How to Bring That Creative Spark into Your Branding

How to Bring That Creative Spark into Your Branding

by with No Comment Digital Marketing

How many times have you revised your last branding campaign? You may never know if you actually got it right. You can measure outcomes and improve features on your next campaign, but we all know branding is not an easy aspect of any business. There are so many factors to keep in mind from marketing mediums to audience preferences to what your message should really be.

With so much to consider you run the risk of doing something, you should preferably avoid: overthinking.

While it’s important to plan, overthinking can rob your campaign of all creativity. Your marketing may end up looking just like your competitors because you’re doing what the research tells you to. And you’re not standing out from the crowd anymore.

We’ll help you add some creativity back into your branding so you have the X-factor counting in your favor again.

Why is Creativity Important?

Never before has branding been this competitive. With modern technology, any business can reach a global audience. Consumers also face a daily barrage of information coming at them online, via TV screens, and on billboards. If they feel overwhelmed by all the stimulation, they can easily ignore what they deem irrelevant.

A creative approach is how you will make an impact in this highly competitive environment.

Adding the X-Factor to Your Branding

You can partner with expert marketers and hopefully, they will compile a customized branding solution to keep your message original. But there’s also a lot you can do yourself.

Get the Visuals Right from the Start

Get the Visuals Right from the Start

You can ensure an original, creative look by putting effort into compiling the visual elements of your brand:

  • The logo that will become the image you’re recognized by: Make sure it’s different from all your competitors’ images.
  • Colors you use in your branding: Because neuroscience proves that colors carry messages you need to make sure your branding incorporates the right hues.
  • Be personal and use faces: Despite being a tech-driven society people still desire to feel connected with others. Using your or your staff members’ faces in your branding campaigns will make your business seem less clinical than others.

Use Your Story

It’s not only your people that you can be creative about. What is your business’ story?

People enjoy being part of something bigger than themselves. In their daily lives, this adds to job satisfaction if they like the company they’re part of.

Your story

But don’t let it stop there. Use your company’s history to draw people when they’re shopping or in search of services:

  • Share how you dreamt about starting a company or providing a solution to the masses
  • Tell the story of starting small and growing into a large company
  • Talk about why you do what you do

This is not simply a ‘nice’ source of ideas for your next campaign. These elements work because people will want to be part of a success story and what you find important, many others may relate to as well.

Telling your story in this way ensures your brand will matter to others as much as it matters to you.

Show You Care

Remember that branding is not only about creating your logo for your business and plastering it on print materials. Branding involves communicating your values. These characteristics—such as professionalism or excellence—will garner respect from your audience who are similar of mind.

For many customers and companies, community involvement is a number one value. This should spark many creative ideas for sharing your brand with locals. Why not support local sports teams, organic markets, or community projects?

Or perhaps your value is being environmentally friendly or ensuring mental health for your employees. For example, when your brand relates to wellness (of people, nature, or a city) and you mention this in your marketing, those who have the same concerns will rather support you than your competitors.

Stories about your involvement can be shared online, so what you do locally can lead to global respect.

What Language are You Using?

Before you send out your next advertisement, pause a moment and look at the language you’re using. Different audiences have unique preferences and manners of speaking:

  • They use different words to refer to the same item
  • Some people talk more formal while others use casual terms
  • Age groups relate to different ‘slang’ words and references

Make sure you’re using the language your target audience uses. A few small tweaks to the type of words you use are creative ways of optimizing your branding impact.

So, for a moment stop overthinking and look. The features that can spark some creativity for your branding campaign can be found all around you. Marketing is a serious role player in your business success—but don’t forget to also have fun with it.

5 Branding Elements of a Website Design

5 Branding Elements of a Website Design

by with No Comment Website Development

A website design is often the first impression that a company has with potential customers. It’s what they see, and decide whether or not to continue browsing the site. That’s why it’s important for your branding elements of a website design to stand out. You don’t want people ‘walking away’ the moment they see your homepage! Here are five branding elements that make up effective web designs:

Logo

One of the most important elements of a website design is the logo. This element is often the first thing seen by visitors, and it needs to be clear, memorable, and unique. The logo should represent your company in a way that captures what you have to offer from an industry standpoint as well as from a personality perspective.

When building a logo, it’s important to consider how it looks in both black and white. This will help you make sure that the logo is still effective when printed on a brochure or other collateral materials before investing too much time into designing.

Below are some tips for designing an effective logo for your site:

  1. Use a timeless font style.
  2. Include brand colors in the logo to make it recognizable and memorable.
  3. Consider how your logo will look on business cards, brochures, and other marketing materials before designing for the web.
  4. Make sure your company name is included prominently so that people can find out who you are if they don’t want to explore any further into your site after viewing the homepage design.

Images

Images should be used sparingly when building a website design but can offer an effective way of adding personality or depth to a page with minimal effort from visitors’ perspectives. Ideally, images should support rather than distract from content on pages; however, depending on what kind of information you’re posting, images can be very beneficial for conveying certain messages. The image from a video of this website clearly tells that what it offers and how people can benefit from “selling my used laptops”.

When placing images on your site’s pages, make sure they don’t detract from the content or take up too much space in relation to an article’s primary headline and text. There is a wide range of options when it comes to what kind of image you decide to use — whether that be stock photos purchased through sites like Getty Images, downloading them from loyalty-free sites like Pixabay, or taking pictures with your smartphone camera and editing them before uploading them.

If designing for one specific page where lots of visual information will appear (such as a landing page), then investing time into finding attractive imagery may be worth your while; however, if you are using only one photo per post, then buying inexpensive stock photography would probably be sufficient.

Typography

A website design should be easy to read and navigate, so it’s important that the typography is well considered. There are a variety of factors to keep in mind when considering font styles for your site — including whether mobile responsiveness — which is today an integral ranking factor.

Typography can also play into how professional your brand looks. If you want customers to feel like they’re getting value for their money without even signing up to your site, consider using serif fonts (which look more traditional) instead of sans-serif ones (which tend to be associated with tech companies). Below are some tips for designing effective typography:

  • Pick one typeface and stick with it throughout your site as much as possible. -Consider what kind of message you want to communicate with your typestyle, and then choose a font accordingly.
  • Limit the number of fonts on each page to two or three at most.
  • Make sure that every word is spelled correctly – nothing will kill an otherwise well-designed site quicker than a poorly written copy!

Layout Elements

A layout consists of all of the elements used in designing how content appears on a website, like photos, graphics, text boxes, videos — anything visual really. There are four main types: grid layouts; mosaic layouts; overlapping layouts; and photo collages (or card decks). Grid layouts use columns for organizing information evenly across widths while mosaics organize imagery by size and have more variety in their arrangement patterns.

web-design-stats-and-facts

Overlapping layouts are similar to mosaics in that they’re organized by size, but the elements overlap each other rather than being stacked neatly one on top of another. Photo collages consist of an arrangement of photos or videos that is often more eye-catching and creative in order to represent a certain theme.

Layout plays into how professional your brand looks. Therefore, make sure you present it in the best way possible.

Colors

Of course, the colors used on your website are important to consider. If your business already has established color schemes, then it would be wise to maintain those when designing your site so as not to confuse your customers and make them think they’re visiting an entirely different company’s page. Otherwise, try out various combinations of complimentary shades in order to create a sense of cohesiveness throughout all parts of the design process – from text boxes down to images.

Author Bio

Jessica Thomas hails from a small town in Texas. She has a degree in Psychology but pursues her passion for writing. When not writing she likes to spend her time cooking and travel the world.