Whether you're a small business, entrepreneur or however you define yourself in the business world, there are some important things to bear in mind when it comes to designing your own brand. After all, your brand identity is all about conveying its message, personality, and connecting with your audience. I'm guessing that you've clicked on this page because brand design isn't your forte (we've all got to start somewhere right?) - so here is a fuss-free guide to help walk you through the essentials when creating your brand identity.
1. Planning out your brand identity
Creating an overview of your business
This probably won't come as a surprise to you - but before diving into the design process, you must have a clear understanding of your business. Think about your mission, values, and target audience then answer these questions:
What do you do?
Are you product or service based?
Are you existing or new?
Why are you in this industry?
Who is your target audience?
What are their interests?
Planning out what you need
If you've got a clear understanding of your business and have answered the previous questions, then this will help define what you need design wise. Firstly here are the basic elements to brand design that you will need:
Logo design
Colour palette
Typography (the fonts you choose as part of your brand identity)
Think of these as the foundations to your brand. Your logo design, colour palette and typography are the basic elements that you will use across different projects to establish yourself - I will talk through any additional elements you may need later in the blog.
Gathering inspiration and setting a vision
I've taken you through the 'logistical' side of designing your own brand, and now it's time for the fun part. Thinking about everything we've discussed so far, start to gather visual inspiration for your branding. A great tool for this is Pinterest - use it to create a mood board of any logos, colour palettes, typography, etc. that you feel aligns with you and your business. A couple of prompts to get you thinking - what do you what your brand to represent? For example, are you aiming for a professional, playful or eco-friendly image?
Once you have your bank of inspiration, start to narrow it down until you have curated a mood board of images that work well together and give you more of a clear creative direction.
2. Designing your brand identity
Logo Design
Using your mood board to reference from, it's design time. For design newbies, you can use free online tools such as Canva or Adobe Express to design your logo, but bear in mind that learning and designing on more powerful apps such as Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer in the long run allow you to create a brand identity that is truly one of a kind. Once you have set yourself up on your tool of choice, start to bring up some fonts, colours and graphics (that you've designed or are pre-made) inspired by your mood board. Don't worry about adding in colour to your logo straight away though, as this can be overwhelming, and designing in black and white can help ensure legibility (I will cover more on this in the next step!). Play around with the arrangement of these elements and create lots of different options until you come up with something that resonates with you. If you are struggling to use certain tools, there are plenty of tutorials online to help you navigate them.
Top Tips:
Avoid any trends that may become outdated quickly.
Aim to make a logo that is recognisable, memorable and unique.
Test the logo in various sizes to ensure it remains legible and impactful.
Colour Palette
Once again keeping your mood board to hand, let's start creating your colour palette. You can use free online tools such as Coolors, Color Hunt and Happy Hues to help you. A colour palette plays a significant role in how your brand is perceived, so choose wisely - I have a short, handy blog post with tips on choosing a colour palette for your brand identity here. I would recommend selecting a primary colour, two supporting colours and accent colour to make up your colour palette. Using the tips below, introduce your colour palette into your logo if you haven't done so already.
How to use your colour palette:
Primary Colour: Use for large design elements and backgrounds.
Supporting Colours: Use to compliment the primary colour and add variety through use in smaller design elements.
Accent Colour: Use sparingly in small design elements to draw attention and highlight them.
Typography
I'm guessing that your logo will have some kind of typography within the design, so now it's time to choose a set of complimentary fonts that you can use throughout your projects (for example social media post graphics, business cards, etc.). There no doubt that the tool that you have using to design your logo will have some fonts for you to choose from, but if these fonts aren't to your liking, then there are lots of websites that have free fonts or fonts that you can buy that may suit your preferences better. These can then be uploaded onto that design tool (which is usually very straightforward) by just doing a quick Google search on how to do so for that tool. Just remember to check in the descriptions that the font(s) that you have downloaded externally are available for commercial use.
Choose fonts for your:
Heading font: This will be used for headings and large pieces of text.
Subheading font: This will be used for subheadings and smaller pieces of text.
Body font: This will be used for body text only.
For the heading font, you may want to choose something similar or the same as your the typography in your logo. For the subheading and body fonts, I would suggest choosing something that contrasts with the heading font but pairs well with it. Just remember that selecting the right fonts for your brand is crucial for conveying its personality. For example, serif fonts can come across as traditional and trustworthy, while sans-serif fonts can feel modern and clean. Ensure your chosen fonts are legible, especially in small sizes.
3. Additional elements for your brand identity
As promised in step 1, let's go over additional elements for your brand identity. So you've got the basics, but it's likely that your business will require more in the way of deliverables (the elements of your brand design that are created and used e.g. social media post templates, business card design). To help you define this, here is an example.
Let's pretend that there is a fictional brand called Posh Pups that makes dog accessories. Posh Pups are a new business that have done their research and decided that they would like to start things off by creating a social media presence across Instagram and Facebook. Here is what they need designed:
Instagram highlight covers
Instagram story templates
Social media post templates
A social media banner
Custom illustrations
A brand guidelines sheet
Bearing in mind the social media platforms that they want to branch out on, they have chosen appropriate deliverables to best showcase their branding, stay consistent and get noticed by their target audience. Instagram has a 'Highlights' function, a 'Stories' function and of course a posting function, so designing branded templates for these functions are a must. Whilst Facebook does have similar functions to Instagram (e.g Stories), it's important to tailor your deliverables to each platform, and in this case, Posh Pups would need a banner designed for their Facebook page (which Instagram doesn't have).
So where do custom illustrations and a brand guidelines sheet come into play? Well let's put it like this. If you're creating several social media post templates, your logo design, colour palette and typography will only get you so far...and here's why. There's only going to be so many compositions you can create with these three elements, and after a while your audience is going to get bored of seeing the same thing all the time! Custom illustrations designed just for your brand can help to make your content memorable, and you will be able to create graphics that are much more visually stimulating. Additionally, if Posh Pups later decided that they wanted new boxes to send out their products in, they could develop their custom illustrations into a pattern to have printed on them too.
A brand guidelines sheet is just a simplified version of brand guidelines (this is a document containing the elements that make up your brand, along with a set of rules to maintain consistency across projects). A brand guidelines sheet is one page containing your brand basics (e.g. logo design, colour palette, typography, custom illustrations, etc.) - this can be a great option for smaller businesses or for those just starting out. Posh Pups would refer to this document to keep their graphics looking consistent, for example using the correct fonts for their brand. Later down the line they may want to look at adding things like printing rules for their logo, such as providing the CMYK versions.
Brand design in a nutshell
Hopefully by now you are much more clued up on designing your own brand, but if I'm being honest, this is just the tip of the iceberg! There is so much more to brand design and putting everything there is to know into one blog post would've been quite the challenge. That said, I have written other blog posts which branch out and delve into detail on related topics on brand design. For example, I have a helpful post on how to design social media post graphics, which would be great to read following the creation of your brand.
So if you have taken the route of designing your branding yourself, remember that brand design is a dynamic element that can evolve and grow alongside your business. Embrace this process as an opportunity to connect with your audience and leave a lasting impression. However, if you do feel as though brand design is not for you, Abigail Designs can offer a helping hand. From complete brand design packages to one-off logos, I am here to help you. Take a look at my services, drop me an email or enquire now.
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