Marketing: 5 Tips For Customizing Your Brand Visuals to Attract Partners

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Faye Brown and in this class, I'll be sharing my five top tips for customizing your brand visuals to attract your ideal partners. We will be talking about how to expand your current brand assets into a bigger family of visual materials from secondary logo options to sub marks to your color palette, typography, and photography style. All of these elements can come into play to ensure your visual branding is speaking to the right people in the right way. By the end of this class, you will be feeling a lot more confident with your visual brand elements, how to use them, and how to share them with fellow colleagues or outside designers such as web designers. You will be adding all these elements into a brand style board that acts as a mini set of guidelines. But most importantly, you'll have a greater understanding of how you can use your visual brand to attract your partners that use your services or buy your products. For those of you who are new to my Skillshare classes, I've been teaching on Skillshare for about 10 years now with many classes on branding and creativity. I've worked in Motion Graphics for 10 years before starting my own company in 2010 and now I focus on branding projects. As a brand and design specialist who has worked with hundreds of clients, I know the importance of making sure your visual brand represents your business and values. This is not a one size fits all approach. Whilst a funky pattern design might work for some, for others, a beautiful stamp design to overlay on your imagery will be much more useful. Within the projects and resources folder, you'll find a handy Adobe Illustrator template that you can use for your brand style board and there is also a link to a Canva template, if you prefer. There will be project steps to complete along the way and I can't wait to see how you all develop your existing brand elements to help attract those ideal partners to your business. 2. What We Will Cover: Let's take a deeper look into what we will be covering in this class. I will talk very briefly about knowing your target audience before we move on to the five top tips. We will start with looking at your logo. Your company probably has a logo already, but maybe you only have one or two layouts to play with, and this is literally it. In this section, we will discuss secondary logo versions along with submarks and stamps and how to use these. Then we will talk all about color. I expect your company already has one or two main colors that are possibly used in your logo, but this could be where your options for color stop. We will talk about how to expand these colors out into a fuller pallet of accent colors and neutral colors. I will also talk a little bit about color association. Then we will discuss how typefaces can be your visual voice. I'll talk about creating a font family which will help get the right message across to your partners and also help create that all-important brand consistency so everyone in the business knows what typefaces to use and when. I'll also talk about typographic hierarchy and how different typefaces can change the message of the word or phrase. We will then move on to developing a photography style for your company and brand. Again, this will help reinforce your brand message and help build brand recognition. The fifth tip will cover brand elements. That takes in illustrations, patterns, and textures. Your first project step will be to create a mood board. A mood board helps set the tone and style of your company's visuals. Is it rustic and edgy, or is it soft and muted? Is it bright and fresh, or luxurious and high-end? Within the mood board, you'll include existing color palettes, typefaces, graphic ideas, and styles along with photography ideas. A mood board helps act as a springboard for all the other elements, so they all start working together. However, although this will be your first step, it's important to go through all the tips with the first, which will then help you define what to include on this mood board. I advise you to watch class 3 in one go. I'll then talk to you about where to start with your mood board towards the end of the class. I'll prompt you with the other projects steps along the way. At the end of the class, you will collect all these elements into a brand-style board. I've included an Adobe Illustrator template for this, along with a Canvas template, if you prefer. Feel free to build your own brand board if you would like to. But the template will be a great starting point. Brand style boards will act as a set of mini brand guidelines that you can share within the business. Everyone will be using the correct colors, typefaces, and see how everything comes together as part of a visual brand family. That will help build brand recognition and consistency, helping your partner spot your visual materials and instantly knowing it comes from your business. I will then talk a little bit about how to use all these branding assets to create a cohesive visual style for your business. Let's begin. 