What is a brand?
Your brand is what your customers think and feel about your business. Your brand includes:
- Business name
- Mission, vision and values
- Visual identity
- Brand messaging
In this post we will explain how to create your brand’s visual identity quickly and inexpensively.
What are the parts of a brand’s visual identity?
There are four major elements to your brand’s visual identity. These elements are what customers will recognize as belonging to your business, and not someone else’s. The four elements are:
- Colors
- Fonts
- Design style
- Logo
Colors
Choose a set of colors to use consistently throughout your marketing and other business documents. The colors you choose can create a unique design style that customers will recognize as your brand. (You can probably picture in your mind the brown trucks and uniforms of UPS, or the bright red of Target’s logo, shopping carts, and store signs.) There are plenty of free tools like Coolors and Colormind that can help you generate sets of colors to use for your brand.
Fonts
You will need to communicate about your business in writing and having a set of fonts you always use will build recognition of your brand. You want to pick several fonts to use consistently with your brand. One should be a body font that you use for longer blocks of text. Your body font should be easy to read. You also want to pick at least one header font that is bolder or more decorative. Different fonts make it easier to highlight important information and allow readers to skim the text, particularly on a screen. You can use sites like Fontpair or Mixfont to discover new fonts and combinations to use in your branding.
Identifying your design style
Your design style is all the characteristics and details that make up a complete logo. Characteristics of design style include colors, fonts, shapes, direction, and imagery. Your design style might be categorized as either traditional, fun, or modern. You want to pick one design style for your brand so that everything looks consistent, not confusing.
Creating a logo
You can always hire a graphic designer or use online services like Fiverr or 99Designs to create your logo. If you would like to create your own logo, you can use tools like Canva, Tailor Brands, and Hatchful to help you explore fonts, shapes, and other graphic design elements. You are not limited to the colors and fonts you chose for your brand, but your logo should coordinate with your other brand elements.
Creating a logo and visual identity for your brand
Once you select your fonts, colors, design style and logo, you can use a tool like Canva to create graphics to use on social media, your website, and print marketing or advertisements telling people about your business. It’s important to apply your visual identity consistently so people learn to associate the logo, colors, and fonts with your business.