Build Your Brand & Attract Your Dream Clients – time to say ‘goodbye’ to boring logos and ‘hello’ to beautiful inspirational branding.
Welcome back to the Build Your Brand & Attract Your Dream Clients series, where we say ‘goodbye’ to boring logos and ‘hello’ to beautiful inspirational branding.
Throughout the series we will explore what branding is, and throughout the coming posts I will aim to show you how great branding can attract your dream clients, how companies build strong brands, and how you can do it too.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the last four blog posts where we talked about what branding is, logos, typography and colour. If you haven’t read these I recommend you go back and check those out.
If you have read these blogs how did you get on with your mood boards and your new brand choices? Are you inspired? I’d love to see some of them so please comment below or post your photos on my Facebook page.
So today we are talking about all the other design elements to do with your brand and things that you might add into your final style guide.
Let’s start with icons. These are the little details that add a bit of personality to your brand and can be used in a decorative way in your marketing designs. Some of them might be literal, such as an envelope to show email or a phone to highlight your phone number or they can be more decorative, such as pretty flowers or animal illustrations. You can use icons from your logo or be completely new, but should be in the same style as your branding so far. You can also use illustrations. Perhaps you have an interest in drawing or you know an illustrator you can hire. Small illustrations and points of interest can add some real style to a brand.
You can use these new icons in your patterns. Patterns come in all types. They can be simple and geometric, or they can be more complicated with lots of illustrated elements. The most important thing is that they keep in-line with your brand essence and the style that you’ve developed so far. They could be polka dots or stripes in your brand colour palette, they can be pretty florals, and you can add texture or even typography from your font stack. If they sit well with the processes you’ve made so far, you’ll have a beautiful looking pattern that fits. You can create repeat patterns in Adobe illustrator and there are lots of tutorials about this online. Alternatively, you can employ a pattern designer or a graphic designer to help you do this. There are also stock patterns which you can purchase online starting at a small cost. These patterns can be used for so many things. Perhaps you need them for your packaging or for stand out parts on your website? They’ll add depth to your brand and highlight what you are about.
Photography is much the same. Image has become so important recently with the birth of Instagram and other social media changing to be more image focused. Think about hiring a photographer who is great at settings and fully understands your brand and company. It’s all about storytelling and giving your clients a feel for your business and what you’re selling. You can also source lots of images online from places like iStock or Shutterstock. Make sure your images are all high-resolution (300dpi) in case you need them later for printed material.
Your social media icons are also an important element to think about. Have you thought how you might design them? They could simply be in your company’s statement colours or perhaps you want to add your new patterns to them? Most social media apps have vector versions of their logo online that you can download and amend. Some of them have their own particular brand guidelines associated to them, just like your new brand might have, so look out for that. It’s all about making them fit to your styling and to tie every element of your brand together so it’s easily and quickly recognised by your dream clients.
It’s crucial that you apply your styling to every part of your business. From your business cards when you first meet a new client, to that final invoice you’ll hopefully send.
So now you have a good idea about your whole brand. In the next and last post, I am going to show you how to bring these elements together into a branding guide bible or style guide as it’s better known. This is your company’s style bible and is a quick, easy reference guide to all the design decisions you’ll have made over the last few blog tutorials.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this fifth blog and found it useful. If so I’d love it if you’d like it or share it with someone else who might find it helpful.
If you have any questions about branding, post them below and I will be happy to answer them.
So, I will see you next time for the last blog about building your brand and attracting your dream clients.
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