Need a visual brand identity but can’t afford professional design services?
Although we always recommend engaging a professional designer and brand specialist when starting a business, we understand that it may not be feasible for all small businesses when just starting out. For this reason, we’ve compiled our top tips to a great DIY brand. Including logo creation, brand marks, colours, fonts and imagery.
1. Logo and brand mark design.
1. Logo and brand mark design.
There are two predominant types of logos, those that are icon/ graphic based and those that are more typographic (font based). Start by looking at logos of brands in the same industry as you and comparing the two styles. Your design process will be easier if you start by choosing a particular style.
Icon based fonts are those that rely on a unique graphic to convey a quick and memorable message. These can be difficult to create without graphic design experience, however they can hold a lot of brand equity when done properly.
Font based designs usually work by selecting 1 to 2 key fonts that represent the brand, are scalable and would be memorable to an audience. These fonts are then used to strategically place the letters within the brand name, creating a brand mark.
Logo design process
Make a mood board - Using Pinterest, start a mood board collecting all the logos and other imagery that inspires your brand. Try and narrow your collection to only images that match and are of the same style. Too many conflicting ideas can make the process harder. You can also gather great inspiration from Awards.com.
Play around with different options - Start by creating a series of different options based on the inspiration you have gathered. These can be rough ideas and do not need to look perfect. For those with no graphic design experience, we recommend using Canva or Adobe Spark on a desktop computer for best results.
Select 2 options to refine - At this stage you should have a clear idea of what your logo should encompass. Select your 2 favourite options and building on them. Keep tweaking until you’re done! Once you’ve completed your main logo, you can create smaller icons and secondary brand marks.
Export your logo as a PNG with a transparent background, this is the easiest to apply to different circumstances, particularly digital applications. You can also use a pdf and JPEG for print applications.
Logo design rules
Design the logo in black and white first - An age-old rule for logo design is that if your logo doesn’t work in black and white, it won’t work in colour. So, to make the design process easier, work in black and white to ensure your elements of shape, hierarchy and typography function perfectly before adding colour.
Test in-situ - Logos need to function in a variety of situations, from letter heads, to t-shirts, billboards, business cards and packaging. It’s important to mock up your logo on a series of different applications to make sure that it will always work on as many placements as needed over time.
Scale up and down - Your brand mark needs to legible across all sizes. Do some test prints of your logo in different sizes and check to see if you can read and understand it at a quick glance. If it’s too difficult, consider altering your design or font.
2. Colours.
2. Colours
Choosing your brand colour palette is a big task. A great place to start is by looking at basic colour theory and thinking about the meaning of colours in brands as you see them. For example, Endota Spa uses green and white to reflect freshness and serenity. Whereas McDonald’s uses red and yellow to evoke a sense of hunger.
With this in mind, choose your main brand colour. In the case of Mariah Jade Studio, we use hot pink as it presents a sense of strength and creativity which reflects our brand and team well.
Now that you have your main brand colour, use Adobe Color to select the supporting colours and tones to your brand. This program is fantastic as you will be able to use colour theory and mix your own palettes. It even supplies all the colour codes you will need to create your designs. Make sure you save these codes for future use.
Colour pairing to consider
Contrasting - Colours that are on opposite sides of the colour wheel contrast and enhance vibrancy. This is a great option if you want your brand to stand out with lots of different colours.
Monochromatic - Using multiple shades of the one colour can create a sense of class and unity.
Complementary - Using a total of 2 colours that are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel, multiple shades of each colour can be used. This is often a creat ay to go when you want your brand to stand out whilst keeping it classy and simple.
3. Fonts.
3. Fonts.
When selecting fonts for your brand, you will need a heading 1, heading 2 and body copy font at the least. These fonts should be web safe and legible in printed formats too. You can look at fontpair.co for inspiration.
Font pairing tips
The key to any great typographic pairing is to have 1 decorative font, and 1 non-decorative font. The decorative font (like a script or serif font) will appear as the focal point of the pairing, whilst the san-serif font will be cleaner, creating contrast whilst ensuring legibility. For example…
Script and san-serif
Bold and script
Serif and san-serif
4. Imagery selection and treatment.
4. Imagery selection and treatment.
Create another mood board, this time detailing the types of imagery you would like to use for your brand. Think about all the times you will need images, they could be for social media, flyers, brochures and more. We need to capture a style of image that can be carried across all imagery in this mood board. Look through Unsplash for royalty free images and save the ones that suit your brand. Images match when they depict similar things and are shot in a similar way. For example, if you are a florist, you may choose imagery that is all taken indoors of beautiful bouquets of flowers and smiling people.
Now that you have your image style selected, it’s time to look at the photography treatment to be used across all images to maintain consistency. For someone with no design or photography experience, Lightroom for mobile is a highly powerful tool. Here you can adjust an array of things from lightness, to contrast, colour balance sharpness and texture. Play around with a few images and select the settings that suit. These settings can be saved as a preset and applied to all images in the future for consistency. Alternatively, you can purchase ready made Lightroom presets online.
We hope you found these DIY branding tips helpful.
If you want to add a professional spark to your branding, book a free 15min consultation with us to find out how we can help you.
Until then, watch this space for monthly updates on the latest digital marketing trends.