3. Knowing Your Target Audience : This class we'll be focusing on the visual side of branding, but having an idea of your target audience, the partners you want to attract, plays a big part in the branding process. Making sure that whatever you create, attracts the right people to your company. Without those people, that company probably wouldn't exist, so what you ought to think about these people as you go through this class. If you need a few pointers in this area, I do have another class that goes deep into the subject and I'll put a link to that in the notes below. Just as a very quick exercise, maybe write a couple of paragraphs about your target market, your partners, so they're at the forefront of your mind as we move forward. 4. Analyzing Logos, Submarks & Stamps : Let's start looking at logos, submarks, and stamps. Firstly, we need to dispel the myth that your logo is your brand. If we think about the most famous logos like Nike and Coca-Cola, their logos are famous worldwide. But there's so much more that goes into making a brand successful than a nice logo. I use the analogy of a cake when it comes to logos. Let's say you have the tastiest cake in the world and all these layers buildup to make a cake like no other. These layers are part of your brand, your brand values, personality, message, your mission, your unique selling point, your legacy. All these elements of your business that make it great. Now I got into a bit of a debate with someone once who said it doesn't matter what your logo looks like, what matters is that all these other elements are in place and absolutely all these things that make up you and your business have to be greater and 100 percent important. But now let's say you put the icing on this cake and it looks pretty enough, or just a bit framed together. Now there's some people that will look at this cake and think, no, it doesn't look great. and they will never get to all those lovely bits underneath as they've been put off. In this instance, I say that a logo that's not working for you could do you more damage than having no logo at all. On the other hand, this icing or your logo could look flipping amazing the colors, the details is beyond anything you've seen on bake-off. But then you take a bite and all those layers underneath don't taste that good or they aren't living up to expectation. Your logo is not your brand, but sometimes it's the first point of contact someone will have with your business so your logo needs to set expectations. If you are budget friendly, your logo shouldn't look too high-end. It'll put your target market off. If you are a luxury brand aiming at high paying clients, your logo needs to reflect that. Your colors and your typeface can play an important role in this as well so as we go through the tips in this class, just bear that in mind. Maybe there is no way you can change your company logo, but perhaps you might be allowed to tweak the colors, for example. Whilst this isn't a logo design class, I want you to really think about whether your logo is working for your company. If you feel it is really not serving the company well or attractive to the right audience for you, then maybe it's time to make a change. But let's assume your logo is fantastic but perhaps you just want another extra version. A secondary version of your logo, a submark or a stamp, they might be quite handy brand elements to have in the toolkit. Let's chat a little bit about what these are and how you could use them to create some more options. Firstly, let's look at secondary logos. These are usually very much based on the main primary logo, but just a different layout. Let us say you have a centered logo with a brand icon. The secondary logo could be as simple as switching up the positions and sizing to create a horizontal or landscape version, which might be useful when space is tight. Maybe at the top of an invoice, for example, and you can see that example here for Laura Porter, Interior Design. Another secondary logo version that you might consider are ones that include a little tagline which might be your company motto or just help explain what your business does. Think about using this old version would be useful when maybe this is going to be the first point of contact someone's going to have with your business. Perhaps a business card that you hand out at events, for example, that could be useful to have this extra little strapline. Submarks are stripped down versions of your logo. It won't include all the text. As you can see with Rebecca's submark, I've just so load the custom design typeface and put it in a little circle. It doesn't include her name, and it's usually something you'd use when people are already familiar with your brand. Maybe it's on social media. They will already see the company name but a little submark in a social graphic helps you not have to just use that logo over and over again. It's a simplified version of the logo that makes up part of your brand elements to give you this flexibility. You don't always need a submark, but they can be quite handy. Let's look at a few more examples against their main primary logo. Few different ones here. For Faith&Brown, it's a simple initial submark, for the Meraki Cabin, I just pulled out the M to make a little icon, and for Sarah Winterflood, the graphic is enclosed in a circle. Do you think a submark would be useful for your business. How could you take your existing logo and adapt that into a submark? The other brand element you could think about is a stamp design. These are quite similar to a submark, but usually a little bit subtler. Stamps work great for any business that use a lot of imagery. Let's think photographers, designers of any sort, real estate firms and architects to name just a few. A stamp can be any shape, but what