﻿>>HOLLIE: Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode. Last week - oh no!
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Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode. In one of the recent episodes, I was talking
to you about what brand identity design is and why it's important and giving you like 1:1
on all things brand design and today I wanted to talk to you about exactly what goes into building
your brand identity and give you some fundamental things that you need to be thinking about when
putting your own brand identity together. So, let's dive in.
There are a bunch of things that
go into creating a brand identity. Before you do any of that it's really, really important to
make sure that you have done all and any of your brand strategy side of things and gone through
and determined what your message is all about and how you want your brand identity to come
across and how you want to convey your message to your audience and who that audience is.
So, all of that stuff is really, really important because it's going to inform all
of these things that you’re gonna decide about your brand identity. Because there's no point in
doing your brand identity without doing those things because then your identity is going to
attract the wrong people or be saying the wrong thing. It's important that you consider these
things first so that you don't waste time or money or effort down the track when you realise
that your identity is not doing its job. Let's talk about what goes into creating a brand
identity. First and foremost, the big one, the thing that everybody worries or stresses
about the thing that stops people from achieving their dream and just starting the thing that they
want to do is a logo. There are so, so many different parts, types, styles of logos. There
are some fundamental things that are important to consider when creating your logo. Those are
things like making sure that your logo is easy to read, that it works at big scale and small scale,
that you can use it if you have to in somewhere that's just black & white. These things are really
important to make sure that your logo can stand the test of time and that it's useable everywhere,
not just on Instagram or in certain locations it has to be applied and used absolutely everywhere.
So, think about these things when you are creating or commissioning your logo. You
can't just have a million gradient patterns and images in there, it has to be a logo that is gonna
stand-alone stand strong and be able to be used at different sizes, scales, situations.
Needs to be a flexible and useable logo. The next big thing to think about is your colours,
right? These colours are super important, I’ve mentioned colour a bunch of times on the podcast
so far and it's important because it really increases your brand recognition, I think up to
80% more. It's really important to have a really clear and distinct colour palette, that you use
across all of your branding. Just like logos, there are a bunch of different types of colour
palettes. My core suggestion for creating a colour palette is to have one to two main core colours,
so for me that's orange, and then you have maybe two to three more secondary colours, for me,
I have a blue and a red and a, like, a beige for those colours. Then you should also have
two neutral colours, so a dark neutral and a light neutral. So that could be just straight
black & white or it could be like a dark grey and a cream, however you wanna make that work,
but that's kind of a basic colour palette structure. So, one main colour, two to three
secondary colours, and then two neutral colours. And that should give you everything that you need
in order to have a really flexible but constrained and consistent colour palette - that's important,
we want it to be consistent but you also need to have the flexibility to be able to have
call-to-actions on your website that stand out, and have text copy that works and is readable,
and you've gotta have a palette that works for all of these and is applicable to a lot
of situations so follow that structure and you'll have a beautiful consistent colour palette.
The next thing to think about fonts or typefaces. These are the different types of fonts that you
use in your body copy, in your headings, probably on your website or your social media graphics,
things like that. And there are a bunch of different types of fonts that you can use,
ranging from script fonts, to really modern sans serif fonts, to old retro fonts, like there are so
many different styles of fonts. And fonts really do have meaning. They tell a story without you
even having to read the words that are written in those fonts. You can tell and feel the story
through the fonts themselves. So, you can have a look into some font meanings. I already have
an old blog post that I’ll link that's all about the different types of fonts and the different
classifications and the meanings behind them. So you can go and have a read of that, and use fonts
that evoke the feeling that you want to portray, and that's the same with colour too - just to go
back a little bit - when you choose your colours and choose that colour palette, it should be
representing the feeling that you want to have come across because colour has meaning too. So,
combined, your colour and fonts is really, really powerful because they both have a
lot of meaning. When you thoughtfully put those two together it can be really, really powerful
in telling the right story or if you do it wrong, it can tell the wrong story. So, you
wanna be careful about what colours and what fonts you're choosing and what messages they tell.
Now those are kind of the core three that everybody thinks about when they think about
creating a brand identity, but there are a few more, and one of those is patterns. Patterns are
a great asset to use, they give you more graphic elements that you can use across
social media and your website and like printed materials. You can use them in the background.
I'm using this kind of pattern, or collection of coloured blobs in my new branding, but you could
have more of a consistent pattern, hand-drawn patterns, it's really up to you. But having a
pattern is a really helpful and flexible asset to your brand to be able to use, so think about
what patterns could you use that will enable you to decorate your brand a little bit.
