Design Tools for Creating a Stunning Brand Identity
Building your brand is more than just having a great product and people who want to buy it. Any great business should also have a unified style that’s echoed in every facet of their brand. This not only gives off a sense of professionalism but will also make it easier for customers to identify the brand. With the right tools, building your brand’s identity can be a simple process.
Here are the steps you should take to get you started:
1. Choose a font
Use a free tool like FontForge to design or select the fonts you’d like to use throughout your brand. Yes, your font seems like a small thing to worry about. But having the same font, or same couple of fonts throughout your brand’s representation will make it easier for your viewers to digest. Pick one or two that you feel best fits your business and stick with them!
2. Coordinate colors
It's a fact that colors impact emotions. Red signifies a sense of alarm, green indicates safety... You get the point. So, where does your brand fall in the color wheel of emotions? Play around with color pairings or select pre-made color combinations with Coolors. Use these colors throughout your brand to establish associated colors with your brand.
3. Pick your symbol
Choosing your company icon is another way to subtly express your brand and what it stands for. It’s the symbol that you’ll use in your logo and will be present in most of your marketing material. So, choose wisely! With plenty of resources providing free vector art, obtaining an icon for your brand is a painless step in the process. One tool for this is Vecteezy. Here, you can select from over a million free vector images to find the one that best represents your brand.
4. Design your logo
Once you have your colors, fonts, and icon decided, it’s time to get your logo. Once again, there’s no need to break the bank in this step. Use a free tool like LogoCreator and you can upload your icon, select your brand’s color, and play around with the design. It’s an easy to use tool that will have your logo ready in the blink of an eye.
5. Build your website
There are a couple of routes for this. You can go with WordPress- which boasts every feature imaginable for building a gorgeous website. The only catch is that you may have to learn your way around this tool. The investment of time is a trade-off for the investment in money you'd pay a professional to design your site.
Another option is to use an easier but slightly more limited tool, such as Wix. Don’t get me wrong, you can still build a professional-looking website on this platform. In fact, Wix is continuously adding more features for customizing your site. It’s just a matter of preference in the trade-offs you’re most comfortable with. Flexibility vs. ease.
You can compare and contrast the differences here.
6. Put together marketing materials
Now that you have your brand’s logo, website, and design themes picked out, it’s time to get started on your marketing strategy! This is most likely going to be a large portfolio of different materials, ranging from physical to digital. It depends on your business and how you want to promote it. Will you be promoting and networking face to face, or will you be doing everything digitally? Or maybe a mixture of both?
Whether you’re creating business cards and brochures, or social media posts and presentations- it all includes graphic design. If you’re not a skilled designer and lack the expensive software, there’s more practical options for you. Canva makes design projects easy by providing customizable templates and storage for your projects. The basic plan is free to use with the option to upgrade for access to more tools and storage space.
To conclude this guide
Just keep in mind that building your brand doesn’t have to be a big, overwhelming experience. Hopefully this guide can show you how many useful tools there are to help along the process. With the right resources, you can create an elegant look for your business with ease. And no one will ever know how much money or time you saved! Like the saying goes, work smarter not harder.
Guest Author
Alexia Zavala
Alexia Zavala is located out of San Diego and a recent graduate of UC San Diego. She’s working as a freelancer and covers business and branding related topics. Her experience in graphic design and degree in business give her a great perspective to write actionable articles.