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Branding

Branding design – 3 tips to build visual items

by Casey Schmidt  |  November 1, 2019

3 min. read
A designer drawing a sketch.

Branding design is a crucial part of company success. However, a lot of businesses don’t tackle the concept with confidence. If you’re interested in boosting the visual elements of your company, check out this branding design guide.

What is branding design?

Branding design focuses on building an identity that demonstrates your brand ideals. It deals with the creation of different styles, elements and arrangements in combination to make a company stand out among its peers. Branding design measures the visual output customers tie to a company.

Think of branding design like the layout of a building. The way a building is constructed says a lot about what happens inside of it. We expect certain things out of a giant warehouse building, just as we make assumptions about a small, cozy place. Branding design attempts to make customers assume something positive about a company based upon design elements.

A picture of a large warehouse.
Just as people assume this warehouse isn’t a cupcake shop, they’ll make assumptions about your business based on visual elements.

Now that you have a good idea what branding design is, here are three tips to follow:

1. Incorporate style into the process

When we think of design, we often only imagine visual elements and how they appear. We generally overlook another important part of the design process: style. Each company has a style which they uphold through different design elements, newsletters, logos and mottos.

One of the most important things to remember throughout your entire branding design process is to craft projects and visual elements that complement your brand style. For example, if your business sells candles, leaves and autumn-based items, a logo that portrays a hot summer isn’t going to fit.

Happy people jumping on colored backgrounds.
Style matters! If your visual elements represent light and breezy, make sure it fits your brand style.

2. Focus on the visually-pleasing

The ideal branding design attempts to capture the most aesthetic aspects into key company elements. The most important piece of the puzzle is the logo. Once you’ve pinpointed the type of style needed, the next thing to figure out is how to visually portray the logo. For example, if your company focuses on uncluttering customer tasks, a logo with an overwhelming array of graphics could send mixed signals.

Another lesser-utilized tool is the font of your brand. Though it might not be prudent to use the exact same typography style in each advertisement space, it’s still valuable to generally sync fonts. If the logo has text in a particular font type, try to use the same font for titles of newsletters and other advertisement titles.

A creamy alphabet font.
Be aware of what font says about your brand.

3. Analysis is key

It’s easy to forget that branding design is a process that must be cultivated through different phases and methods. One of these important phases is the analysis phase. In order to create materials that coincide with company ideals, research is needed. Begin each design project by analyzing the available data about successful brand designs and customer needs.

Part of this phase involves studying the market and the potential markets where your products and services will attempt to reach. If direct competitors have succeeded or failed within certain markets, take note of their branding design campaigns. These are the types of things you need to study in order to succeed.

Branding design will help change the way customers perceive your brand. Make sure that you build a foundation before diving into the subsets of visual elements.