1/ If you are a CPG brand who has decided to work with a branding agency, do yourself a favor and provide SPECIFIC feedback when reviewing their moodboard directions.

Avoid the mistakes we made: our story and learnings below...

2/ Initially, they'll give you a few moodboards of varying directions and will ask you to pick 1.

It's tempting to look at one moodboard direction (which will have multiple individual designs) and sign off on the overall aesthetic.

3/ Early on, we made the mistake of not calling out specific designs within a moodboard that we didn't like.

Your branding agency CANNOT read your mind.

Here's what ended up happening to us.

4/ They took 1-2 design elements within the moodboard direction we picked and built an initial brand off them.

When we came in for the initial review, we realized that those 1-2 design elements were the only elements we weren't particularly fond of in that selected direction.

5/ They were confused because we had initially selected that moodboard direction and approved of it.

This was ENTIRELY our fault. We should have been much more specific in our feedback.

We had to start over from scratch.

6/ This time, when they sent us more moodboard directions, we copied over one board that we liked into Sketch, and used Xs and Os to mark individual designs in it we LOVED or DISLIKED.

There is no "okay" - you should either LOVE, or DISLIKE. It's just like scoring candidates.

7/ Even better would be to throw your edited moodboard full of Xs and Os into a Google Doc and add some written commentary on why you marked it up that way.

8/ We were initially scared to do this. The last thing we wanted to do was to restrict creative freedom.

BUT..... (and I'd love to discuss this point with anyone who disagrees) I think your agency will APPRECIATE these creative constraints.

9/ My gf is a product designer and she hates it when team members say "I don't like that design element" but then give 0 feedback as to what they DO like.

There's no way she can read their minds.

10/ We're much happier with our current branding and love the work our agency has done.

But it was a rocky starting road to get there and I'd love for other founders not to go through the mistakes we did.