Branding is important and is more than just a logo. It is the look, feel, style, and tone of voice of a business. Colours, typography, icons, and straplines are all key elements to consider when creating a brand.
Branding: Colour
Colour is a powerful tool for grabbing people’s attention and creating an emotional response. Using the right colours to represent your business and products and appeal to your target market is important to consider.
Here are the meanings behind some colours:
Black – bold, powerful and authoritative
White – simplicity, neutrality, and purity
Red – intense, strong and powerful
Orange – bright, fun and friendly
Pink – feminine, tranquil and soft
Blue – cool, trustworthy and dependable
Green – nature, stability and calm
Yellow – positive, optimistic and attention-grabbing
Purple – nostalgic, romantic and sophisticated
Branding: Typography
Typography can help sell a product, and making sure you have the right font to make the right impression is vital.
Traditional serif fonts such as Times New Roman represent reliability, stability, and a conventional, trustworthy approach to your business and customers.
Modern Sans Serif fonts such as Arial represent a dynamic, vibrant, and fresh approach to your business and customers.
You can use italics to emphasise certain words or text without making them stand out too much, or you can make them bold so they clearly stand out from the rest of the document.
Branding: Icon
Some businesses have branding that consists of a simple symbol that is instantly recognisable. For example:
Apple logo
Nike tick
McDonald’s golden arches
Branding: Straplines
A strapline is a memorable and brief statement that captures your business and your brand. There are many businesses that have created successful straplines that are instantly recognisable, such as:
You’re worth it – L’Oreal
The best a man can get – Gillette
Every little helps – Tesco
It does exactly what it says on the tin – Ronseal
I am sure there are many more logos and straplines that you can think of that stick in your mind.
Brand Guidelines
It is essential to have consistency throughout all your marketing materials from business cards and flyers through to your website and social media platforms and this is where having brand guidelines is important.
Brand guidelines can range from 1 page to 100 pages. The more in-depth brand guidelines will specify the tone of voice and the styles of images that can be used in marketing.
It is important to have branding as people tend to do business with people they know, like and trust. Branding increases business visibility, trust and loyalty and helps keep in the mind of your potential customers.
A graphic designer can create your brand for your business and will ask relevant questions to determine the colours, look and styles that you like and don’t like.
Spend some time looking in magazines or on Pinterest boards for pictures and images that appeal to you and resonate with your business to discuss and share with your graphic designer.
