What are stylescapes?
So, you managed to get a meeting with one of the biggest clients on your list after years of marketing your services and providing quality services. You gather your courage to facilitate the discussion that will determine the brand attributes, values, vision, and direction of the company. Things run smoothly and you end the meeting feeling confident.
You get back to your desk and start working passionately on the project. You put your soul into it and comes the deadline, you proudly present your outcomes to the client.
Your heart is pounding and suddenly doubt settles in as you watch your client getting confused and disappointed. You wonder what is happening and why the solution you came up with did not get approved. You did everything right by establishing the vision of the company, understanding their core values, their goals and objectives. So where did it go wrong?
This is the type of dreadful situation that all designers have nightmares about. Then how do we avoid these uncomfortable situations? One of the ways to do it is through the use of stylescape in your design process.
So, what exactly is this magical thing called stylescape then?
Quite similar to the previous post on mood board, a stylescape is an arrangement of images, textures, layouts, colour palette and photography amongst other things that provide visual direction for the project.
But wait! There is a significant difference between a stylescape and a mood board.
Basically, a stylescape is a mood board taken to the next level. Unlike mood boards which are simply collections of images from random sources, a stylescape is a curated arrangement of visuals that gives the viewer a clear sense of the visual direction of the project.
The key differences:
Mood boards do not require colour adjustments or cropping. You simply gather images and paste them in a board. Stylescapes require image modification and revision to ensure consistency of colours, type, layout, and tone. Here you will be required to spend more time cutting out images and putting them together to fit the overall tone.
Mood boards do not need to be specific. They simply need to visually communicate an idea. Stylescapes on the other hand should feel and look like a brand, even without designing anything yet. By curating visuals, modifying existing materials, colour correcting, and so on, you can give make it appear as a new identity for the client.
Most stylescapes also include an image of the audience to create empathy while looking at the visual direction.
Examples
Here are two examples of stylescapes that have been created for a design agency called Woodrun. These have been created to illustrate how you can use a stylescape and modify existing images to reflect a particular direction. If you use this in your process, it is expected that you spend more time with crafting your stylescape.
Keywords for this project: artistic, design, raw, emotions, blended approach.
Fig. 1
In Fig.1, you will notice the use of primarily geometric shapes in the design. The brand (extreme left) has been quickly created to show how we can use geometric shapes in an abstract way to display the type. It was custom made for the stylescape and it took approximately 10 minutes. The rest of the images have been modified in terms on colour grading to show the use of the colour palette. The audience we are designing for is a bit more mature in this particular case.
Fig. 2
In Fig. 2, there is a different approach to the visual direction of the project. In this case, we can observe the use of handmade textures along with digital elements. This mix of medium also represents the keywords identified above. However, the look and feel of these two stylescapes is completely different. We can also observe that there is a change in the audience we are designing for- while still a mature one, pay attention to the smaller details. They reflect a more casual and relaxed audience than Fig. 1.
All these small details can highly influence the direction of the project. While both stylescapes are for the same project, they reveal different visual directions as well as different applications for their materials. One is geared towards geometric and digital outcomes while the other is playful with the experimentation of blended approach (digital and traditional media).
Conclusion
While mood boards have their use in the design process, stylescapes can also help to bridge the gap between business goals and objects and creative outcomes of the brand identity. While stylescapes do not guarantee that revisions may not occur, they can be used to establish specific design direction to your clients and provide them with a clear idea of what can be expected.
The use of stylescape ensures that both the client and the designer are visually aligned before designing the actual brand identity.
The only downside is that it may require more time and skills to put together as you will need to adjust, colour correct and crop out elements.
