Building a Brand (part 2): Showcasing your brand

A guide to creating a brilliant brand for your business. In Building a Brand (Part 1): Where to start? (link) I spoke about the process of creating a brand identity and defining your business’s brand. Here I talk more about the design process and what to expect, as well as how best to showcase your new visual identity to the world.

Design and refine

The design phase is where the findings from the discovery phase (brand values, personality, and future goals) are translated into something more meaningful. It’s time for me to work my magic and pull the ideas into a logo and a visual identity.

The work often begins with sketching logo ideas. It’s great to get off the computer and the process is quicker and more efficient as you get to see what is and isn’t working more easily. It allows for experimentation with type and shape without the computer’s constraints. It can take over 30 sketches to come up with just one logo idea. You will never see many of the ideas, as you will only be presented with the best-suited designs. Showing all the designs would not be helpful and would just make the process more confusing, trust in your designer!

Sketching logo designs for Clearworks Coaching

After this stage, you will be presented with visuals of your new brand concepts. There are often a couple of design routes to choose from, including logo and visual identity. The visual identity is demonstrated by choosing a few key elements of your communications and creating mock-ups of the designs. This allows you to really see how your new brand will look and work. The designs may include typography, illustration, photography, and animation, as well as the all-important colours and fonts.

Colours

The finished design will include a colour palette. Very often there will be one to two key colours and a secondary colour palette, with some complementary colours to allow enough flexibility in your final designs. Don’t underestimate the power of colour. Alongside your logo this can have a huge impact in terms of recognition. Your designer will also be aware of colour psychology and how the colours effect the mood of a design.

Fonts

The finished mock-ups will have some relevant font choices and you will have enough fonts to give some contrast to your designs (eg, header font compared to body copy font). You may also want display fonts or handwritten fonts to add personality.

Example mockup designs when presenting visual ideas really help the client

It’s now time to work with your designer to give your thoughts and feedback. This stage can involve some back and forth, but soon you should end up with a final brand design you are happy with and which truly represents your business.

Showcasing your new brand design

At this point you may be panicking about how to keep things looking fantastic. It’s good to do a bit of planning here, reviewing all your assets and timing their rollout. The timescales can really vary here depending on your business’s needs. A website, for example, will take longer.

Once you have a plan, there are numerous methods to help keep your new branding looking consistent across all your communications. At the sign-off stage you will receive a toolkit with all your assets. Depending on the branding package you have chosen these may include:

Logos

These files may include different versions of your logo (eg, for dark background or a favicon for use on social media). You will receive the logos in two colour formats, RGB for screen and CMYK for print. Your files will include a variety of file formats:

• Vector format files (EPS, AI or SVG) are files that can be enlarged to any size, as they are made using shapes and lines. These are great for large-format exhibition work.

• Bitmap graphics are made up of pixels (JPEG, PNG). Be warned that these will look fuzzy if enlarged. These are mostly used online for websites and social media, where file sizes need to be lower.

Brand Guidelines

A brand guide is a really important record of the decisions made during the branding process. The guide keeps elements of the design consistent going forward. As a minimum you should have a brand board, which is a one-page document showing your logo, colours and fonts. Ideally though you will have a longer document showing elements from the discovery phase. This would include your business values; more detailed logo rules; typography; image usage; colour sections; and working examples of how your assets will look going forward.

Example brand guidelines for Hortus Garden Design and the Gender, Justice and Security Hub

Templates

These files are great if you have to produce visual documents or graphics quickly and often. Templates mean that your workload is reduced and that your business is branded consistently every time. They can include:

• PowerPoint presentations and proposals

• Canva templates for social media graphics

• Emailable stationery eg, invoices, contracts, letterheads

If there is more complex work, ask for help! I work regularly with clients to help with further design projects as and when required. Think of me as your in-house designer.

I hope this blog has been useful to you and given some insight into the work involved in producing a new brand design. In this visually-crowded world – with shops, ads, posters, social media, tv, and billboards all vying for your client’s attention – it’s no surprise that we welcome consistency, bringing comfort and trust. Having a well-designed brand for your business can bring so many benefits, including a feeling of confidence to showcase your business to the world.

If you would like to find out more about the branding services I offer, read more on my services page.

Or, if you’re ready to chat about your business with me, book a FREE 30 minute discovery call to talk more about branding.