shape might work best for you? Have a think about this before going ahead and designing one. For Victoria James Cake Design, I created a subtle cake illustration that she could use like a watermark on her photos. I tend to use circles a lot in my stamp designs. They usually have a central focus point and the name of the business is set around the edge of the circle. Your stamp doesn't have to be circular. Stamps can work really well on social media or over imagery when you want a different option to your logo. Also just saves you repeating that same logo over and over. Your project step for this logo and submark section is firstly decide if a secondary logo, submark, or stamp would be useful for your business. Then find some inspiration. You can use sites like Pinterest and just type in brand stamps, see what comes up and see if there's a nice inspiration you can use with them. Then design one or more of these options. What do you need? Do you need a secondary logo, a submark, or stamp? Do you need a couple of those? Just figure out what would be useful and then have a go at designing them. Then upload your designs into the project gallery. Also, please post up the original company logo so we can see how these work alongside it. 5. Curating a Brand Color Palette : Let's move onto your brand color palette. Let's really think about what a brand color palette is. Brand color palette is a curated set of colors that help reflect your brand values, help build brand recognition and help attract your ideal partners. The benefit of having a set of brand colors to play with is that it can really help with brand recognition and looking consistent. Let's take a quick look at some interesting stats. The average person scrolls through the height of the Statue of Liberty a day. Think about when you're scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, do certain color combos stand out to you and you instantly know that they belong to a certain brand that you like, so then you might stop the scroll to take a look in detail. Ninety percent of our first impressions about products can be based on the color, and 80 percent of consumers believe that color plays a big part in brand recognition. Let's discuss how you can use color in your branding. You probably have one or two main brand colors already that are used possibly in your logo. But maybe you feel like having a few more colors in your toolkit would be really useful when creating visual materials for your business. Now there are no set rules to say that you must have X amount of colors in your brand palette. But typically when I'm coming up for palettes for my clients, I'll go for about 5-6 colors. Usually, this is made up of 1-2 primary colors, 1-2 secondary colors, and an accent color, maybe a couple of neutral colors like grays, light browns, or off whites. When it comes to filling in your brand boards, you'll see that I've left space for five colors, but please don't feel you have to fill them. Or if you want a couple more, add one or two extras. This really depends on your business. A lot of businesses aimed at children, for example, might have quite a lot of colors that they can play with. Others might only have three. I usually also break this down into a ratio diagram to show which colors are the main colors and which ones to use more minimally, like the accent color when you want a pop of color somewhere. As everyone's pallets will be different, I haven't included this in your brand boards. But what you can do instead is add a bar chart below showing the ratios like this if you wish to. A lot of this depends on how many people are in your business and who might be creating visuals for the business. The brand board acts as a mini brand guideline, so giving people direction like this can make sure that all your visuals look aligned and consistent. When it comes to color palettes, don't think that all these colors have to appear in your logo. Your logo will probably be 1-3 colors, there are exceptions to this, but don't try to get all your colors into your logo. Your color palette is what to use for all your other lovely branding materials. Think social media posts, flyers, packaging, uniform maybe, stationary, brochures, whatever collateral you're putting out to the world. If you have a shop, you might think about your interiors, your paint colors. If you have a work van, your van could be a great way to advertise your business and build brand recognition as well. What color is your van? How do you add colors to an already existing palette? I'm going to take the example of your main brand colors being a very deep blue and a pinky red. You'll see two examples here of how the additional colors can complement the original ones, but also give us a different tone for each. The one on the left is quite cool. It's quite sporty and professional-looking. The other is super bright and eye-catching, it's bold, confident, and warming. You can see the difference the extra colors have made to each. The key here is working out what approach will be right for your business. Another factor to take into consideration is color association, and words we tend to associate with certain colors. I'm going to flick through these slides showing keywords, emotions, and characteristics of each color, along with famous brands who use them. But if you want more detail on these, and also looking into seasonal color palettes, then do check out my class Branding Uncovered the Power of the Perfect