Link to the published FB Live video – https://youtu.be/edadm8uZLMo
Once you’re happy with your brand material, the idea is to reduce your choices so that you can focus on the most important brand assets in order to strengthen your brand and create one that is memorable. Your brand assets in the example are:
colours
fonts
logo variations
layout
Colours
Where you can, try and stick to only one main colour, maybe 2, but definitely not more than 3. This will form your primary colour palette. Then select your secondary colour palette – these will be colours that compliment and enhance your primary colour palette.
Your primary colour palette should feature strongly in your logo and brand identity, try to reserve your primary colour palette to be used sparingly so that the strength of that colour is strong and powerful and not monotonous.
Your secondary colour palette will build flexibility into your brand as well as future proofing the growth of your business. You can use these colours to categories services you offer when you start building more offerings into your business. You can also use these colours to compartmentalise sections on your website or a brochure – it’ll help your potential customer navigate through the information easier with the freedom to start with the most pertinent information to them.
Fonts
The font used in your logo should be the only instance that that font is used, this will keep the logo as a special part of your brand, strengthening the impact of the logo. The logo font, like the primary colour palette work towards creating an impression of your business to your customers, that’s an entire blog all on it’s own. You’ll need to decide on a brand font, this should be a font family that compliments and enhances your main brand identity/logo.
What is a font family?
A font family is a typeface that has a large selection of weights to choose from. For example, bold, regular, italic, light. The purpose is the use font consistently, with a set of rules to help teach potential customers how you communicate your information and to, again, make it as easy as possible to absorb the information that you’re wanting them to know. To help readers navigate through a document with loads of text, I create a hierarchy of information by defining the headings, bulleted lists, paragraphs, image captions, contact details by using colours, font size and weights for each. For example, I might make all the section headers 14pt font size, bold and in blue (just throwing a colour out there, it should be part of the brand colour palette).
Logo Variations
You’ll have a logo designed for you or you may even design one yourself, it’s important that it’s easily recognisable and consistently shown but that doesn’t mean that you can’t build in some flexibility to fit into a space better if it needs to be made smaller or larger, fit into a tall format or wide.
In my logo, you can see that there are 2 parts to it, image (geometry hare) and the text (‘mystery hare’) I will use this logo, as it is, wherever I can - this will be my first choice but if I need to reconstruct the logo to fit into a space better then I can pull it apart and rebuild it, perhaps the image on top and the text underneath it. It’ll still be recognisable as my logo but I’ve considered the space it’ll feature in so that it can be represented in the best way possible.
Layout
As well as logo design, colour palette and font choices, you should establish a set of rules around how your information is displayed. It's about clarity and conditioning your audience on how they will absorb the information presented to them. Luckily, the job has been made easier from the way websites and emails are already designed – we know that if we want to find contact details, we look at the footer, that tends to be the same on websites and emails. We've been trained to understand that the information is there if we need it but it's also information that we can ignore - it's normally in a smaller sized font too. This helps us to not be overwhelmed by all the information, we can pick and choose what we want to read first and where to look for details we need later. Layout is about accommodating the social rules that have already been established and creating a set of rules for ourselves, that start working towards creating a memorable brand. Keep your layout simple, neat and clear – give your logo space around it so that it's not crowded and signals to the reader that it's important but doesn't require a lot of effort to read. Catering to the modern consumers short attention span means really considering the message and targeting how we want them to react to any given communication we're sending to them. Don't try and cram too much into your message otherwise it'll all get missed. By focussing on one message at a time, you'll get a much better response for your efforts.
Do you struggle with feeling overwhelmed when it comes to your brand and how to display it then let me help you, it’s what I do and, more importantly, what I love to do. Email me at caroline@mysteryhare.com or call me on 07525246734
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