Do you ever find yourself trapped in the caverns of your mind without a map? You’re going deeper into different pathways but leading to nowhere. No answers. You’re tirelessly trying to find the hidden gems you need to translate your brand keywords into tangible, captivating visuals but no finds.

Picture this:

You, the art therapist, are tasked with the challenge of unlocking a client’s mind to find imagery and words that help you understand the person and find concrete solutions to their problem. All the things your client is sharing at the moment are abstract words that keep slipping through your fingers because there is not enough to grapple on. So you basically fall through the floor every time you try to go deeper with the client.

This is the same struggle art therapists have currently with translating brand keywords or attributes to graphics, it keeps slipping through their fingers and feel so overwhelmed by them as if it’s just a list of words. That could mean anything! This concept of the therapy session is similar to breathing life into abstract brand attributes or keywords to your art therapy brand. Trying to find stable ground that allows you to have concrete ideas that you can weave together to create mesmerizing mood boards that speak through a metaphorical lens with emotion and meaning. But alas you find yourself in chaos in your creative quest to find something to hold onto and build stable ground to build a clear bridge from words to visuals. 

I am sure the question on your mind is…

How can I break free from the constraints of linguistic confinement and unleash the boundless potential of visual expression to tell my brand’s story?

In the world of art therapy, where the client and you dance together in discovering emotions through imagination and creativity shows no bounds. The journey from words to visuals comes together fluidly as there is a bond of two minds coming together to form concrete pictures and solutions. This is surprisingly similar with branding for an art therapy business but this time it’s more constructive and strategic with a need for meaning, connection, story and purpose. Yes, this is both a daunting exploration and a liberating journey. But fear not, for within the caverns of critical thinking lies a powerful tool waiting to guide you through the maze of your mind: It’s called Zoom In.

In today’s reading, we’ll pack our bags and explore the magic of mind mapping, paving  the path for stressed art therapists wishing to infuse their brand attributes with visual stories. Walk along with me to unlock the gates to a realm where words dissolve into colours, shapes, and textures, where the language of the soul finds expression in strokes of creativity.

Understanding Mind Mapping for Visual Transformation

I would like to express the importance of mind mapping, many of us skip this essential step in the process of extraction. We skip this step due to time constraints and being overwhelmed. Given any project you always want to start with brainstorming because it builds the foundation to an idea and has backup support for it to stand tall. Skipping brainstorming is like forgetting to write out all the ingredients you need to buy in order to cook a meal.

Mind map involves

A mind map involves writing down a central theme and thinking of new and related connections that stem from this theme. It gives you a bird eye view of all the thoughts you came up with that help you to better understand your main idea and document this information. Mind mapping allows you the opportunity to explore and look at things from a different view points. This is a tool to help you dive into many possible directions and get your ideas on paper so you don’t forget to explore that area.

If you are currently struggling to translate words into visual representations, mind mapping can be your best friend. It allows you the space to go deeper in a certain area so you can get even more descriptive and concrete. But this is only a tool, your mind and this tool need to come together and become curious as you use this mind map tool.

Mind maps are essential

Mind mapping is part of the creative process, without it it’s hard to build an understanding of the brand keywords and its story as it’s all about finding connections. It’s about research and articulation. This involves deep thinking to go deep in a mind mapping session but it’s so relieving once we find clarity in the words. 

I really encourage you to not miss this step out of fear but be curious and playful with it and embrace what it can bring to you. The insights you will receive.

Key Steps in Changing Words to Visuals

1. Defining Your Brand Identity

The first step into creating visuals for your art therapy brand is to collect brand attributes that describe your brand and identity. These brand attributes are the ingredients to creating your amazing dish of visual representations to use when you hop onto Pinterest. They are the backbone to the overall art direction to your art therapy brand. Without them it would be difficult to grapple onto an idea of where to go for your imagery because we need to narrow down the funnel of options because there are so many different graphic styles and approaches in the branding world. We need to see where you stand in that. 

The attributes can help decipher the graphic design styles to go for. Here is a list of a few possibilities but there are many more to this.

