Chanel Mood Board

Luxury, high-end fashion, Chanel is a brand that sells a dream of beauty and class many women long for. Classic beauty icons such as Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe were both fans of the brand and have promoted it in ads. Chanel’s popularity stems from its timelessness that remains a classic standard of beauty. So how is this personality displayed through their website? And why do these things matter? It is important to think about how to take the story and personality of the brand and transform that into visual representation through a website. The website needs to have the same personality and this can be accomplished through both the user experience and user interface of the site. Through type, color, layout, and more, all the little details matter in creating an experience for the user that invokes feelings and emotions that build trust in the brand. Psychology plays an important role in designs where we need to gain the consumer’s trust. so “Understanding how a design is perceived and interpreted is a crucial asset that visual communicators must possess.” 

The Chanel website does a great job of not only selling a lifestyle but also giving the story behind that lifestyle, explaining to the consumer exactly why they want this. The website uses Gestalt principles in its designs, starting out with its simplicity. The site, as a whole, is very simple and chic and is organized in a way that is very easy for the consumer to navigate. It also uses a lot of symmetry through its organization of the product pages. Just as the brand represents timeless beauty, their site reflects that in its simple elegant nature. 

The color scheme is entirely black and white, besides some images or products, and these colors can be representative of simplicity, sophistication, and power. Jerry Cao, in his article, Web design color theory: how to create the right emotions with color in web design,  says “For most websites, black is used to create an instant feeling of sophistication and timelessness. The feeling of elegance is especially strong well when paired with white font and set against a minimalist layout…” The design of the site also uses this black and white color pallet to emphasize certain products or images by making all design elements and images around them without color. This makes the colored elements pop out to the users even more. 

The Chanel site has mastered this elegant look even down to their fonts. The classic Chanel logo is in the font Couture, which is a modern san-serif font, a subfamily of sans serif. Couture is used in titles and short paragraphs, while Helvetic, which is also a modern sans serif font, is used for other areas of text such as bigger paragraphs and product descriptions. In Grace Fussell’s article, The Psychology of Fonts, she says “Often used as advertising fonts and associated with the boom in modernist design during the 1950s, modern sans serifs are a popular choice amongst design-focused businesses and brands, such as architecture practices, furniture retailers, and fashion brands.” These modern sans serif fonts are “chic, futuristic, and elegant,” which show the users that Chanel is not only elegant and classic but also modern and in style. All of these elements cause emotions in the consumer that lead them to purchase from Chanel. The psychology of the design causes users long to be perceived with that same level of class and beauty that Chanel is selling. 

Chanel Mood Board

In the mood board that I created for the site, I wanted to capture all of these feelings and emotions that the design of the Chanel website evokes. Used the black and white color pallet of Chanel, but also added in color through the flowers, makeup smears, and soft pearl coloring. I wanted the mood board to reflect the elegance and class that Chanel embodies. I included an image of Audrey Hepburn, a closet full of Chanel bags, as well as a sketch of Paris and a sketch woman in a dress. I wanted to show the history of Chanel since the brand is very proud of that history and it still impacts a lot of their designs, as well as adding to the timelessness of the brand. I added in the flowers for a sense of fragrance and freshness, focused on pearls to add to the classic feelings. Overall, I think I capture the emotions of the brand and website design pretty well through this mood board. 

Psychology is important in all designs, and a designer must always beware of how their design will be perceived. To create the best design, the user experience needs to be at the forefront of thought when designing the interface and how you can make smarter design choices that trigger emotions in the users that bring them to ultimately purchase your product. 

Sources:

Bernazzani, Sophia. “Fonts & Feelings: Does Typography Connote Emotions?” HubSpot Blog, 18 Apr. 2018, blog.hubspot.com/marketing/typography-emotions.

Bonner, Carolann. “Using Gestalt Principles for Natural Interactions.” Thoughtbot, 23 Mar. 2019, thoughtbot.com/blog/gestalt-principles.

Cao, Jerry. “Web Design Color Theory: How to Create the Right Emotions with Color in Web Design.” TNW | Tnw, 27 Apr. 2021, thenextweb.com/news/how-to-create-the-right-emotions-with-color-in-web-design.

Fussell, Grace. “The Psychology of Fonts (Fonts That Evoke Emotion).” Design & Illustration Envato Tuts+, Envato Tuts, 16 May 2020, design.tutsplus.com/articles/the-psychology-of-fonts--cms-34943.

Kazim, Sherine. “Emotive UI.” Medium, UX Collective, 2 Nov. 2016, uxdesign.cc/emotive-ui-10cb9811c35e.

“Putting Some Emotion into Your Design – Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions.” The Interaction Design Foundation, www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/putting-some-emotion-into-your-design-plutchik-s-wheel-of-emotions.

“Storytelling in the Age of Emojis.” Litigation Insights, 11 Oct. 2019, www.litigationinsights.com/storytelling-emojis/.

Stouhi, Dima. “The Art of Visual Communication: 12 Tips for Creating Powerful Mood Boards.” ArchDaily, ArchDaily, 1 May 2021, www.archdaily.com/960594/the-art-of-visual-communication-12-tips-for-creating-powerful-mood-boards.