Palette. You can go into this a lot deeper. I'll put the link in the notes below. But for now, you can go back through this video and pause to take a longer look at these slides and the brands that use these color palettes. We have a lot to cover in this class, and I don't want to overwhelm you too much. But you will have to pause to take a look at those slides in more detail. Do go back and make some notes. What tools can you use to come up with color palettes? Great place to start is Coolors. You can input your existing colors, lock them in, and then simply press the spacebar to see palettes that it might suggest. But these aren't always great, so it's good to have a bit of an idea of what you might be after. Once you have something you are relatively happy with, you can go into the values and play with the tones, tints, and shades a little more. You can also add more colors here if need be. Another neat trick you can use is the color pick option. You can upload a photo and pick colors from it to form a pallet. Depending on what type of business you're in, this might be a handy tool. Adobe Color is another great tool with similar options. For inspiration, I always tend to recommend Pinterest. You could simply type in navy color palettes and it'll come up with loads of lovely options based around navy. If you have Navy as a color already, this approach could be quite useful. Your project step for this section is to come up with some more colors for your brand palette. The key questions you want to ask yourselves are, what feelings do you want your partners to experience when working with you? Do these colors reflect your brand values? Does this palette reflect your prices? If you are a high-end brand, be careful not to use colors that look too budget-friendly as it might make you look cheaper than you are and put off your potential partners and vice versa. How many colors do you really need? Don't just add colors for the sake of it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Remember when posting your projects, do give a little bit of a background into the business so we all know where you place yourselves in the market. 6. Making Typography Your Visual Voice : How typography can be your visual voice. Let's take a look now at how having a family of typefaces can really help enhance your brand message and become what I like to call your visual voice. If we think of a typeface like our own tone of voice, you can have quiet typefaces that are maybe setting a small point size and a lightweight. It's like a whisper. Or you could have a big bold typeface that's quite a lot louder. Taking this one step further, I'm going to use a made-up name, Charlie Hooper. Charlie could be female or male or gender-neutral. We've no preconceived ideas about who Charlie is or what Charlie does. But notice how the typeface helps us form ideas and our minds about what type of business Charlie might be running. Think about the typefaces you are currently using or the ones in your logo. Sometimes if you have a really strong logo symbol, the typeface that accompanies that can afford to be quite simple and clean as you don't want the two fighting for attention. The typeface doesn't always have to tell a story but it needs to support and compliment. Moving onto expanding this out into a font family, which is a set of typefaces that will become you're heading option, subheading, and body copy. Possibly also an additional typeface used for more personal elements so maybe something like a handwritten script. They can work well for this. I'm going to walk you through some examples now about how type hierarchy and font pairings work as this should be useful for when you start thinking about your font family. Your project step will be to come up with a font family for your business. Let's talk briefly about type hierarchy and how you can use this on your visual material for maximum impact to attract someone's attention, whether that's on a printed flyer or a social media post. Think of this as a bit of a system for highlighting most important text and then the supporting text. Let's say you have a block of text and you can see the one on the left is not drawing my eye into much specific, not shouting for my attention. If I saw something like this on Instagram, I'd most likely just keep scrolling by. However, the one on the right will draw my eye into the subject heading. I'll read the subheading and then if I'm still interested, I'll read the body copy below. This example uses size to demonstrate the hierarchy and also a different typeface for the main heading. But you can also see this working with just using different weights of the same typeface on the left layout here. Also, this doesn't have to read in a standard top-down formula. You can mix this up. Just keep thinking, what information do you want your viewer to read first, second, third, and maybe fourth. Also bear in mind how color can help play a part in this too [NOISE] by drawing your eye into the main info. Let us think about what font pairings we can use for this. You could go down in an easy route of choosing one typeface that has a lot of different weights plus an italic version perhaps and work out which one to use for headings, subheading, and body copy, plus maybe a pullout quote. There's nothing wrong with this. Usually, when I give my clients a font family, I might suggest a heading typeface along with body copy and then, depending on the client, a more friendly handwritten