You decided to
In any of the above, whether you’re going to Do-it-yourself or hire some experts to help, you need to figure out your branding.
Your branding will determine HOW you’ll be perceived by your target audience.
A brand identity for your business involves the visual components that make up the look and feel of your brand. These include things like your logo, colour palette, fonts, patterns, textures, etc.
We usually create Brand Guidelines for each of our clients, but if you’re just getting started and you’re not sure what you like, you can start with some basics.
Over the years we’ve found some fun ways you can use to communicate to any designer what you envision for your brand.
The best way to do this? By creating a mood board!
Its purpose is to capture the overall look and feel of your brand, giving your brand its own unique personality.
Some of these elements may include
A mood board helps communicate what you can’t convey in words. It gets us on the same page when it comes to how you want your brand to look online and in print.
Mood boards…
The goal of a mood board is to visually communicate ONE mood. This is how you want your brand to be perceived by your target audience.
It's important to remember that your brand is not what you say about your business; it's all about your brand's reputation, which is almost entirely based on the emotions of others.
Your goal should be to create a positive brand perception that speaks directly to your target audience and gives them exactly what they want.
In other words, brand perception impacts your bottom line—a lot.
Ask yourself how you want your brand to be perceived by others:
However you want your brand to be perceived, you will need to focus on visually communicating that perception through a specific colour palette, fonts, patterns, textures, etc., that help evoke certain emotions from others.
1. Use Pinterest or Google Images to collect imagery.
2. Search for words that describe your brand; colour combinations and logo styles you like; patterns, textures, photos that evoke an emotion (or emotions) you want your brand to convey; and inspirational quotes, etc. Aim to pin about 25-75 images.
3. Load all your images into Power Point or Google Slides.
4. Every time you save an image, write a description as to why you included this pin on your board.
Ex: You like this particular shade of green because __________ (or) You like the feel of this particular photo because__________.
5. Once you have finished pinning your images, look for things that seem out of place and delete them.
Using the images in your mood board as a guide, take key colours and create a palette of complementary colours to use for your project.
You now have 2 options:
1. Take everything to a designer and get them to set you up with a brand guidelines document.
2. DIY with some online tools to create your own colour palette
Here are some tools you can use to get your final colour palette.
(No, not a misspelling.) Upload your images and get a colour palette created for you
This one is fun. You can upload a picture or put in colour numbers, and it'll show you what your website could look like based on those colours.
The popular online image editor, Canva also has a colour generator.
Written By: Dafne CanalesFounder and CEO of the innovative digital marketing software company, Spartan Spark, Dafne Canales Lees has earned her reputation as the Data-Driven Digital Storyteller. Her 7-Second Trust Formula uses behavioural marketing strategies to create client trust via digital marketing platforms for a more personalized user experience that translates into additional sign-ups, sales and increased profits.
A member of the Neuromarketing Business and Science Association and the Society for the Advancement of Behavioural Economics, Dafne travels monthly to California to attend meetings with her advisory board. A sought-after speaker and facilitator, this creative innovator never stops giving of her time and talent, even teaching corporate in-house marketing teams the latest digital marketing strategies.
