BSK: Design
Your visual identity is critical to your brand as it will be featured across all platforms, channels, Modes, and produced media assets. A design and aesthetic is how people (your Audience, clients, suppliers, staff) will identify and recognise you, your idea, or what your team has developed. Be that when establishing a new business, refreshing your branding, or creating branded content.
Because of this variety of placements in which your branding will be featured, a well-designed brand will have something called a Visual Language to accompany its Visual Identity; these terms can be interchanged and sometimes called something even more complicated.
For the sake of simplicity, good Brand Identity design typically consists of the following:
Logo - what symbol identifies the Brand, how it should and shouldn't be used.
Colours - state the colours and colour codes that are best associated with the brand's identity.
Fonts - which should be used in official correspondence or in produced media that best represents the brand.
Here's a video on the subject to learn more about Brand Identity books.
Some people have more confidence developing visuals, while many struggle; it's nothing to be ashamed of, and much of design is like a muscle; working at it will help you develop.
To help with this, get your design muscle flexing by having a go at designing one of the following:
Your logo
Brochure or flyer
A mood board
Business card
A landing page
An Instagram post
Why Design a brochure?
Brochures are great because they are simple - everyone knows what a brochure is and what it's for.
You can have a digital version or a printed version.
A brochure needs to be clear - you can't put too much.
It also needs to be too simple or abstract - you can't put too little.
Balancing these out in the exercise of developing a brochure is a great way to practice your design muscle.
Even if you won’t need to or want to use some of these immediately, designing what they would look like is a great way to understand your brand's style and presentation.
Here are some websites and tools that can help you put together a design.
Unsplash.com
Canva.com
Photologo
Ai illustrator
You might want to hire help to support the design aspect of developing your brand, content, or campaign.
[Here's a Studio blog post about the process of hiring help.]
If you're looking to hire help, developing a mood board is a powerful element that helps speed up the process of creating your Design.
A mood board is a sample of images, logos, colours, fonts, and styles you like to look at while working on your visual aesthetic. A mood board is a reference that you can show to the people you hire for help.
A mood board can be made of the above, but you can also add in the following:
Websites you like
Social media profiles you admire
Photography you want to replicate
Whole brands that you admire and want to use as influence for your Brand
Note: A designer will take your mood board, ideas, and strategy, help you bring the concept to life through the design process, and highlight which design principles to put into practice.
Last Updated: 22/May/2024