script style that can work well on social media for a short phrase or a one-word graphic when they want to get attention. Whilst the typeface like Fox trails script is lovely for short phrases and really adds a nice personal friendly field for a whole paragraph it's hard to read. Without being boring always try to think about the ease of reading for your viewer. Sticking with one family of typefaces is okay but if you want to go into this in more depth, you could look at some alternative font pairings. I'll walk you through some points to consider now. We can have a very elegant heading set in a typeface called hunter, alongside a simple sans serif typeface like lato light. The balance here works well. The heading is very thin. It's not a bold typeface so the rest of the text needs to be mindful of that. This font pairing is communicating messages of elegant, style. It's quite understated and it's quite delicate. I can imagine this font pairing working well for high-end fashion brands or well-being business. If I change the lato wait to a regular, this doesn't balance as well with the heading. The message is a bit lost now, just simply by changing the weight of that second typeface. If I now change the heading typeface to something bold, I like Playfair, the lato regular works well alongside this. The messaging here is a bit bolder. Whilst it's not shouting, if you think of the first one like a quiet calming voice, this one is a little bit louder. Just for comparison, if we look at Playfair using Lato light, we can see the balances off here and there's too much contrast. This can be overcome by simply changing the weight of the subheading to a bold. This allows your eye to adjust to the lighter body copy, although I think this might still be a little bit too light for this heading typeface. Let's go back to the original one now. The body copy here is a sans serif typeface. Let's try a serif typeface and see how different it looks. The messaging is still very similar to before, understated elegance, but using the serif makes it look a touch more high-end and classic, a bit more traditional. We used to look at sans serif typefaces as more modern but serif typefaces used in body copy are making a bit of a comeback. Let us look at this pairing when a serif really could clash with a heading. Here I'm using chunk Roman for the heading which is a slab serif typeface. It's not exactly elegant, it's super bold, a bit brash. It's demanding to be looked at. It's quite sporty. The subtleties of the serif typeface with this clash, they just don't work together at all. There's mixed messaging. Simple geometric sans serif like Century Gothic works much better with this. Hopefully, that acts as a few pointers for starting to think about your font family. You'll also need to make sure that your typefaces complement your logo. A lot of designers categorically say you shouldn't use the same typefaces that are in your logo as it dilutes the power of your logo. There are instances where I think this can still work, especially if you use a different typeface for a tagline, for example. But just bear this in mind when coming up with your options. Your project step is to come up with a family of typefaces that will form your brand font family. You'll want to include a heading, body copy, and a personalized or Accent font. This is the one that you might use on social media for one word or small phrases, possibly something a bit more friendly impersonal. Of course, this depends on the business. Also, maybe consider a subheading. This would usually be either a lighter version of the heading or a weightier version of the Body Copy. Also, think about how they complement the logo. Post your options in the project gallery and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 7. Developing Your Photo Style : Photography can play a big part in your brand message and attracting the all important ideal partners. Coming up with a photography style or a rough framework can be really useful when sourcing imagery to use for your business or when talking to photographers you might hire. You might hire a specific brand photographer who will talk to you about your ideal partners and hopefully try to incorporate your color palette and tone into the photography. Where do we start? Your business might be product-based, or service-based, or even both. I'm going to show you some examples of how different photography styles can help reflect your brand message. We will look at two shops selling shoes. This first style uses very bold color blocking techniques. The imagery is striking, bold, youthful, slightly edgy, and very eye-catching. It would probably grab your attention. Just take a moment to think who might be attracted to this imagery in a way that would then make them want to buy from the shop. Now let us look at the second example, a totally different vibe and still sells Nike trainers along with other shoes, but the photography style is completely different. It's more down to earth, real life puts you in the picture. Do you think this would attract a different kind of customer? Where do you think you would buy from? Think about the different people each are trying to attract. This example was quite stark in it's differences. We're now going to look at two examples that are similar in many ways, but you'll start to see the slight nuances a photography style can communicate. I'm not going to assign a particular job role to this person's mood board. It's a service-based business rather than a product-based. Maybe this person is a coach, a photographer or a travel blogger. I want you to think about what vibe these photos give off. Then compare that to this next mood board. Similar content and subject matter, but the style is a little different again. Whereas the content is very similar the way the photos are taken, the way they're color graded and setup, all help give off a certain message to their ideal partners. The one on the left, I think, is very classy. It's very posed and perfect, quite upmarket, but trying to give off a relaxed vibe, although it could look a little bit forced. I think this person is super organized and structured, gives off an air of elegance. The person on the right could do exactly the same job as the other one. But her tone is more laid back like hazy days, very natural, a bit messy and cluttered, sense of adventure, loves being outdoors. It's more personal, also where you see a lot of the faces. You can also think about how a color palette can help tie everything together. These tones are very muted, but warming and welcoming. This color palette is a bit more up market, is cool, luxurious, and a bit edgy. Start thinking about the photography you already use in your business. Are people in relationships a big part of your values? If so, makes sure there are photos of people. Then think about how they are posed. Are they quite corporate and very posed or are they more relaxed? What tone do you want to give off to your partners? If you're a product-based business, how are you going to style your photos? You can see on this slide and just how many different ways you can style candles, for example. Think about what extra props you can use to communicate the vibe you want to give off. Your project step will be to come up with a photo style for your business. You might want to incorporate some imagery you already have, but then add to this, use sites like unsplash.com or pexels.com for some high-quality free stock imagery. This is just to inform the style at this stage. You might want to take new photos depending on what this class brings up for you and your business, and bear in mind your color palette also. Think about how your photography style might work on social media perhaps. Also think about what photos your company might need. Create a shortlist of images that you think would be useful. This is also really handy if you commission a photographer to come in and take your photos. You might be starting to think, where do I begin with all these elements and how do I bring them all together? Do I start with the color palette and then the photography or vice versa? As I mentioned, your first task will be to come up with a general mood board that I will talk to you about shortly. This is a way of starting to get an idea about how it all might work together. Don't worry, we will be talking about mood board soon. 8. Using Brand Elements: The first area we will look at in this class is brand elements. This can encompass everything we've spoken about so far as they are all visual elements that make up your branding. But there are others that we can also think about like illustrations, patterns, and textures. Let's take a quick look at each and what might work best for your business. If you use illustrations or think you might need illustrations, consider what style will work best for your company, and also how these will work potentially alongside your logo. At least close by, you want the style of your logo and illustrations to complement each other. These are just a few of the illustration styles available on Canva. You can see how on a slide together it looks a bit of a mess, there's no consistency. Have a think about what style might work best for your business, maybe it's detailed, maybe it's very simple and iconic. Then the first question to ask yourself is, do we need illustrations for our business? If yes, what for? Maybe it's little icons for a website, or maybe it's to include on packaging, maybe it's for your social platforms. Just start thinking about what you need and then do some research on places like Pinterest or Behance for potential styles that would work for your business. You can see just with these quick three searches how the styles are very different. I searched for graphic illustration style here, this brings up a wide range of styles, but you'll see that they're all quite bold and striking. Then I searched for vector icon designs, and these would work well as buttons potentially, and then another search for botanical illustrations. You'll see some of these are probably too detailed for a brand element, but the more simple or black outline styles could work well. Spend a little time thinking about what styles might work for you and you can add this to your mood board. When it comes to pattern, designers might not be relevant for many companies so I won't spend too long talking about it. But let's just talk about where patterns can come in handy. For this branding project for True Horizon, I designed this pattern and she uses it as a background on her website, for example. It's a very simple pattern that works well with her mission and values. Another example when a pattern can work well, is on packaging for Hygge Me, which was a shop selling products. I developed a logo into a pattern that was used on tissue paper for wrapping the products, for example. Take the same process here with illustrations. Do you need a pattern? If