Designing Your Brand … the look and feel of it all

When designing your brand, consider the following elements to achieve the right look and feel …

1: Choice of Typefaces (or fonts):

There are 2 main types to choose from:

• Serif (like TIMES NEW ROMAN, quite old fashioned with tails on the individual letters)
• San Serif (like HELVETICA, modern, strong and clean -and missing the tails)

Never, in my opinion, should they be mixed together in a brand design!

Always choose to use a full family of weights ie Black, Bold, Semi-Bold, Regular, Light, Thin, and all with Italics. This enables a hierarchy of emphasis for all written communications. Please never use ‘dodgy’ fonts found online and never ever under any circumstances use Comic Sans!

(unless you’re a school teacher and even then with extreme caution!)

2: Creation of an Icon or Illustration:

This should sit with the type, unless using a hand-drawn typeface as ‘Virgin’ does. Are there any symbols or graphics commonly associated with your industry, products and services?

3: Colourways:

Remember different Colours drive varying emotions and perceptions. Again are there any colours aligned to your industry, products and services?

4: Other Thoughts:

Does your end result have an overall clean simplicity?

Does it translate cleanly into Black and White?

Is it adaptable & can it offer longevity?

Take Apple, for instance. With their first beige plastic computers, their brand was colourful and stripey. When metal took over in their manufacturing the brand had to change to plain black or white as it is now. But the basic outline continued and is still known instantly as the computer brand that captures its customer’s hearts and minds.

Finally on a practical note, always have a set of brand guidelines (like a Haynes manual for your brand), that documents variants, typefaces, styles, colourways, layouts and tone of voice) along with a set of the master brand files in both CMYK (print) and RGB (screen). The benefit of this means that any supplier can work with your brand, and consistently present it as it was meant to be.

Designing your brand should be a strategic process that takes an understanding of your customers and THEIR needs and combines this with the skill and creativity of a graphic designer with genuine experience and knowledge. Don’t let your brand down by trying to do it yourself – partner with a skilled graphic designer who can support your business needs and help you establish your brand for the future.

Straight talking advice from the Yorkshire Powerhouse

Have you any questions?

Here at Yorkshire Powerhouse, we’re happy to help as much as possible – is there anything else we can do to help you, do you have any further questions or can we help introduce you to an expert – please let us know: