If we were to ask you to name 10 of your favorite brands, and to identify their logos, you would likely be able to do so in short order.
There’s a reason for that.
Few things are as important for a business as establishing a trusted, reliable, recognizable brand. Without one, you will struggle to gain market recognition and fail to develop a loyal customer base.
Successful companies allocate so much of their budget towards branding (and re-branding) because a great brand is a distillation of what the company stands for. A great brand stands out to the customer because it signals something special to them.
A great brand is a lighthouse in a dense fog of irrelevant companies.
Pretty poetic, right?
We’re going to go over 5 key things to consider when branding or re-branding your business so that you won’t get lost in the fog.
Read on!
1. Invest in a Truly Customized Logo
Your logo cannot be generic in any sense of the word.
A logo must strike the balance of being both of the moment and timeless. No easy feat.
There are automated logo-generating programs out there that can be used to quickly and cheaply churn out something weak and uninspired. We can promise you those programs are limited and ultimately ineffective because they don’t have any soul.
Yes, soul.
In order for your logo to be effective as a brand representation, it has to be lively, vibrant, and communicate exactly what kind of company you’ve built. It must speak directly to your target audience. It must help with customer acquisition.
It’s crucial to find a branding team hell-bent on creating the custom logo that will effectively bring your brand to life!
Our team of collaborative, creative, forward-thinking professionals is committed to working with you. We leave no stone unturned. We dive into the nitty-gritty of who you are as a company, and we have the experience, knowledge, and determination to come up with the very best logo for your brand.
An automated program will never produce something unique and memorable. You can take that to the bank.
2. Incorporate Consistent Font Treatment
An incredibly important aspect of your brand will be selecting (or even creating) font(s) that best represent your business’s tone and aesthetic sensibilities.
It can seem like a simple, mundane decision, but we can assure you that it is anything but.
There are quite literally hundreds of thousands of fonts, and more are being generated every day. These fonts are created by designers and artists who have centered their careers around how letters and words look and flow.
Isn’t that amazing?
We think so.
Here are some good questions to ask your team about the brand’s goals to determine what sort of font(s) you should use across your marketing platforms:
- Is the brand more formal or casual, or does it fall somewhere in between?
- Is the brand more playful or more serious in nature? What is the brand’s attitude?
- What other brands does your target audience patronize? What kinds of fonts and typefaces are used in those brands? How do those express the brand’s personality?
- What kinds of fonts do the brands you respect and/or emulate use? (This doesn’t mean you should copy or reproduce their fonts, merely just to pay attention and consider why their marketing materials use the fonts they do).
These questions can serve as a springboard to spur more creative conversations, but are crucial to consider.
Think about the difference between a menu at an upscale French restaurant and the chalkboard menu at your local burger joint. Think about a Garfield comic versus a medical journal.
The point is that there is a reason so many fonts exist. The uniqueness of your brand needs to be mirrored in the way your words look. People read things differently depending on how they are presented.
We think you get the point.
3. Leverage a Branded Color Palette
Speaking of options, let’s have a conversation about color.
Wow.
There is a lot to unpack here. Choosing the right colors for your branding campaign can feel overwhelming. The options are essentially endless.
It would behoove you to consider the same questions we outlined above for font selection with honing in on your brand’s palette.
Think about some of the world’s biggest brands: Apple, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald’s. What do they have in common?
Besides being worth billions upon billions of dollars, the color palettes are immediately recognizable. While they might seem basic, you can be sure they had teams figuring out what would make the most sense for their branding goals.
Consider collaborating on a custom, branded color palette. It will add another layer to your brand’s complexity. People want the brands they support to be special and to stand out.
It is common knowledge that colors can denote feelings. Depending on where you operate in the world, and the industry you’re in, the colors you use can make a huge difference. Different parts of the world associate colors with different emotions and traditions than we do in the U.S., for example.
So make sure to do your due diligence when it comes to your brand’s color palette.
Our team is here and ready to work with you to make it perfect.
4. Consider a Lightroom Preset for Branding
Lightroom presets are settings you can put in place in Adobe so that you can have consistency in your media assets without having to fuss around with filters, saturation, etc. each time you want to post a photo or image.
You can dial in on exactly how you’d like all of your media, including user-generated assets, to look across all of your platforms.
By applying a Lightroom preset, you’ll save a bundle of time better spent building your brand.
5. Rebrand with Confidence
Branding a new business is a difficult endeavor.
Rebranding an established one is even more challenging.
You must reassess your business’s needs, capacities, and ability to reorientate itself around new competition and marketing trends. This can feel daunting for even the most seasoned business people, but is totally achievable when the right components are in place.
Phrasing is in Your Corner
As one of Dallas’s feature branding agencies, Phrasing, Inc. will help you through this process so that you and your brand come out on the other side stronger than before.
We’ll help you make your brand truly special. We’ll help you make it the reliable, consistent, cohesive brand you need it to be to propel you to the next level of success you deserve.
If you want to take a look around, make sure to check out DesignRush’s digital marketing agencies to see our agency and other great providers in your area.
