Creating Brand Identity.
From Concept to Execution
Welcome to the enchanting realm of creating brand identity.
Whether you’re just starting or looking to refresh your existing brand, this blog can become your guide on this journey. A well-designed brand is a game-changer, especially for a small business.
Let’s start with a little talk about the importance of a memorable brand identity. Your business will show up in many places: your business card, website, e-commerce, e-mail, prints, digital marketing, videos, broadcast, social media, and so on. To be recognized, you need to be unforgettable. Therefore, consistency in brand identity design in all your appearances is vital. This is how you will be noticed and eventually remembered. Uniformity and repetition build recognition and then trust. It is a proven way to win and retain customers.
Good news: you don’t need a sky-high budget to design a brand worthy of remembering. Below, I listed a few tips and links to outside services that can help you create an effective brand in the DIY realm.
Understanding Basics of Creating Brand Identity
1. Brand Mission and Values
Before diving into colors and logos, define the soul of your brand. Your mission statement and core values are like the heartbeat of your business. They will set the tone and guide every decision you will make.
Quick tip #1: Enlist help in the mission statement writing process. Even if at this point you cannot budget for a professional copywriter, a second opinion from a friend or coworker is vital. Remember – you are not creating a business for yourself. Your target audience will be your final, and merciless evaluator and judge. So, before you present your message to them, ensure it is reviewed and redacted by an audience larger than you.
For more specifics about the mission statement writing process, visit my blog: The Elevator Pitch.
2. Brand Personality
Just like a person, your brand will develop a personality. It’s the way you talk, the words you use, and the vibes you send out. Take a moment to figure out your brand’s tone of voice. Are you a witty friend or a wise mentor? Start with the vision you developed in your mission statement, cater it to the perfect customer avatar you can imagine, and watch the magic happen.
Quick tip #2: Market research is your secret weapon. Check your competition and gather inspiration. Believe me, unless your business idea is absolutely innovative, you will be one of many in the market. By checking competitors, you may learn a lot about the lingo and standards required from your industry and expected by your audience.
This is not a suggestion to become a copycat. That’s illegal and quickly punishable if not by a lawsuit, then by the Search Engines’ ignorance. If you want to rank well in online searches, you need to add your unique personality and proposition to the already existing standards.
3. Brand Appearance
Now, onto the fun stuff – the visuals. Your logo, color palette, typography, and imagery create a visual style for your brand. As mentioned before, consistency is the key. Therefore, take time to make decisions here. You will be stuck with them for a long time.
Quick tip #3: Your personal preference is less important than your consumers’ expectations and industry standards. Your business is like a bride: even if black is your favorite color, you would not want her to wear a black dress to the wedding, right?
4. Selecting Brand Colors and Fonts
Images, colors, and shapes can speak louder than words, so let’s get artsy! With your business mission, vision, and personality ready you may now consider hiring a designer to help you create all your visual elements. Trust me, this will be money well spent. But if you want to embrace your own inner artist, let me introduce you to a few very affordable resources:
Start selecting colors by visiting my other blog: Colors for a Brand. It contains basic information about colors’ psychology and creating color palettes. You can even download from there my free PDF listing general meanings associated with several popular colors.
If studying color theory is not your thing, but you already chose your primary color you can generate a pretty good color palette for it using a free online tool called ColorSpace. Visit the site, enter the hexadecimal number of your color, click generate, and voila!
For more complex DIY designs the easy-to-use platform of my choice is Canva. It will not only help you with colors but it also contains tons of fonts, graphics, photos, and templates. Many of them can be accessed and easily modified in the free version of Canva.
If there is a part of your brand project that you would rather outsource, or purchase as a template, the places to visit are: Fiverr or Creative Fabrica.
Whether you’re ordering visuals or creating your own, remember that a cohesive visual style is a must. While it is easy to drift on some “rabbit trails” when scrolling through thousands of online designs, a consistent visual style is like the glue that holds your brand together. Stick to it.
5. A Brand Style Guide
Ever heard of a brand style guide? It’s like the holy grail of brand consistency. I saw promising businesses never lift off the ground because they never created one – it’s that powerful. Create your guide and watch your brand stay on point, in all marketing efforts.
What is the Brand Style Guide? It’s a library of all the brand elements you will create. These are your company’s marketing assets. Once you go through the trouble of creating them, clearly describe them and gather them in this guide. Having them handy will:
- Save you tons of time in all future branding projects
- Reassure that you will stick to the branding style you created
Quick tip #4: Remember to share this guide and all its requirements with every marketing service that may work on behalf of your company in the future. Otherwise, your carefully created branding will be diluted by the ideas and aesthetics of every new person helping you out. And let me say one more time:
Consistency and repetition form your path to being recognized, remembered, and finally respected.
And there you have it – a summary of steps you take to create a brand identity. Check the next blog for important details about them, and cheers to your brand’s journey – let’s make it amazing!