so, what styles would work well for you? There's loads of really good pattern design courses on Skillshare to checkout as well. Textures can be useful for social posts, they can help you mix up the backgrounds a little if you want to get away from a very flat color look, there's nothing wrong with a flat color look by the way, but if your business is a little bit more rustic, outdoorsy is a good way to get that feeling of being in the real world. Equally, if your business is quite high-end, adding a texture like leather can help bring across that quality, but again, think hard about your choices. If you are a vegan brand or very much against cruelty to animals, the connotations of using leather would backfire. Again you can use sites like Unsplash, Pexels and Canva to get some good textures to use. For your project step, I challenge you to pick either illustrations, patterns, or textures, you are welcome to do more. Just come up with a few examples of styles that would fit your brand message. Or if you can, why not design your own? Or if it's textures, find a few images that could work well for your company. If you go down the illustration or pattern root, try not to be confined to what you are capable of producing yourself. I know many designers who employ illustrators with specific styles to come up with elements for their projects. You can art direct this process. You can also use sites like creativemarket.com and buy in illustrations and patterns and textures to use. I do this quite regularly. Just remember anyone can download these so they won't be bespoke for your company, but they can still be used very effectively. When it comes to your brand board, you'll see a section called extra brand elements, this is where you can put in your findings from this section. We will be talking all about your brand board just after we talk next about mood boards. 9. Creating Your Moodboard : I totally know that's a lot to take in, and you're probably thinking, where do I start? Mood boards are a great starting point. When I'm working with my clients, after the initial brand consultation and getting to know all about their business values and partners, I will come up with a mood board that encapsulates the visual tone. I realize it might seem a little bit odd that one of the first projects step is spoken about towards the end of this class. I feel it's really important to talk about all the elements to consider before the mood board stage. You should now have a good grasp on everything to think about in terms of how your brand elements might start working alongside each other. As you can see from these boards, things that I might include are examples of existing logos, color palettes I'm considering, typefaces, imagery that help reflect their message and tone. I haven't got that many mood boards which include photography style as I usually would do a separate photography guide if that was part of the client package. But please do add some examples of photography into yours, as this is a section that we are covering in this class. Nothing at this stage is locked in, but it gives you a starting point for each element that we've spoken about and how all those elements might work as a family. Please share your mood boards in the project gallery and have fun with this. You can use Canva, or an Adobe program, Pinterest, or why not come up with a more tactile mood board using magazine cutouts? Hopefully, you can see how much these mood boards really helped set the tone for the design process and how the final brand boards are very close in style to those first thoughts that I put down into a mood board. They're super helpful for getting that tone right at an early stage. If you have an existing logo that isn't changing, then put that on the mood board, along with any other brand collateral that you know won't change. This will help you work around those elements that are already in place. What will you include on your mood board? Think about stamp designs and submarks, color palettes, examples of typefaces that you're drawn to for a potential typography family, photography styles, illustration styles, patterns, or textures. Just to recap, some of my favorite places for getting imagery and inspiration are unsplash.com and Pexels.com for photography and other imagery. Pinterest.com for pretty much any kind of inspiration. Designseeds.com along with Coolors.co and Adobe Color are good for color inspiration. Also Creativemarket.com is a great resource for typefaces, illustrations, and patterns. Font Squirrel is good for free typefaces too. Remember to keep thinking about your idea partners. Will the style attract the right people to your business? Enjoy this part of the process and I'm looking forward to seeing your mood boards in the project gallery. 