Another one of these other things that you can think about is icons. We use icons all the time,
on our websites, you can use them when you're trying to break up information so if you have
a long amount of text on your website, or you have a PDF or something that you're sharing,
icons are really, really useful for that and you can use line icons so they're just the outline
of the figure or the symbol that you're trying to share, or you can use like, filled in ones,
different coloured ones, more complicated ones, there are a bunch of different icons
that you can use, and you can find sets that already exist or you can create custom icons
depending on how uhh complicated and special you want to make your icons but icons are
really powerful in conveying information, and breaking down and simplifying information. If
you are wanting to make your content really easy to digest and kind of bullet point the
information then having a set of icons is going to be really, really helpful for you.
Along that similar vein, is illustrations, and illustrations are a bigger way of conveying
information through visuals. And so, while icons are really small
and they bullet-point information, illustrations are used often to convey more complicated, more
complex pieces of information. Illustrations have so many different styles that you can choose from,
there are so many amazing talented illustrators out there that you can work with, or if you
feel like doing it yourself you can do that too. Illustrations really add a lot of character and
a distinct style to your brand if you use them. I highly recommend looking into illustrations and
thinking about what style are you gonna use if and when you use illustrations in your branding.
And another massively important one that I actually love talking about and love teaching
about, is brand photography. Every brand needs to have ideally a set of photographs that are
uniquely yours, so it's fine to use stock photos when you need to and I have another great resource
that's all about like amazing places to find stock photography. If you're trying to level up your
brand and get to a place where people see you as a serious business, a badass creative who is
smashing it, then I highly, highly recommend getting some photographs of you and your work
and your creative process, and your space, all of these different aspects of your business,
you can get photos of these that you can use everywhere. You can use these in social media, in
presentations, on your website, in emails that you send. Like, you can use them absolutely everywhere
and they really add a unique style to your brand and make you stand out from other people who are
just using stock photography. And they let people kind of, into your world, it lets people see how
you create your work, it lets people see where you work, and what you look like. It just really
brings a special kind of magic to your brand when people can see you and your process and
your work and your space and all of that amazing stuff. Have a think about brand photography,
reach out to somebody in your local area who's a photographer, and see if you can get some professional,
beautiful, unique brand photos taken. One step on from illustrations and icons that you
can do is, think about animation. Animation adds a lot of like, fun and energy and makes your content
really dynamic. Animation is a way that you can add that into your brand. I recently did this with
my friend Devon, he's a motion graphics designer and he took my brand my logos and turned them into
animated assets so I now have like a rotating ampersand that's on my website, I’ve got animated
introductions to these podcast episodes, um I have animated transitions that I can use throughout
the videos and put on Instagram TV and things like that. They really just add an extra level
on top of your brand, they're not a necessary thing I don't think, but if you wanna go like,
the next level and wow people, and really like show off your brand then I highly,
highly recommend trying out some animation and thinking about how that can fit into your brand,
and what it says about your brand as well. And the last thing I wanted to talk to you about
is music. So often we don't think about music being a part of branding but it really, really is,
and it's something that more and more people are thinking about these days. Semi-recently,
probably a year ago now [laughs] MasterCard did a whole product on their "sonic branding" - that's what
they call it - all about what noises does it make when you use your MasterCard and what
noises come up on the ATM what sounds and music play on the ad, this is all part of the experience
of using MasterCard right. So, you can think about that as well. For example, this podcast,
the music that I use on this podcast tells a completely different story than somebody else's
podcast because of how it feels and the tempo of the music and just the vibe that it gives off. So,
you can think about what music are you using on your videos or podcasts, you can think about what
sounds happen on your website maybe, or things like that just think about the music and the
sound, auditory experience for your audience. Again, this isn't something that's like massively
necessary, it's not the first thing that you should be thinking about, but if you are doing any
video or podcast content, thinking about the music and the audio is really, really important.
Okay so we have basically covered the major things that you need to
be thinking about when you are putting your brand identity together, and the fundamental
things to be thinking about. So those things just to recap are your: logos, colours, fonts,
patterns, icons, illustrations, photography, animation and music. So that's ten things that
you can be thinking about when it comes to putting your brand identity together.
I hope that this has been helpful. If you wanna go into more detail about any one of these,
just let me know which one of these you wanna go into more detail about
and I’d also love to know what one you wanna focus on what do you want to implement more in
your business. Do you want to think about what colours that you're using a bit more carefully?
Maybe you'd never thought about the music side of things? Which one of these would you like to
focus on and implement more in your brand? Let me know in the comments, I would love to know.
If you've enjoyed this episode then you can like this video, subscribe if you haven't already,
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and I will see you next time!
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