The image of your brand is extremely important.
If you do not have a cohesive image throughout your branding, it will be almost impossible for your brand to succeed. The reason it is so important to create a successful image for your brand is because it helps attract dedicated users by providing visual appeal and credibility for your target audience.
Here are the 4 steps to take when beginning the process of creating an image for your brand:
Target Audience
The very first thing you need to do is figure out your target audience!
These questions below will help you narrow down the best audience for your brand to target.
What demographic does your brand appeal to?
What age range is your demographic? (for example ages 20 – 35, or 25 – 45)
Does it appeal to mostly men, women, or both?
Is your audience from a specific location?
Does your audience share any specific hobbies?
The reason it is so important to determine your target audience is because it provides you with a smaller portion of the population to advertise to. It is most beneficial to advertise to a smaller, more targeted group, because it will get your brand in front of the eyes of users who would most likely be interested in your brand.
If you advertise to a larger audience with a low percentage of people in your target audience, it will be very difficult to convert users into customers. For example, if you have a group of 25 people who are in your target audience, you are more likely to have a higher conversion rate than you would if you advertised to 100 people with only 5 of those people being in your target audience.
Once you have figured out who your target audience is, you can begin creating the image of your brand.
Keywords
When creating your brand image, you should come up with 3 to 4 keywords that encompass your brand.
For example, One of my past clients chose the keywords perseverance, warm, and inspirational. She was a motivational coach and an author, therefore she wanted her brand to help inspire her audience to persevere through hard times by providing a warm and welcoming feeling with the use of her typefaces, color theme, and graphics.
These keywords will help guide you through the next steps in choosing your brand’s color theme as well as typefaces.
Fonts/ Typefaces
Taking the time to find typefaces that provide a visual representation of your brand’s keywords is extremely important for your brand image. Some typefaces have a more sophisticated look, while others might have a more playful feel.
First off, what is the difference between a font and a typeface?
A typeface is a family of fonts. Lets say you want to use the typeface Didot. The fonts within the Didot typeface would be Didot Regular, Didot Italic, and Didot Bold.
Now that we all know what a typeface is, how do you find them?
Google! You can google specific font classes to see all of your options. Some websites have free fonts, and others charge for their fonts. One of my favorite websites to get free fonts from is Font Squirrel. They have tons of different fonts for you to choose from.
You only want to choose 2 to 3 typefaces at the most! If you have too many typefaces your branding will become cluttered and unappealing. You also want to make sure that one of your typefaces is easily readable so that you can use it for your text. If you have a hard time figuring out if a font will work well for text, you can look for fonts in the class sans-serif. Fonts in this class are most commonly used for text.
Your other typeface will be used for headings and titles, therefore it can be fancier. The contrast between your two typefaces will add to the visual appeal of your brand image.
Now that you have figured out which typefaces to utilize, it is time for the final step, your color theme.
Color Theme
The color theme is the series of colors that you will use throughout your brand.
There should be 5 colors each having a specific purpose. For example:
You should have at least 1 to 2 bold colors in your color theme. If you have more than 2 bold/ bright colors it will be too busy and will get in the way of the visual appeal of your branding.
It is also important to make sure that 2 of your colors contrast. In the image above, the dark purple (for the text) and the light purple (for the background) are contrasting colors. Since one is a dark color, and the other is a light color they provide contrast so that the dark purple text will stand out on a light purple background.
You also want to make sure that your colors are complimentary to each other. The best way to tell if 2 colors are complementary is to look at a color wheel. If the colors are across from each other on the color wheel than that means they are complementary colors.
If you have a photo that has the look and feel of what your brand represents, you can use Canva’s color palette generator. It will generate a palette of colors based off of the photo that you uploaded. This is a great tool to use if you haven’t worked with colors before, or if you have a hard time choosing colors that work cohesively together.
Now that you have your color theme you can begin to put all the parts together.
As you build your brand image always keep your target audience in mind by utilizing your 2 typefaces, color theme, and keywords to create cohesive content and graphics for your brand.
If you have any questions about creating your brand image, or if your looking for someone to create your brand image for you, contact me. I would love to help you build a strong brand image that makes your brand stand out to users.