You may have spent hours trying to make your brand’s voice ‘sound right’ — Is the tone of humor appropriate? Will it appeal to the target audience? — but have you ever considered if it looks right? Like words or slogans, visuals convey what a brand does, its values, and its personality. Visual branding is omnipresent. Anything that could be seen, ranging from a brand’s website to their uniforms, could contribute to their branding. Arguably, visuals may even have a greater emotional impact on viewers than words. Design that just ‘looks nice’ is not enough. Color, type, and graphics are opportunities to communicate the ethos of your brand. Here is a quick guide on how to manipulate these elements to create your desired message.
Font
Each font has its own unique personality — A typography expert can point out to you the differences in two fonts and why those differences matter, amongst other things. For our purposes, it is sufficient to be aware that different fonts have different connotations, whether it is because of their appearance, or their cultural/contextual connotations. (For instance, the association of comic sans with jokes)
Google fonts is your friend when it comes to finding fonts that are free for commercial use. While there are other font websites, not all fonts are made equal, and some fonts have odd letter spacing or missing characters. Generally, having one font for headlines and one font for body text should be enough, especially if the fonts come in different weights.
For your reference, here is a diagram of various categories of fonts:
source: https://www2.slideshare.net/cmoorehead/typeclassification/12
Color
Picking a color palette / scheme and sticking with it can associate those colors with your brand. The color #81D8D0, otherwise known as Tiffany blue, is a prominent example of how a brand could seem to own a color. For many, seeing that shade of blue automatically reminds them of Tiffany.
It is an old cliché that each color has meaning. Adding to that cliché, meaning is created through the combination of colors. For instance, as seen in the image below, red is often associated with violence, love, and Chinese New Year, but pairing it with green gives the connotation of Christmas. However, reducing the saturation of the colors, and increasing the contrast in value, again changes the associated meaning. Hence, when selecting colors, it is important to consider if the chosen colors look good together, and if they look good with the colors on your logo.
Graphics
Finally, graphical illustration and images also contribute to a brand’s visual identity. The diagram below shows the same icon of a cloud in different styles. As with font and color, it is best to limit the number of styles you use, to keep the design coherent. It may also be worthy to note that graphics include not only iconography, but all the elements on a page, such as shapes or patterns used in background images, or text bubbles.
Source: https://venngage.com/blog/icon-story/
After making these design decisions, it helps to create a style guide, or a brand book — this will be something you, or designers you hire, could refer to when they create designs in the future, and it helps ensure that the way your brand is presented stays consistent.
Do you need help designing the visuals of your social enterprise? Drop us an email at socreate.sg@gmail.com to find out about how we can help you!
