Branding is more than just a main logo for your brand identity. It’s important to understand that branding goes beyond the visuals — it’s actually an emotional experience, what others think of you. It's telling a story.
But, in order to visually tell your story well, you must have many elements working together to create a cohesive look and feel for your brand — and one that makes you look authentic and unique — and stand out from the crowd!
So what are these components??
1. MAIN LOGO
Your logo is the “face” of your brand — your major mark. A symbol that is unique just to your company and that current and potential clients will come to recognize. It should be memorable and iconic — never too busy or detailed. When we work with brand and website design clients, the first step of my design process is coming up with three distinctive logo design concepts. The primary logo is an essential component of the brand identity and it’s the main symbol of your brand.
2. DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF YOUR MAIN LOGO
Your brand needs more than one version of your logo – it needs alternative logos and sub-marks. The reason behind having more than one version of your logo it’s that your main logo might not work well in certain situations.
3. COLOUR PALETTE
It is recomended to use 3 to 5 colours, which you may use over and over again for your brand – in other words, your brand colours/colour scheme. Your palette should be representative of your brand’s personality and what will resonate well with your potential client base. You can create a “primary” palette, which is the one that you use for your website, most collateral, is used within your logo, etc. But, you can also create a “secondary” palette that you use for smaller graphics, on social media, for special brand projects and more.
4. TYPOGRAPHY
Similar to the colours, you use typography all over your website and in any graphics, you create for social media and so on. You should consider having a collection of no more than 2-3 typefaces: a combination of a serif, a sans serif and a script.
5. DESIGN ELEMENTS/TEXTURES/PATTERNS
Once you have your logo and other elements established, think about incorporating secondary elements to really tie together your identity. Have design elements that fit your brand like icons, illustrations, dividers, signatures, image holders, buttons and so on. Remember, consistency is the key!
6. PHOTOGRAPHY
This one depends on your business type/model. Not every business uses photos, but there are businesses where photos are crucial, like fashion bloggers, food bloggers. Make sure to take high-quality pictures and ten edit your pictures creating high quality consistent imagery throughout.
7. BRAND COLLATERALS
Often forgotten, but super important! Brand collaterals (business cards, note cards, blog post graphics, icons, social media covers, etc.) is as much as important as having a logo, colour palette and so on. You need to use the design elements, colours and fonts on your brand collaterals to create a streamlined experience for your audience.
8. WEBSITE
Once you have the brand design, we need to make sure that your new brand identity shines through your website. Both brand and website design work together as a whole.
9. BRANDED SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES
Even though you can’t control the look of Instagram or Facebook like, you can control the way your website or blog look like. You need to make sure that your brand design is incorporated on your social media profiles. You do that by uploading your logo and using branded social media graphics and incorporating your colours, website URL or other design elements.