Welcome to your one stop shop on the rundown of starting your own brand. If you’re like many new business owners out there, you may have the name, the target customer, the business plan, but the one thing you’re struggling on is the branding!
Don’t worry – designers like me go to school for YEARS to refine the art of making a perfect brand for businesses. No one expects you to be an expert off the bat. If you were, us designers wouldn’t have a job!
But that doesn’t’ mean you can’t learn a little bit about how to make your own brand. In fact, sometimes having a better knowledge of brand development can help you communicate with your designer, even if you don’t do the designing yourself.
If your familiar with my blog, you’ll see that I wrote a series called Your Brand Identity. I broke brand identity down into 5 categories: Keywords, Colors, Fonts, Images, and Graphic Elements. Of course, each category has it’s own detailed post if you’re interested in some more reading. But if you’re just getting started, you may want a quick guide. So, here you go!
Keywords
The first step I would recommended taking is finding some good keywords that you want to represent your brand. Keywords are simple words used to describe what you want to convey to your clients. Finding a small group of keywords is invaluable in keeping your brand consistent. Let’s use my business, Mocasa Design Studio, as an example. I want to evoke the passion in other people, and I want my clients to feel in good hands, and that they can come to me for anything! So for my keywords, I chose: Friendly, helpful, happy and energetic.
Take a look at the image below. Try to find a few keywords that resonate with feelings you want to evoke when clients think of you.
If you’re ever losing sight of your brand identity, just go back to those keywords and keep your vision aligned!
Colors
There are many studies on the relationship between color and emotion, so it’s important to take them into consideration when your building brand. While it may be tempting to simply choose your brand colors simply based on what your favorite color, it’s not always the best idea. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes that can work great, but it shouldn’t be your only factor in choosing.
Colors can ignite emotion. Below, you’ll see an image that will show you what emotions correspond to each color! Thinking back to what your keywords are, this is a great guide to showing how colors can evoke the best feeling for your brand.
Fonts
Have you ever heard the phrase, “it’s not what you say, but how you say it?” That’s how it feels when you have the wrong font for the wrong occasion. Fonts may not be the most fun part of the brand, but you’d be surprised how much they can make or break the style you’re trying to set.
I would recommend having 2-3 separate font styles to work with your brand. This will keep your brand consistent, at the same time allows you to mix and match different styles together. Below is an image that briefly describes different categories of fonts and what they are used for.
Whether your working with a designer or doing it yourself, there’s a lot that can go into choosing the right font for your brand. While it may not be the most exciting, it is a very important part of keeping your brand personality consistent.
Images
It’s human nature to be drawn to images. Chances are, your audience will see the images long before they read any words you wrote. Therefore, it’s very important to have aesthetic and high quality images. By having the best images possible, you make sure you’re giving your audience a great first impression before they read a single word.
Making sure the images convey the right emotion for your brand. If you’re brand is happy and colorful, we won’t want to use dark and moody photos. Below, you can see how these two images of an ocean can convey two very different moods.
Know what feeling you want to convey will ensure your audience gets the right idea of your brand before you even say a word. Confused about what feeling you want to convey? Check out the keywords you chose, and go from there!
Graphic Elements
I’ve done a lot of branding work over the years with a ton of research and practice, but I could not find any information about this particularly subject. However, I know it’s an important part of branding, so I created the phrase for it. What I like to call “Graphic Elements” are the flourishes that you can add to your web and print pieces that make sure all of your designs are tied together. They will be elements that you can repeat on any brand piece you want to make sure that your brand shines through, no matter what the medium.
One of the best examples I could find when researching this was Chobani. As you can see from the image below, they use wonderful nature graphic elements throughout their website, social media, and ads.
Graphic elements are not entirely necessary, and not every brand will use them. But brainstorming what you would use for your graphic elements could be another great way to refine your brand identity.
Putting It All Together
Each of these separate elements are very important for your brand. Once you start putting them all together, it’s like the pieces of the puzzles will fit together and suddenly you’ll see a clear picture of your brand!
The image below is an example of a brand identity for a made up company called Outdoorsy Outfitters (super clever, right?). Here are all all the elements we talked about put into practice:
Keywords: Rustic, Natural and Durable
Colors: Dark green, dark red, dark blue, dark yellow
Fonts: Sonder Sans, Source Serif Variable
Images: Nature, hiking, athletic.
Graphic Elements: Rough textures like rocks and tree bark.
In Conclusion
It is so important to keep your brand identity consistent because it will ensure that you will attract the audience you want to attract. You’re next assignment is to write down what keywords you would use for your brand. From there, you’ll have no trouble figuring out the rest. Your colors, fonts, images, and graphic elements will align with what your brand is all about.