• Minimalism
• Maximism 
• Illustrated 
• Organic
• Corporate
• Feminine
• Masculine 
• Vintage/Retro
• Geometric
• Grunge
• Typographic

Brand attributes aren’t the only thing that we need to understand, we also need to look at our ideal clients map or profile to know what they prefer to see graphically and visually as we are designing for them. 

To start a brand identity visualization session, I would start with your ideal client. A brand needs to speak to a specific person after all so it best to start here as step one.

Step 1: Get to know your ideal client, your ideal audience

Start by getting a piece of paper and answer these questions:

• Who are you creating these visuals for? 
• What would they like or expect to see?
• How would you describe your ideal client? 

It’s easier to find someone in your inner circle that you love working with to help you with this activity. Imagine your person, what words come to mind when you visualize them? 

Here’s an example that could help facilitate this:

Who are you creating these visuals for? My ideal clients are people who identify as the eldest child in their family. 

What would they like or expect to see? They would like to see something that looks clean and professional, strong and confident imagery, visuals that celebrate family, and symbols that represent growth. 

How would you describe your ideal client? My ideal client is someone who is responsible, reliable, someone who carries high levels of leadership, and is a high achiever. A lone wolf who is very independent. 

Now on a new piece of paper write in the middle the ideal client’s name. Mine is “Eldest child.”

Let’s pull from the adjectives we put together in the example above.

Let’s go for the word “reliable,” make a branch coming out of the Eldest child bubble and form a new bubble and write the word reliable.

Let’s start Zooming in on this word.

By asking the following questions to ourselves:

What looks reliable? Name three things when you hear the word reliable. Well a toolbox is one, a flashlight, and backpack are some ideas.

From here we now can go deeper into the essence of these 3 things we named. 

If we could capture the essence of these things how can it show up in our brand image? 

Toolbox: Blue, Red and yellow colours to shoe a sense of practically and strength. Angular and Geometric shapes to match tools in a tool box.

Flashlight: colour could be a vibrant orange, maybe clear and readable font to showcase efficiently and accessibility.  

Backpack: Colours can be earthy tones. Textures you can use canvas, nylon or leather to showcase durability. 

You see how we continued to break the piece of bread into smaller and smaller digestible pieces. That way it’s easier to chew and process. 

Step 2:  Brand Attributes Brainstorm 

Get a piece of paper and write your brand name in the middle. Then make 5 branches stemming out from it. Each Branch will be named the following and have a circle drawn around it. Culture, Customer, Voice, Feeling, Impact, and X-Factor. 

Brainstorm adjectives for each bubble and if your having trouble with this look to your past clients, friends, colleagues etc to get some insight on how your perceived by others but only from your inner circle of people that know you well. 

Once you have some words to work with under each category it’s time narrow down to five words per each category.  

Then we do the zooming in method again. Let’s go deeper into understanding the adjective.

What’s it meaning? 

What emotions are associated?

What metaphors can be used? 

Are there symbols that match this word?

Any scenery that can be associated with this word?

Any colours? 

It’s about making it concrete. Something tangible to grasp.

For Example maybe one of your adjectives is Playful. 

Ask yourself what looks playful? Name 3 ideas when you hear the word playful? 

Let’s see: 

• Games/Toys 
• Kids playing pretend pirates
• Animals frolicking in the woods

To capture this essence in your brand image:

• Multicolored Schemes
• Childish fonts
• Photos that have carefree people
• Fluid shapes that have movement 

Now you have more structure to the words you extracted.

2. Exploring Visual Elements

Once you have associated visual images of these brand attributes we can now look at visual elements that can capture pieces of this visual encapsulation.

What are visual elements? They are pieces that make up art and design.

There are 7 visual elements:

• Shape
• Line
• Space
• Form
• Texture
• Value
• Colour

Here are visual branding techniques to help you choose visual elements that align to your brand attributes:

1. Connections: Associate the brand attributes to something familiar to you, like a scenery, an object or an experience. Then extract a simple impression from those associations. For example: A beach scenery, what simple impressions can we take from that? Could it be the sandy brown colour of the sand or could it be images of shells.
    
