How to Create a Strong Visual Brand

A brand is an important aspect of any business. It is the first impression that people will often have when encountering a company for the first time, and whether you are planning on creating a small business on the side or you eventually want to move into becoming a fully-fledged entrepreneur, it is important that the visual side of your brand appeals to people and encourages them to buy from your business. Businesses up and down the country want to create a strong visual brand, so it will take some time to succeed.

Of course, there are also some hard and fast rules that you can follow, and a few of them will be examined in more detail here.

Come Up with a Range of Ideas

Whether you are planning on coming up with the branding for yourself or you would like to get the professionals involved, it is useful to pitch a wide range of ideas. This way, you will be able to compare and contrast properly. Ideally, you will have some contrasting ideas, to begin with. This way, you will be able to see what you like and what you do not. Eventually, you should be able to start narrowing down your ideas. At this stage, you must make some small adjustments until you eventually work out your strongest ideas.

Test Your Brand Out

Once you have some ideas, you will want to get some third-party input. After all, just because you like an idea doesn’t mean everyone will feel the same. To begin with, you can ask anyone else who is working at the business. This can also be useful if you have contacts you trust in the entrepreneurial world. At the same time, you need to have your target audience firmly in mind at all times. You will want to connect with these people at the end of the day.

Create Some Brand Guidelines

You should now have a firmer idea in mind of what your visual brand is all about. At this stage, you can start to come up with some brand guidelines that help to solidify your visual presence. This should include everything from the specific color scheme you are using to the font style you will be relying upon. The brand guidelines will help others that need to use your brand and ensure that anyone new to your business knows all about its visual aspects of it.

Stay Consistent

Once you have created your brand guidelines, it is then important that you maintain consistency in how they are applied. When people first start to notice a brand, it is going to be through repeated exposure to it. If you are constantly making subtle variations all the time, they may not know that they are looking at the same business. As a result, you will not have the visual impact that you are looking for. The most successful companies in the world have achieved almost universal brand recognition. This is what you should be aiming for.

Think About Your Imagery

So far, it is only the branding that has been discussed. However, you will also need to consider the imagery that you are using and how this represents your business. In a world that is dominated by social media, this is bound to be even more important than ever before. For example, is your brand supposed to be humorous? In this case, you only want images that reflect this. You could have a ‘cooler’ business that relies on a certain type of illustration. What you want to achieve is for people to start to associate that style with your brand naturally.

Apply Your Visual Presence Widely

At this stage, you should have a much clearer idea of what your brand is all about from a visual perspective. Therefore, you should ensure you apply this as widely as possible. Your online and offline marketing materials should feature your brand’s visual appeal. This should certainly be the case with any branded clothing that you create to promote your business, such as custom made converse. As has already been mentioned above, it takes time for a person to engage and connect with your brand fully. By maintaining consistency and widespread coverage, it is going to be much more likely that you will get noticed.

Consider Any Video Content

We live in a world that is being taken over by video content, and it is certainly useful for a brand to create this type of content as well. It would be best if you also considered whether your brand will create its own visual content and the style you are looking to adopt. At the very least, it is worth getting your logo onto the videos as this is yet another way of reinforcing your brand presence and ensuring that people sit up and take notice of what you are putting out there.

Think About When to Refresh Your Visual Brand

When your brand has been around for a while, you may have reached a stage where it is important to consider whether or not you are still having the same visual impact. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need a complete rebrand at this stage. Instead, there may be some modernization that will help to move your brand forwards into the current visual age. However, in some situations, a complete rebrand may be on the cards – and it has certainly been done successfully by many of the biggest companies out there.

Creating a strong brand is important for every business. A brand can become the reputation of the company, and a good reliable brand can draw customers in from their name and recommendations alone. The visual brand of any business takes time and effort to cultivate properly. However, at the end of the day, you would hope that the time and effort you put in will be worth it. You will want to reach a stage where people can naturally align themselves with your brand and are happy to make some repeated purchases with you.