Effective branding is essential when building a business. Due to today’s highly competitive market, you should realize the importance of good branding. Otherwise, you'll be overpowered by your competitors. Consumers will naturally think about your visual identity whenever your brand is mentioned. This implies that customers aren’t likely to show interest in products with poor visual identity.
With the right efforts, you can earn the confidence of your market. To help you achieve a compelling visual identity, here's a guide you can use to come up with a unique visual identity that will catch your customers' attention.
Understanding The Concept Of Visual Identity
Before you can make a compelling visual identity, you must first understand what it is. Visual identity is a mixture of visual and graphic elements that develops an impression about your business. For instance, if your color scheme is green, they may assume that your business has to do with natural or organic products.
Grow Illustrations Guidelines by Luc Chaissac
For you to make your brand recognizable in a good way and ensure that it stands out from the rest, you must be able to define it by emphasizing its best traits. Your approach should be interesting and distinct so customers will think of your brand when planning to buy a specific product or request a particular service.
Visual identity is composed of elements that are far beyond the features seen on a business card. The objective of visual identity is to capture the attention of the potential market in an artistic way. Hence, the clearer and better the visual branding is, the higher the chance for the brand to gain customers' attention.
You may even see some businesses prospering in the industry because of their excellent visual identity. Consumers can even immediately recognize some brands by their colors alone and others because of the kind of images they use.
What Your Visual Identity Should Have
Here are some of the factors you need to incorporate in your graphic design to create an effective visual identity:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Typography
- Promotional materials such as posters, billboards, and flyers
- Social media components like avatars, cover photos, and images for posts
1. Logo Design
Although you might think that your logo is the determining factor of your visual identity, there are aspects you have to take into consideration. Creating a logo is just one of the steps in building a visual identity through graphic design.
However, you should never undervalue the importance of a logo design. That's because it's a fundamental component of brand identity. Furthermore, it's the most significant symbol of brand image that can make your target market remember what you do or offer.
Brand overview by Aiste
If you want it to be done well, you should have advanced knowledge in graphic design. Alternatively, you can turn to a graphic design studio so they can bring your dream logo to life.
These are the essential stages of the artistic process involved in logo design:
- Determining the purpose of the business
- Developing a style guide
- Evaluating various sizes and environments
- Style direction selection
- Color palette selection
- Marketing research
- User research
- Creative research
Part of the things you should do during research is exploring and assessing competitors' logos. Doing so will help you avoid irrelevant resemblance with another company's logo and enable you to create a unique brand identity.
Once all the important information has been collected, you'll proceed to the creative stage. You can determine the color palette and style direction best suitable for the logo through experimentation.
When you’ve finished the logo, start testing it out. The truth is, everything that looks great on one digital screen may appear different on another platform or device. For instance, it may be clear on your computer but may appear blurred on your mobile device.
Hence, you must test the logo on all possible platforms. By doing so, you can determine if your logo design will remain appropriate and appealing no matter where you place or use it.
2. Color Palette
Aside from your logo, the color palette is vital in your graphic design. There's a good reason why various companies wear various colors. A good choice of color, known as the brand's color palette, can deliver different impressions. It can also draw different feelings and emotions.
When you choose a color palette, you must carefully consider what kind of emotion you want to evoke. Moreover, your color palette should be relevant to or should connect with your target audience. If you don’t know where to start, it’s a good idea to know the basics of color theory.
You can use your color palette for the following:
- Online social presence
- Brochures
- Reports
- Print materials
- Sales tools
- Presentation
When you have a consistent color palette on various marketing platforms, your customers will soon associate it with your business, which is what visual identity is all about.
3. Pick A Font That Fits The Personality Of Your Brand
Aside from your color palette, you have to be cautious with the kind of font you use in your graphic design. Fonts can say a lot about the kind of business you're running.
For instance, if you own a corporate firm, you shouldn’t use Comic Sans since it fails to embody professionalism in the strictest sense. However, if you're running a fun business and you want to express that toward your audience, Comic Sans could be a suitable choice.
4. Imagery And Photography
Imagery and photography in graphic design also helps in building your visual identity. Brand photography involves a set of images and portraits that defines the business and acts as another element contributing to its visual character.
The photos you choose must complement the logo, colors, messages you want to convey, and the rest of the brand identity. Brand photography has to do with photos of your team, workspace, products, and other things related to your business.
ZoomSphere Brandbook by Halo Graphic
If you choose the right brand image or brand photography, you can reap the following benefits:
- Make your brand more recognizable
- Create a good first impression
- Boost customer engagement
Conclusion
Part of business development is building your business' visual identity. Thus, you should never disregard the importance of graphic design as well as the other aspects of visual identity. If you have zero knowledge about such concepts, you might think that you'll have to deal with complicated steps and procedures. But with the tips above, you can easily develop a good visual identity. You may also attract more customers and, consequently, get more profits.
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