DEVELOPING A BRAND IDENTITY

So, you have a great business idea, a lovely logo and an awesome business name. Following on from last week's design tips I want to share my three essentials for developing your brand identity. Last week I talked briefly about choosing design elements for your website. I want to stress that for a truly professional look it's important to maintain a consistent look throughout your marketing collateral. This helps to establish and reinforce your brand identity.

1 CONSISTENT FONTS

Fonts are a really key part of your brand identity. They appear everywhere from business cards to leaflets and adverts, the emails you send, through to quotations and invoices.

You can use a different font for your headers and body text, but try to be consistent in how you use them. Don't have too many variations in size, as it makes your text difficult to read.

To make your life easier it's best to use a true type font for your body text - these fonts can be installed on all your devices and can be read by all the recipients of your communications. In all honesty something like arial is the perfect font. It may be plain, but it's easy to read, and doesn't get substituted for other fonts. A classic for a reason!

2 ENFORCE LOGO GUIDELINES

Make a decision on how you are going to place your logo and stick to it. Does it always go in the top left? do you prefer it in the centre? Does it have a minumum amount of white space surrounding it? Your logo should be the most recognisable pice of your brand identity and you need to make it easy to find - consistent placement helps with this.

3 MATCH YOUR COLLATERAL

For example - your business card and email signatures should match. The logo on your headed paper and your business card should be used consistently. Your flyers and ads should use the same fonts. Get together a copy of everything that you present to the world, put it all side by side and look at it. Does it look like a disjointed collection of items from lots of different companies? If so, you need to re-evaluate your marketing collateral.

As well as website design I can create logos, design adverts and flyers, create brand guidelines and Microsoft Office templates. I'm always happy to help!

#TipsOnTuesday #BrandIdentity #BrandGuidelines #Logos