There are a lot of things to consider, and things to choose when starting a business: what will your business offer and what will be the brand’s personality, how should the customer perceive your brand, and what will be the visual aspects of the brand and the list goes on and on and on And when starting choosing the visual elements is one of the essentials that you should focus on once you have finally figured out what your company is as a brand.
Choosing the elements that’ll represent your brand visually may sound easy and the fact is you can just randomly select it at ease, you can choose the elements that you think speak to you, but what most people don’t consider is that the visual elements that may seem resonate with you may not resonate with your target audience or the target customers. That’s why while thinking about setting the brand identity and the brand’s visual identity in motion keeping the target audience in mind is a must.
In this post, we’ll discuss the impact of visual identity and how you can create visual Identity for your business the right way.
The Impact Of Visual Identity
Every decision you make while presenting your brand visually whether on your business website, social media, or Traditional Media (TV, Newspapers, magazines, etc) will highly impact how your audience will perceive your brand and they’ll help your audience to recall your brand. That’s why choosing the visual is the part you just can’t ignore and do it right is just as important.
The visual elements of your brand will also depend on the identity of your brand. So you should ask yourself questions like – Is your company fun-loving with a sense of humor that resonates with the young crowd, or Is your company solving the financial problems of its customers through the service and products, or Is your company producing high-tech products to solve serious problems of the customers. If you have the answer then you already know what your brand will speak to its target audience and that’ll help you to select the visual components correctly to set a mood that resonates with your brand’s voice and personality. That’s why before going after the visuals, figuring out your brand’s identity is important.
Let’s look at an example to get a clear picture of what we’re discussing here. Think about your favorite soft drink company, let’s say Coca-Cola is the one. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of them, the iconic typography of the Coca-Cola logo, the eye-catching red color, and the unique design of the bottle.
Hopefully, now you got a very good idea of how the visuals can impact your brand’s identity and how you can use it to your advantage to create a memorable brand for your customers. Now let’s dive deep into how you can create the visual identity for your brand the right way.
Create The Visual Identity
Let’s go through all the components that you need to pull together in order to create the perfect visual identity for your brand.
1. The Colors
The word simply means business means serving the customers, whether through a product or service and every aspect of a business should be decided to keep the customers in mind and so the colors that you put in the scheme should also influence the customers.
To start you can take a systematic approach and break down the process into several steps the first step that you need to take is –
Step 1 Choose The Primary Color
To do that there are several color tools that’ll provide you with the necessary knowledge you need to choose the right one to go with. You can use popular tools Like Canva Color Meanings to figure out more about the meaning and symbolism of colors, learn more about how color can psychologically impact people (your audience), and much more.
Choosing color according to how they invoke several emotions is a good plan but it shouldn’t be the only motivation, since you’re here to do business and serve the customers choosing that’ll positively affect your customers and serve a better user experience should be the primary object at this stage.
You wanna select one or two colors as your primary color which you wanna use on your logo and keep consistent in all the other areas and next you wanna move on to create the whole palette.
Step 2 Build The Whole Palette
Once you’ve figured out the primary colors it’s about time to build the whole color palette. Why do you need a color palette? The answer is simple: you want the brand visuals to be consistent and using them strategically will increase your brand awareness and recognition.
You wanna have 4 -10 colors in the palette depending on the type of business you have, your products or services, and you wanna use them constantly on your website, branded social media channels, and even in physical marketing channels. There are several tools that you can use to build your color palettes such as Canva’s Color Palettes or Color Palette Generator tool and there are many other options like Material Design Palette, and Colores.co Palette Generator etc to do the work. Even though you can use a limited number of colors, using a palette will help you to decide where to put what color.
2. The Typography
Pairing design with the fonts is a great way to influence your audience even further, rather than choosing the several random fonts without thinking and using them inconsistently will create confusion and affect your brand’s overall image and visual Identity.
The goal here is you wanna make sure the message that is sent out there to your audience is easily readable and understandable while also giving a touch of the style, personality and vibe of your brand, hence adding more elements to the plate in order to increase the brand awareness even further.
Again to settle down you wanna go with a systematic approach and break down the process in steps
Step 1 Font Style
The first thing you wanna make sure is the font style goes well with the style of your brand. Again you wanna maintain the overall consistency, so understanding the font style will give you the head start. You can use tools like Google Fonts, Fonts Space, Fonts.com, etc to get a better understanding of the font styles and help you find the right font for your brand.
Step 2 Settle Down
The next is settling down with the fonts you wanna use. You don’t wanna go overboard and use a bunch of fonts, you’ll just end up confusing your customers. You wanna settle down with at least 2 maximum 4 fonts. One for the Headlines, one for the body texts, one for the logo if you use letters on your logo, and one for the hero images and social media posts.
Step 3 Combine Typefaces With Rules
When combining typefaces, use styles that are in opposition but complementary to one another. Again the goal is always customer-centered and you’ll be using these fonts to send out your message to them. You can use popular tools like Mix Fonts to get the job done, other than that you’re looking for options you read Some Font Pairing Tools For Designers (A link to another article will go here).
3. The Visuals
At this stage, you wanna style down with visual content that you wanna use for your marketing and branding. These can be the following
- Images
- Videos
- Icons
- Animation
- Gifs
- Backgrounds etc
Just because there is a various options doesn’t necessarily mean that you wanna use all of them. Once again the goal is to reach the heart of your customers. So choose what goes well with your overall brand identity. Settle upon what type you wanna share and where you wanna share.
The End Note
Giving your business brand identity is just as important as giving it a visual identity, and at least having a bit of knowledge about it will help you do it the right way even if you don’t wanna do it yourself.
