthetics of the site. While AIGA is very professional and networking-focused, it also holds colorful and geometric displays of design. This was included in the final mood board.
AIGA's Design Elements
Color
When it comes to colors, many designers might turn to Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions, a color wheel that depicts various hues and saturations of each color with a corresponding emotion. While this tool is valuable for understanding human emotions, it may not be as effective as traditional color psychology in the realm of design.
Plutchik's model is rooted in complex and nuanced emotions, making it challenging to translate directly into effective color choices. For example, AIGA's primary colors are navy blue, pink, and black. According to Plutchik's model, these colors might convey pensive, bored, and remorseful emotions (Interaction Design, 2021).
Conversely, traditional color psychology offers a more direct and intuitive approach. It associates colors with specific emotions and moods, suggesting a more straightforward and actionable guide for designers. According to traditional color psychology, AIGA's color palette aligns with notions of creativity, trustworthiness, and success, which resonates with its primary goals and aesthetics (Keane, 2022). These insights were integrated into the mood board with the hope of conveying the message of creativity, trust, and success.
Sans-serif
AIGA prioritizes fonts and colors that enhance readability, making it a prime choice for effective design methods. They employ sans-serif fonts in their typography to efficiently convey their message.
Gestalt Principles
Revisiting their website, one can see that AIGA adheres nicely to the Gestalt Principles. These design principles include elements such as proximity, similarity, and closure, all of which enhance the user experience in web design. AIGA thoughtfully organizes its content into logical and meaningful groups, ensuring cohesion and elevating aesthetics. The application of these principles aids in conveying their information effectively while also aligning seamlessly with AIGA's dedication to promoting the value of design.
Final Comments
As I explored the crafting of a mood board for AIGA's website, I discovered the crucial roles that color, type, and proximity play in its message and aesthetics. Upon further exploring the color psychology of AIGA, it became evident that it perfectly aligns with the organization's core values. Furthermore, AIGA's use of sans-serif fonts and their adherence to Gestalt Principles in design exemplify their dedication to enhancing the user experience and emphasizing the importance of quality design. AIGA's website is a testament to its mission, with every design choice thoughtfully contributing to its overall aesthetics and purpose.
Hi! My name is Kristin Ardese and I am a professional Graphic Designer and Marketing Strategist. I hope that by sharing some of my expertise, I can help offer valuable insights and build an engaging community.
