By Akeem Bernard
June 30, 2021

 

You want a Brand, now what?

You are thinking of launching a business, you know it will need a logo that will 'pop' whenever anyone comes across it on social media. It will also need to look good if it is printed on a business card.

Creating a brand can be a daunting endeavour, differentiating your brand in a sea of new startups and micro Instagram business pages means knowing what you want your brand to be and the experience you want to create for your audience.

The conceptual stage of creating a brand is often overlooked and seen as a step to be skipped, to speed up the process of reaching to market. This often has negative future consequences; spending extra funds to make branding adjustments, losing time waiting for new assets to be created and causing confusion for the various users of those branding assets such as the printers or content creators.

 

Create brand recognition

Creating an instant psychological recognition within the mind of your audience is a trillion-dollar business that often takes years to develop and maintain, this takes a deliberate and focused effort.

You may know the brands from the images above, the actual logo is not used but we instantly recognize them. One main commonality among them is the consistent use of colours to create an impression that often remains in the mind.

 

Brand Essence

Is your brand energetic, sleek, modern or bold? these are some words that can help you craft the look and feel of your brand. Defining your brand with emotional traits gives it an underlying personality that your audience can align themselves to. Creating real brand experiences resonates well with an audience. People want to connect with what they feel is real. Building a brand equates to curating a persona for your business.

 

Audience

When you fully define your brand, this will aid in telling your brand's story to your targeted audience. Fostering a relationship between you and your audience will take time to properly develop. Many of the top global brands have put years into defining and connecting to their audience through deliberate branding efforts.

 

Colour theory- The meaning of colours

Colours holds significance in various cultures and societies, having sub- conscientious cues that you can leverage for your brand. Some of the most commonly used colours and generally what they represent is seen below:

Red- is often associated with fire and represents intensity and passion.
Blue- represents dependability, calm, trustworthiness and stability. often associated with the sky and ocean.
Green- often signifies growth, renewal, nature and luck.
Yellow- signifies joy and happiness, it is often linked to summer.
Orange- is a vibrant and energetic colour that signifies energy and warmth. Purple- represents royalty, nobility, spirituality and elegance.
Black- signifies power, wealth, sophistication and formality. White- denotes good, cleanliness, simplicity and precision.
Gray- represents neutrality, intelligence and reliability.

 

Palette

Establishing a set group of colours associated with your brand is vital for consistency and brand growth across multiple channels. You can choose colours using different colour palettes on websites such as color.adobe.com or coolors.co , these often allow you to generate a brand colour scheme from a primary colour of your choice.

 

 

Colour Codes

Colours can appear slightly different or on different device types, screens and resolution. Color systems fixes this issue by having standardized identifiers for specific colors.There are two main color systems used across the board, the RGB color model which stands for Red, Green ,Blue and the CMYK model meaning Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. RGB is most commonly used within digital media and CMYK is mostly used with print media.

 

Hex & CMYK

Examples of RGB and CMYK codes

Placement

The intended placement of brand elements will influence color choices and asset variation. The following would be some of the most common areas to consider during the creation of said assets:

• Website and emails
• Social media Advertising
• Instore
• Stationery
• Staff uniforms
• Events

 

Brand Guideline

A Brand Guideline or Brand Style Guide is a rulebook that essentially provides instruction on how to use assets related to your brand. This includes the use of fonts, logos, and images, ensuring all parties involved use brand elements consistency. This is an essential step towards the creating a strong brand.

Summary

Your brand is the customer facing part of your business. Customers want to know what they are interacting with, this gives confidence when making purchasing decisions and business recommendations. Choosing the right colors for your brand is a key step in creating a brand's persona, while colors can be chosen randomly color palettes are an effective way to group colors that complement each other. A Brand Guide will be the culmination of all your initial branding efforts; containing the details and rules surrounding your brand, ensuring consistency, clarity and maybe some 'pop' in the mix as well.