So, you've done the hard part - you've found a niche in the market and put all your energy and talent into creating your dream business. You've made your products or created your service offerings - what next?
Creating a brand that perfectly represents your business and ultimately attracts your target audience is such an important part of building a successful business. Here are what I think are the fundamentals of creating your brand.
A brand is so much more than a pretty logo...
Before you start even thinking about design ideas, there are a few questions to ask yourself:
vision
What is your business vision and purpose? How would you sum it up in one sentence? What is it you want to achieve? What do you have to offer?
values
What are your business values? What type of customers or clients do you want to attract? What do you want people to feel when they engage with your business? What makes you stand out from the crowd?
audience
Who is your target audience? What are their likes and dislikes? What are they looking for from your business? How can you help them? Ultimately, you are creating a brand that will attract the people you want to buy your product or service. Therefore your brand needs to appeal to them.
Once you have the answers to these questions it will make it so much easier to create a brand that, not only perfectly represents your business but also attracts exactly the type of people that need or want what you have to offer.
Let's get creative...
In terms of design elements of a brand, here are a few aspects that I think are important to creating a complete, comprehensive brand that can be utilised for all your marketing needs. From your website, business cards, packaging, thank you cards, brochures, menus, social media graphics, letterheads - the number of branded products you can create for your business are endless.
logo
Arguably the most important aspect of your brand design, your logo will (hopefully) become the symbol that people recognise as your business. It is also one of the elements of your brand design that is most likely to be used across every piece of your marketing collateral.
alternate logo
An alternate logo is one that compliments your main logo but is perhaps a more simplified version or different size - maybe square, instead of rectangular. Having a couple different versions of a logo ensures your brand will always look good across all pieces of your collateral.
submark
A submark is again similar to an alternate logo but is usually a lot simpler and smaller in design. Submarks are often used as social media profile pictures, stickers or favicons. Basically any place where you need a small, but easily recognisable version of your logo.
colour palette
Your brand colour palette is another very important aspect of brand design. Colour psychology plays a very key role when attracting your target audience and, as tempting as it can be, I wouldn't suggest just picking your favourite colours! This is definitely an element of your brand that should be completely focussed on what would appeal most to your audience.
typography
You will probably end up using a selection of fonts to make up your brand identity. One or two fonts will possibly be used as part of your logo. You will then need a small selection of fonts that you use for all other copy related to your brand. You shouldn't use your logo font anywhere else in your branding as it should be unique to your logo. It's always better to find another complimentary font instead.
I would only suggest having a selection of two or three other fonts that you use for the rest of your branding. We've all seen websites or pieces of marketing collateral where people have chosen so many different fonts that the overall design ends up looking extremely cluttered, messy and unprofessional. The same is true with your branding. It's best to stick to just a few key fonts that you are able to use throughout your marketing collateral to ensure you retain a cohesive look.
brand pattern
This element of a brand identity isn't necessarily fundamental, but I would say that it is hugely beneficial in building a cohesive and comprehensive brand. A brand pattern can add an extra wow factor to a piece of packaging or collateral and shows just how much attention to detail you have invested in ensuring your brand perfectly represents your business.
I hope you have found these tips useful and, just to let you know, I include the creation of all of the above design elements as standard as part of
my brand design package. To find out more information about the process and what else is included, please click here. As always, I'd love to answer any questions you have so feel free to comment on this post or get in touch.
