Three Essential Brand Visuals Every Creative Business Needs

Once you have the backbone of your brand, your story, your niche, your ideal client and your UVP, it is time to nail down your brand identity elements, or brand visuals.

(If you aren’t sure about the other things I mentioned, check out those links to each blog post where I unpack them!)

Brand visuals give exactly that: A visual representation of what your brand's personality, what it represents, and what it offers to your ideal client.

Brand visuals are important because they help the consumer be able to recognize you, and remember you. This is part of how our brains are wired.

Honestly, it is tempting for me as an artist to just want to stick with black and white, and showcase my beautiful images on top of that.

However the brand colors I’ve chosen to implement, give character and personality to my brand, and are going to set me apart from other artists out there in my market.

This is huge: Your brand visuals help to set you apart from your competition, and differentiate you from other businesses.

Consistent brand visuals also help build loyalty and trust with your customers. If a consumer sees consistent visuals across all platforms and spaces, for a consistent period of time, it builds trust. “Consistently presented brands are 3.5 times more likely to enjoy excellent brand visibility than those with an inconsistent brand presentation.” (Source)

Here’s a quick brand visual guidelines check list: 1 ) You need a logo--You may want a sub logo or alternate logo as well. 2) You need brand colors. 3) You also need to choose brand fonts (typography if you want the fancy word!) Extras: You might have a specific way you package items, or gifts for your clients. LOGO(s): A logo is important because it not only is a major brand visual that your client will learn to recognize, it helps your brand come off as professional and put together.

Logos are brilliant for your website, business cards, email headers, inside other brand documents or guides, on physical packaging or stationary--Just to name a few. Your logo doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy. It’s okay if you just use your initials in a bold or scripty font, if you’re a business owner like me who uses their personal name in their business name. But you need SOMETHING!

You can design your own logo using differently software (even canva is a great tool, and if you use their trial period, you can download .png images where the background is transparent!) OR, you can hop onto fiverr, and for not a whole lot of money you can have a graphic designer help you with your logo! I highly recommend that as well! Sub logos or alternate logos are great to give you options to change things up a little bit, and also have different logo shapes that may fit better in different scenarios. BRAND COLORS: Did you know? "Color improves brand recognition by up to 80%" (Source) I recommend a color palette of 4 to 5 colors.

Here are some tips on choosing your brand colors: Think through colors that represent you. Think through color psychology and colors that will help represent your overall brand vibe and tone. Think through colors that will appeal to your ideal client. Figure out the best way to intersect these colors! I like to choose one to two more bold colors, and then two-three neutral colors that complement the bold colors.

Here’s a website for color palette inspiration, and here’s a website for putting your color palette together and then you can download it.

Don’t forget to grab the HEX codes of your colors you choose!

FONTS:

I recommend choosing 2-3 fonts. Choose a highly readable font for the main body of your text, and then choose another font that you can use for headers. The less fonts on your website, the faster it will load, so I would not pick more than three. Plus don’t forget: We are working for cohesion. Too many fonts creates confusion instead of cohesion.

Make sure you keep these font names handy!

EXTRAS: There are other physical visuals you can use to represent your brand! Packaging or stationary is a great way to do that to create seamless brand visual cohesion. You can choose a certain way, within your brand color palette and vibe, that you wrap or present products. You can order stationary and business cards with your logo and brand colors. These little extra details go a looooong way!

PRO TIP:

I highly recommend including all of this in a brand visual style guide in a google doc. I can’t tell you how many times I come back just to grab my color palettes when I’m trying to put things together.

For starters, you can include your: Logos, color palette and hex codes, font names and pt sizes you like to use.

If you’re ready to nail down your brand visuals, and want more guidance on each step of the process, JOIN ME in my brand building facebook course and community!

I’m a mil spouse mama of three and brand photographer in Georgia; during naptime I love to strategically unpack branding to help other small businesses stand out and sell in a saturated market.

I’m diving more in depth about this blog post inside my group, as well as sharing other helpful resources, and how you can find your specific niche market for your business TODAY!