If you want to set your business apart from the rest and sustain a buzz for quarters to come you’ll need to use brand graphic design to your benefit. In today’s world having a solid brand identity isn't just important - it’s essential.
Every brand needs a personality to be successful. To give yours one, you’ll need to create elements that work together to shape that personality in the eyes of your consumers. These are elements like your logo, colors, fonts, and anything else that’s a visual asset to your brand.
Through designing brand graphics that convey your business persona you’ll make lasting connections with your audience and foster trust.
Stick around and learn how to bring your business to life through brand graphic design.
What are the Different Elements of Brand Graphic Design?
Before getting into the tactics and tips of brand designing, it’s important to understand the different elements that will come together to define your brand’s character. When creating your branding graphics, there are four main elements of your brand to consider and utilize:
- Color Palette: When you think of your favorite brands, color always comes into mind. For example, Coca-Cola could be associated with red, while Pepsi might make you think of the color blue. A well-chosen color palette will make your brand instantly recognizable and reinforce your brand identity.
- Logo: Simply put your logo is the face of your business. It needs to be unique and tell a story about your brand's identity without being overstated.
- Imagery: Assets like illustrations, graphics, and pictures are powerful tools that can help you resonate with your audience.
- Typography: Choosing and pairing the right font styles can help you stand out from the crowd to your audience while making your messages clear and visually appealing to readers.
Tip 1: Understand the Basics
Branding graphics are visual elements that communicate a brand's identity, values, and personality. This creates a memorable image that sets a brand apart from the competition.
Just like building a house from the ground up, you will need to do the same with your brand. Building a business requires a solid foundation. In this case, the foundation of your business is a strong brand visual identity. Your branding graphics have to be implemented at the start, and you have to get it right.
When building your brand identity, keep the following in mind:
- Uniqueness: Your brand identity must be unique and different from any competitors. This will help set you apart and make your brand more memorable.
- Scalability: You need to keep in mind that all your visual elements will be used on different platforms and mediums from a business card to website and billboards. You should leave room for scalability and adaptability.
- Consistency: When it comes to brand recognition, you need to ensure that your brand identity designs are used consistently across all touchpoints of your business.
By laying this brand identity foundation from the start, you will ensure that you achieve long-term success and customer recognition in the future.
Tip 2: Solidify the Main Elements of your Brand
Arguably one of the most important aspects when creating your brand personality are the four main elements. These elements breathe life into your brand, here are some vital tips to consider on each brand element:
Logo
Your logo sets the tone for your brand. You have to design it with care and consideration. Since it's the first thing people see, you better make it a good impression. For your logo to be well designed, it should be:
- Timeless: Trends always come and go. Be sure not to base your logo on a current trend. Instead, design without trends in mind to give it a timeless quality that will show relevance for many years.
- Memorable: Your logo should be unique and easy to remember. Don’t overcrowd your designs and cause confusion. Simple designs will make your logo easily recognizable and memorable.
- Relevant: A good logo can tell a story about what your brand does. Make sure to keep your logo relevant and relate to what your business offers and its personality.
Color Palette
The colors you choose to build your brand will evoke emotions and create associates in the minds of your consumers. You should consider the following when choosing your color palette:
- Brand Personality: Colors can give off different vibes and should align with your brand's personality. For example, if you sell boho furniture, you wouldn’t want your colors to be metallic or chrome.
- Contrast: You need to choose colors that have enough contrast to be visually appealing and easy on the eyes. Consider readability for the viewer here.
- Consistency: Ensure that you use these colors consistently across all of your customer interactive channels to build brand consistency and strengthen your reputation with your audience.
Typography
The fonts and style of writing you use have a bigger effect on how your brand is perceived than most think. Consider three important tips when choosing your typography:
- Personality: Different fonts have different personalities. They can make your brand seem more sophisticated, playful, modern or classic. Make sure you choose a font that matches your brand’s personality.
- Legibility: Nowadays we take in so much information daily that if the text is hard to read, we’ll likely scroll on further, skipping the message altogether. Do your best to avoid this and ensure your chosen fonts are easy to read.
- Hierarchy: You can use the size of text and fonts to guide your audience's attention to the most important aspects of your brand graphic designs. For example, our eyes are drawn to larger elements first over smaller text, you can use this to your advantage and direct the audience wherever you want.
Imagery
We live in a world where visuals have taken over. It’s a no brainer, there’s really no need to explain how important the brand graphic design you choose to use is to your success. When adding imagery to your brand design, consider the following:
- Consistency: You need to make sure that the pictures you use represent your brand's personality and relate to your target audience. The imagery not only should be consistent on all platforms, but consistent with your brand as well.