10. Population Your Brand Style Boards: Once you've gone through each project step, you can start populating your brand style board, which is an easy set of guidelines to follow to ensure your visual branding looks great, build brand recognition, and consistency. In the resources you'll find an Adobe Illustrator template. You can use or follow the link below in the notes to get access to a Canva template that I've set up for you. Feel free to design your own brand board. There are also lots of other templates on Canva that you could use as well. I tend to keep my clients' boards relatively clean, but if you would prefer to go down a more colorful route, then please do. Those of you familiar with Canva, you should be able to edit my template to add more colors or make more space for certain areas if you need to. Brand starboard acts as a mini set of guidelines for your visual brand. It's the item you will send on to fellow colleagues, designers, web designers, packaging designers, photographers, anyone who's working on the visual part of your brand will use this guide to make sure everything looks consistent and in line with your brand. It's a document that brings together everything in a neat and tidy way. But as you can probably see from this class, a lot of time goes into the content of the brand board. Start by bringing in your existing elements that you are not changing, perhaps that's the logo and that's a good starting point. When you start bringing all your elements together, you will see how they look alongside each other. I really encourage you to post your boards up in the project gallery, ideally as a JPEG so it's easy for everyone to see rather than link to Canva. Sometimes when you share links, other people can then inadvertently edit your layout so best to just share an image if possible. Please ask if there's anything you feel isn't quite right and between myself and other students, maybe we can all offer up our suggestions. Quite often people might get stuck on one element so maybe that's the typography or the color palette. Sometimes just having some fresh eyes on those can really help. If you'd like more inspiration and advice, the brand boards, then please do check out my other class Creating Brand Boards that make your clients say wow. The link is in the notes below. Once you have completed your brand board, you'll be in a great place to now take all your branding elements and use them on your website, your social media, in print, etc. In the final lesson, I will show you how my clients take their brand boards to use them to expand their brand into other visuals. 11. Packaging Your Assets : Now you have a lovely library of brand assets and what should you do with them? First step, create a library or a folder and save off all your files clearly. If you have different file types, like maybe you have a vector version of the logo, stacks, etc, then clearly label this, or have a supporting document in the folder so your colleagues know what files to use and when. Vector files are ideal when your logo needs to be scaled up, for instance. Whereas a PNG file, which is pixel-based, will lose quality if it's scaled up beyond its original size. Some of you guys will know all of this, but it might not be obvious to your colleagues who will go on to use the files. Just make sure there's a document explaining usage perhaps. Having one central place with all the files will help save time in the future, so you don't get everyone asking you to send a file over. Maybe you could hold a presentation with your colleagues on the best practices. I'm now just going to show you some ways a few of my clients have gone on to use their brand style board. From Natasha Pickup, you can see how she has her primary logo along with a secondary logo. Then I also supplied her with the brand icon as a separate file. We move onto her color palette along with a couple of sub marks. Natasha also needed a stamp design and a favicon, which was her brand icon, just prepped much smaller as a file. Then she has her typography family along with some texture suggestions. Then I collated a few examples of photos picking up on her color palette. Natasha already had a brand photographer ready, so she passed on the brand board to her photographer who then used it to style her photography and find locations that really encapsulated her colors. Sarah from Introvert Advocate uses her color palette and shapes on her social media visuals creating a strong visual brand recognition style. I instantly know when I'm scrolling through Instagram, if it's one of Sarah's posts. If social media is a big part of your business, think about how you can do something similar and stop the scroll. With Stables Fitness Studio, they commissioned an artist to paint the stamp onto the gym wall and also painted the walls the same color as their brand colors. With Bark & Beyond, you can see how they use their illustrations as icons on their website. This is why it's important to really think in advance what would be useful for your company. Maybe you have no need for website icons or illustrations. If that's the case, don't do them. You don't have to do everything. Just figuring out what will be a helpful asset will help you focus. Then if in six months time you want to add something, you can, it doesn't all have to be done straight away. This often depends on how long a company has been established. New businesses will adapt in those first few years and you realize what you need along the way. More established companies will already have a grasp on the elements that they might find helpful. You can keep coming back to this class as and when you need. Having that starting point of a brand star board will help you in the future when creating new elements that fit the style. Feel free to post up in the project gallery how you go on to use anything that you've created in this class, whether that's social media posts, brochures or website, maybe. Thank you for joining me in this class. I really hope you've gained a lot of insight into expanding out your visual branding and how this might appeal to your partners. I'm looking forward to seeing your projects.