References and a moodboard you can defend

This moodboard was the starting point for my speculative redesign of the AllWeb conference site. AllWeb didn't commission it. It looks finished, and that's the risk. A board like this makes claims about the brand: its marks, its colors, its type, even its numbers. So before any of it reaches a page, check it the way you'd check any other evidence.

Start with the references. The board shows four other events' sites, each with a few words beside it. Words like creative confidence describe a mood, and you can't build a mood or check one. So I kept two references and took one principle from each, written as a sentence. From OFFF Barcelona: let the event have an aesthetic, and let the type and art carry it. From Web Summit: the ticket button is always one move away, and the date and city never fall below the fold. Each one is now a sentence you can check. On a phone, the date, the city and the ticket button all sit on the redesign's first screen.

Then check every mark. The board shows four versions of the logo, and one is an A-W monogram. AllWeb's own marks are its wordmark and a speech bubble. The monogram isn't one of them, so it's crossed out. The redesign's header uses the real wordmark file instead of typing the name. Numbers are claims too. The board says a hundred and twenty plus speakers and panels. AllWeb's own site says a hundred and twenty plus partner brands. Same number, different claim. The redesign uses the site's words, and the board's line is crossed out. Type gets the same question: why this one? The board keeps Inter for body text, the face the current site uses, and it says nothing about AllWeb in particular. AllWeb already sets its labels in Space Mono, and Space Grotesk was drawn from Space Mono. So Space Grotesk does both jobs, and no new family comes in.

Write it down in one short file: each reference with its principle, then each thing you crossed out and where you checked it. The art-direction brief picks this file up later, so the monogram never comes back.

Take one principle from each reference, and check every mark before it reaches a page.