2. Building colour palettes: Look at your brand message for this, what main feeling do you want your brand to embody and lead with that. Then as a support you can look to your ideal client profile to grab the desired feelings they want. With these two feelings in mind, look to colour psychology and see what colours can speak to this.
   
3. Ideal Audience Consideration: Remember to always have your ideal client in mind when starting to research visuals. It’s good to have an idea of what visual styles they resonate with and stick with that. Find out what imagery they are drawn too? Knowing your audiences preferences will further narrow down your choices of visual elements that way it saves you time. You can always get them involved in the process as well.  

3. Mind Mapping for Moodboard Creation

Before you dive into mood board creation be sure to have words to work with and that’s done in mind map brainstorm sessions. They allow you to organize your ideas and narrow down to a certain selection of words. That way you can come into the mood board creation with a focus.

Here are my moodboard creation tips:

Step 1:

On paper or in canva draw a circle in the middle and write your art therapy brand name inside. Make 5 other bubbles around that art therapy brand name and call them culture, customer, voice, feeling, impact and x-factor. Brainstorm 10 adjectives for each and narrow it down to 5. 

Step 2:

From the 5 start go deeper and brainstorm things visually associated with that word. 

Step 3:

Take those associations and change them into one of the 7 visual elements, colour, form, line, shape, value, texture, space.

Step 4:

Go to Pinterest and start searching using those associations and visual elements identified. 

Overcoming Challenges and Finding Inspiration

1. Dealing with Creative Blocks

Sometimes in mind mapping we run into roadblocks. Some of the challenges that art therapists face is stress and overthinking and this can disrupt a mind mapping session. To prevent you from freezing up in the mind mapping session is to do the following creative mapping methods:

1. Start with a meditation to ground yourself and pull your mind into the present and loosen any tension that sits in the body, that way you can have a clear mind going into this. 
2. You can move your session to one of your favourite environments and see if that changes your energy and approach. You can invite your close clients or friends to the session to help bounce ideas around. 
3. You can break up the sessions into days to allow yourself to rest and come back. 
4. You can freely brain dump words onto a page and walk away for a day or two and come back to revisit them and see if any speak to you. 

Finding Moodboard Inspiration

If you are stuck on looking for inspiration for moodboard creation check out these moodboard inspiration ideas:

• Pinterest
• Behance
• Dribbble
• Instagram
• Visiting your local library for magazines or books on art, design and photography
• Nature and everyday life 

In Conclusion…

In the realms of creativity, finding a path from words to visuals can feel like walking into thick fog trying to grapple onto abstract concepts, struggling to translate them into tangible, captivating imagery. Yet, within the fog lies a lighthouse that cuts through the fog sharing the clear path to visual expression.

In the realm of art therapy, where emotions are explored through imagination and creativity, the journey from words to visuals is a fluid dance between therapist and client. Through this collaborative process, abstract concepts take shape, forming concrete images that speak volumes about one’s inner world. Similarly, in the realm of branding, visual expression serves as a bridge between brand attributes and audience perception, creating meaningful connections that resonate on a deeper level.

Mind mapping emerges as a powerful tool in navigating this journey, offering a structured approach to organizing thoughts, exploring possibilities, and uncovering new insights. By embracing the process of mind mapping,  we can break free from the constraints of words chaining us down to opening our minds to visual storytelling.

 Don’t shy away from the challenges that words may cause. Instead, embrace curiosity, playfulness, and resilience in breathing new life into abstract concepts and build meaningful connections through visual expression.

In closing, let’s change the lens on this headache and see it as a voyage of self-discovery, innovation, and creative exploration, unlocking hidden treasures within the caverns of our minds.

So, take a deep breath, trust in the process, and let your imagination soar as you take wing on this branding journey from words to visuals.

Safe travels, fellow art therapist explorers, and may your brand image illuminate the world with beauty, meaning, and purpose.