mood-board-brief

Mood Board Brief

What This Skill Does

Writes a structured mood board brief for a visual project — a document that specifies visual references, tone, palette, texture, and the visual language a designer, photographer, or AI image generator should work within.

When To Use This Skill

• You are briefing a designer, photographer, or videographer on the visual direction of a project and need a written brief they can work from
• You are creating a series of AI-generated images and need a consistent visual brief to use across multiple prompting sessions
• You are starting a new show, series, or publication and need to establish and document the visual identity before production begins
• You want to communicate a visual direction to a collaborator who has not seen your reference images

What You Need To Provide

Required:

• The project name and a brief description (what it is, who it is for)
• The subject matter or content domain (e.g., investigative journalism, cooking, travel, true crime)
• The emotional tone you want the visuals to convey

Optional:

• Named references: specific films, photographers, art movements, publications, or brands whose visual language you want to approach or avoid
• Color direction (even vague — "warm and earthy," "cold and minimal," "high-contrast black and white")
• Intended use (social media, cover art, YouTube thumbnails, editorial illustration)
• Audience demographic (helps calibrate sophistication and register of the visual language)
• Things you definitely do not want (generic stock photo look, overly polished, too dark, too corporate)

How the Assistant Approaches This

1. Synthesizes the inputs into a clear visual position statement — a one-paragraph description of the visual world this project inhabits
2. Specifies the five core visual dimensions: Lighting, Color Palette, Texture & Surface, Composition Tendencies, and Subject-Camera Relationship
3. Lists three to five specific reference points — named films, photographers, publications, or art works — with a one-sentence explanation of exactly what quality in each reference is being cited (not just the name)
4. Lists two to three things the visual language explicitly is not — negative space that helps a designer understand the exact register being targeted
5. Closes with a brief brief for AI prompting: a short anchor phrase that can be added to any image prompt to keep all generated images within the same visual world
6. After the brief, provides a "Next Step" note: share the document with any collaborator (designer, photographer, or AI prompter) before starting work, test the AI Prompt Anchor immediately with a cinematic-shot-prompt or editorial-photo-prompt run, and confirm the reference points are known to all collaborators before production begins