Design You Can Do Yourself
Steps to keep your visual brand consistent
In September’s blog post, I talked about how to know if you’re ready to hire a professional designer for your brand or website. I also acknowledged that while custom design is super helpful for your business, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to invest in right away. Sometimes you don’t feel like you know your business well enough yet, and sometimes you simply don’t have the funds.
Regardless, no one should feel stuck just because they’re not in a place to hire a designer. No matter where you are in your business, there are always things you can do yourself to keep your visual brand consistent.
Consistency is key when it comes to branding. When your customers can associate your business with a certain color or tone of voice, they start to remember your brand. When they see the same type of content over and over again, they know what to expect from you, which builds trust and loyalty for your business.
To create visual consistency:
Design
Pick 1-3 colors and 1-2 fonts that you feel fit your business well. Try to stick to them for every piece of content you create, from social media posts to web banners to printed postcards.
Templates
To make your content-creation life easier, consider creating a handful of templates that you can cycle between for things like social media posts. This makes it easy to swap out text or photos while maintaining the same look.
Canva is a great free online program for making social media posts. Canva is not meant for creating professional logos or custom designs, but it is an amazing resource for nice, easy-to-use templates.
Photography
Try to use photos that fall within the same general style or theme. For example, maybe you only post black and white photos, or you stick with photos that are very bright and vibrant. Maybe you only post close-ups of people’s hands working, or maybe you stick to just nature photography.
Voice consistency
Okay, this isn’t a visual thing, but it’s important, too!
Are you more:
Funny or serious?
Casual or formal?
Enthusiastic or matter-of fact?
Detailed or straightforward?
Sassy or respectful?
If your business was a personality, how would it talk? When you’re writing social media posts or drafting text for your website, try to use the same tone of voice.
The above are just a few steps you can take yourself to create consistent visuals and content for your brand. You can put these into action when you’re just starting out or still preparing to hire a designer.
Don’t feel like these decisions are 100% set in stone. When you work with a designer, they’ll collaborate with you to build a professional visual brand that you can use seamlessly to create consistent content.
Ready to take the next steps? I’d love to connect and learn more about your business!
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