Fundamentals of Brand Design

Overview

Nowadays, good design is crucial for making your business look professional and reputable, but not everyone has the time or resources to invest in quality graphic design. This guide will help you with:

• Creating a Design Concept
• Choosing Brand Colors
• Selecting Brand Fonts
• Logo Design
• Additional Design Resources
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Creating a Design Concept

To start, you should at least have a general idea of your business plan and target audience. Before creating a logo or choosing a font, you need to outline a design concept that will lend credibility to your brand and attract customers. First, ensure you have a good understanding of your audience. It’s crucial to know what types of media your audience consumes and where they spend their time both online and offline. Use that information to visit your competitors' websites and observe their colors, fonts, logos, photography, and other design work. What colors do they use? Do they have script, serif, or sans-serif fonts? What imagery do they use to develop their brand? Take notes on what you like and what works well.
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Choosing Brand Colors

Deciding which colors to use can be daunting. Color evokes different emotions and influences how people respond to your brand. Let’s go over some basic color theory.

• Blue: Trust, intelligence, reliability, calmness
  Blue is often associated with reliability and is widely used by hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, governments, and tech firms. Check the apps on your phone that contain sensitive information. Chances are, their logos are predominantly blue.

Red: Excitement, attention, stimulation, powerRed has a variety of effects. It can make you hungry, raise your heart rate, evoke anger, and grab your attention. Red encourages faster fast-food purchases, watching thrilling videos, or buying things you don’t need.

Green: Sustainability, health, freshness, friendlinessGreen gives off a friendly and sustainable energy. You see it reflected in healthy food options and outdoor brands.

Other colors like yellow (cheerful, positive), purple (glamour, mystery), and black (VIP, high-end, exclusive) are also used in logo design but are less common than the colors mentioned above.

Where to start? Choose a neutral color, two bold colors, and a call-to-action color. Begin with a color that you like and that fits well with the message you are trying to convey, and then fill in the other colors around it. You want to ensure that the colors look good together.

Where to Find Color Scheme Inspiration? visit Adobe Color CC. Under the "Explore" tab, you can search for various keywords that relate to your brand. Additionally, you can explore different color combinations of your choice under the "Create" tab.

When choosing your brand colors, the key is to think about the message you want to convey to your customers. Consider how your colors translate into logo design, websites, and even merchandise you might sell. Once you have an idea of your color scheme, you’re ready to move on to fonts.
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Choosing Brand Fonts

Finding and choosing brand fonts can seem like a daunting task. After all, there are thousands of fonts available. But the most important thing to realize is that fonts ultimately fall into a few categories: serif, sans serif, script, and display.

• Serif fonts have lines at the end of each letter. They are classic, traditional, and serious.

• Sans Serif literally means "without serif." These fonts have no lines at the end of their letters, giving them a more modern feel. Both serif and sans serif fonts are usually easy to read, with a slight advantage for sans serif fonts.

• Script fonts resemble handwriting and feature letters that are connected in some way. They have become incredibly popular in recent years, exuding fun and a DIY vibe. They are often used in logos and headlines but are rarely used in body text.

• Display fonts grab attention. They are the hardest to read and should be used deliberately and sparingly.

The best way to add depth and character to your brand and website is by pairing different weights of the same font or different types of fonts together. Contrasting font weights are usually paired with a serif or sans serif font and are added in bold headlines.

Using different fonts, on the other hand, can look like a combination of a serif and a sans serif font. Typically, the serif font is used for the headline and the sans serif font for the body text. You can also use script and display fonts for your header with a serif or sans serif font, but be cautious. At the end of the day, you want to ensure that your content is easy to read. Finally, avoid fonts that are closely associated with another brand (e.g., Coca-Cola, Sopranos, Harry Potter, etc.). A great resource for downloading free fonts is Google Fonts.

Logo Design

Now that you've worked hard researching competitor designs, created a color scheme, and selected fonts that you think will work well for your brand, it's time to build your logo. But before we begin, let’s go over some concepts to keep in mind when creating your logo.

Your logo should:

• Be simple
• Be scalable (just as easy to read on a mobile device as on a billboard)
• Primarily be horizontal

You have two options when it comes to creating a logo: you can design it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. If you choose to design something yourself or want to use some options without investing in expensive new software, GIMP, Inkscape, Pixlr and Canva are all free image editing and design tools you can use to create your logo.  

Keep in mind that you will need the following logo variations for the best scalability of your brand:

• Background: transparent, white
• Text coloring: dark and light text options
• Shape: square, horizontal, favicon

If you don’t want to create something yourself and also don’t want to hire someone to design your logo, Shopify’s app Hatchful can help design a logo for free. Make sure your logo aligns with your brand and industry.

Once your website is live, you may need a handful of stock photos and videos to bring your emails, website, and other communications to life. Unsplash, Gratisography and Pexels all offer high-quality stock photos and videos to give your brand a boost.
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Next Steps

So you have brand colors, styling, and a logo—what now? Find out where you plan to host your website. Are you selling something? Set up an eCommerce store, considering the branding choices for your website. Check out Klaviyo’s article on platforms that you may need that integrate with Klaviyo. Once you focus on branding and design, creating branded content becomes much easier.

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