Welcome to Day 2 of the Big Brand Challenge
On Day 1, we defined who we are. Now we need to know—what do we look like? Then we can move on to:
- Day 3: Create (or update) your logo
- Day 4: Outline essential marketing materials
- Day 5: Prepare for liftoff!
Take out your worksheet from yesterday and review your responses. The images you selected begin to define how your brand might look to the outside world. But you need to create a brand guide so you have a roadmap of what this really looks like.
Think of creating your brand like dating. The date has a higher chance of going well if you’ve carefully chosen your outfit, brushed your teeth, and showered. Once you have defined your brand with colors, fonts, images, and personality, dates with your customers will also be much more likely to go well.
For Day 2, you’re going to work through answering some key questions about your “look.” Let’s get started.
What do you look like?
Exercise 1:
Define your colors.
Why are you doing this?
Colors convey emotion. Refer to your “Who Am I” worksheet. Choose colors that work together to represent who you are.
For example, if you are “corporate,” your colors may include dark blue. If you are “growth” you might choose green. Choose two dominant colors and at least two supporting colors. For help, click this link to the psychology of color.
Exercise 2:
Choose your fonts.
Why are you doing this?
Fonts convey emotion. Choose a more distinctive type for headlines and a more straightforward style for body copy and business documents. We like Font Squirrel for easy to download, online fonts.
Exercise 3:
Choose your images.
Why are you doing this?
Images convey emotion. Ideally these are images that you have professionally taken of you, your products, and your happy customers. There are also several free (and affordable) online resources for stock photos. We like Unsplash, iStock, and MorgueFile.
Exercise 4:
Document in your brand guide.
Why are doing this?
You need a roadmap for your brand. Choose a platform that’s easy for you (Word, Powerpoint, Pinterest). Include a color page where you document your colors including the HEX, CMYK, and RGB values. You will need these for different online and offline occasions. You can’t just tell someone “blue” these days.
Also document the fonts—names, what they look like, and when they should be used.
Include images that you have the rights to use.
Completing today’s work
Use these brand guidelines consistently. Customers will notice if something is off. They may not recognize you—or worse, feel their trust is broken.
A brand establishes trust with people you don’t know.
Next, check out Day 3 of the Big Brand Challenge to learn how to create (or update) your logo.
Prefer to work through it later? Download the 2-page PDF version of Day 2 of the Big Brand Challenge.
Sara Conte is co-founder of Brand Genie, the creator of an affordable, automated brand builder for small businesses. Brand Genie automatically matches small businesses with a recommended brand personality through 12 easy questions. Small businesses can then quickly build a cohesive and well-designed Brand Kit, including a logo, business card, and website.