- Quality: Nobody wants to look at bad-quality images. Use professional imagery that showcases your business's ability to produce quality things.
- Creative: Get as creative as possible when choosing and gathering imagery. Your goal is to spark interest in your audience at first glance.
Tip 3: Securing the Final Pieces
When designing for your brand, you want to create something truly special and that requires careful planning and execution. This is the time to take every little thing into consideration and tie up any loose ends you might have.
When solidifying your brand’s personality, ask yourself: What values and qualities do you want your brand to showcase? What do you have to offer? And what do you want to say?
Focus on your target audience, who they are, what they like and don’t like. This will help you create brand designs that stand out from the competition in the long run.
Moreover, before designing brand graphics, you should create a mood board. Take all the visual elements you want to use and create one large visual representation of what your brand personality will look like. Share with your peers and be open to feedback, at this stage it's important to be willing to make edits.
Finally, don’t be shy to consider reaching out to professional graphic design services. You might already have a vision for your brand, and professional designers can help you bring your ideas to life in a way that ensures your brand design is visually appealing and cohesive the first time around.
Tip 4: Get to Know the Competition
Before you start the brand design process, you should research your competitors. You’ll want to ensure that your brand stands out from the rest, but it’s important to try to be unbiased. Researching your competitors first can help you identify what does and doesn’t work in the space. Here are a few steps you could follow when researching your competitors:
Step 1: Identify Your Direct Competitors
You can start your research by creating a list of different businesses that have a similar product or service as you. Keep in mind what kind of people are interacting with these businesses as you’ll want to target the same audience with your brand designs.
Step 2: Analyze Their Brand Designs
Once you have your list, you should carefully study and analyze each company's different brand design elements, such as logos, color palettes, typography, and all other visual elements.
Look for the patterns these competitors might be following and the different areas that you think you could improve.
Step 3: Identify their Strengths and Weaknesses
Assess what brand efforts these competitors' customers are reacting to. You could use similar ideas and get a good understanding of what your target audience likes. You can also evaluate what efforts aren’t getting enough attention and make sure to avoid making the same mistakes.
Step 4: Draw Inspiration, But Don’t Copy!
When doing your competitor research, be sure that your brand designs don’t copy the competitors. You need to use what you have learned to draw inspiration and create a unique and memorable brand.
Tip 5: Get Branding Ideas From Mega Corporations
Sometimes the best way to get brand design ideas is to look at the companies that have been the most successful. What do they all have in common? Why does everybody know them?
Let’s look at some case studies of successful brand graphic design and see what we can learn from them.
Apple
Apple’s brand design extends way beyond the iconic bitten apple logo. They have expressed simplicity and consistency throughout their entire brand existence, all the way from their foundation.
They have taken their clean and modern aesthetic and added it into their packaging, product designs, and even marketing materials.
But how have they managed to create this well-known aesthetic? They’ve stuck to white spaces, a muted color palette that allows them to use pops of color when necessary in marketing campaigns, and clean lines.
Nike
Nike is a perfect example of knowing your target audience and creating brand graphics to get their attention. Their iconic swoosh logo is one of the most recognized symbols in the world. It represents what the consumers want: movement, speed, and dynamism.
Nike has managed to become so recognizable because of their smart use of branding graphic elements. They use bold, typography, vibrant color, and imagery that all comes together to create a feeling of power and high performance.
Coca-Cola
Another incredible example of brand design is Coca-Cola. They’ve managed to create a brand that feels truly timeless. Their logo with the distinct cursive writing has remained unchanged since they company was founded in 1887.
They have the reputation they do because they stuck to the foundation of their brand identity. Choosing to use imagery surrounding people in their marketing material evokes nostalgia and relatability from the consumer. While the simple but high contrast colors like Coca Cola’s red and white are eye-catching and easy to distinguish.
Even though this is an older company, the design remains true to its foundation and is incredibly consistent in their brand design to this day.
Conclusion
A well-crafted visual identity is the foundation of a brand; incorporating elements like your logo, colors, and fonts to create an appealing image.
You can't just choose any color palette or font pairing and expect to resonate with consumers. You have to do your own research, solidify your brand identity, and be comfortable knowing how to create consistent brand graphic design for your business.
Mastering the art of brand graphic design is key to building a long-lasting identity and becoming the talk of the town. It’s something you don’t want to skimp out on, so if you lack the creative direction and skills, hiring a professional creative service can help set your business up for success right out of the box.
