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Home › Posts tagged Typography

Typography

What is a brand?

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Christa Cape
What is a brand?

Here at Noto Designs, you know we’re all about our clients’ branding – but maybe we should start with some fundamentals – like what even is a brand? Right off the bat we will correct the misconception that your brand is merely your logo – it’s much more than that.

I like to tell people to think of their brand as being the face of their company. People can tell something about you just by looking at your face, before you even say a word; your brand is no different. True, people might have faces that misrepresent who they are, and the same is true when it comes to companies and their brands. But faces also have mouths, which speak and further instill the underlying personality – in the same way, brands use language to complement their visual elements. It’s our job as your brand designers at Noto Designs to ensure that your branding accurately and beautifully represents your company’s true personality.

YOUR BRAND IS A STRATEGY

You should consider your brand as an overall strategy by which you communicate and mediate everything about your company to your clients. It’s more than just visual, and more than just verbiage – it’s a large-perspective set of ideas and ideals all working together to connect with your clients, send them a message, gain their trust, and build a relationship with them. True, your brand embodies itself in both visual and language-based aspects, but those are merely expressions of your overall brand.

It is crucial to have every element of your brand defined and easily reproducible by anyone who’s creating anything for your company, and because of this it needs to be consistent across the board. Inconsistency leads to misrepresentation, confusion, and disloyalty. Consistency is key!

VISUAL BRAND ASPECTS

The way your brand expresses itself visually will include design items such as your logo (which is typically the first thing people think of when they hear “brand”). Even though people think of the logo as the predominant design element (and surely it does play an important role), there are many other visual elements that are absolutely necessary for a brand to be effective. These elements include typography, color palettes, photography styles, layout styles, graphic elements, textures, illustration styles, icon styles, and more. It’s important for these elements to be designed in a way that expresses your brand strategy well – otherwise you’re sending your clients mixed messages!

BRAND VOICE

The language you use to represent your brand is just as important as its visual aspect. The way your company says things will determine how customers relate to you. You determine the personality (or lack of it) that you build among your followers, which will inevitably create your company’s culture and will define how customers relate to you and what they say about you. Again, your brand voice must be consistent with your visual brand elements, because the goal is to make everything work together for your benefit.

USING YOUR BRAND

Once you’ve defined your overall brand strategy, visuals, and voice, you can then use these elements as a tool to influence anything you create afterward. We suggest articulating all these elements in a single brand guidelines document that you can refer to and that you can ask others in your company to refer to when creating any new customer-facing (or employee-facing) piece. Having this as a resource takes the pressure off anyone charged with the task of creating or designing, and gives clear direction on how your brand needs to express itself. It will ultimately ensure that your company is expressing its brand clearly and consistently.

Using your brand guidelines as a tool, you can confidently create anything you need for your company to operate smoothly and communicate effectively – anything from your website to flyers, social media to your office space, brochures to tradeshow graphics, and more.

Want us to re-evaluate your brand’s effectiveness? Don’t have a brand guidelines for your company? We’d love to help – click here!

Posted in Brand Voice, Branding, Visual Branding
Tagged with Brand Guidelines, Brand Voice, Branding, Logo, Typography

Branding: it’s more than just a logo

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Christa Cape

When companies think about their brand, it’s more than just a logo. But many companies fail to think of their brand as more than a logo. These companies spend hours building a business strategy and figuring out ways to make a return on the large investment of starting or maintaining a company. They find the right people and set up camp in all the right places.

They know a logo is important, but branding is more than just a logo.

A brand is vital to the success (or failure) of a company. A brand implemented poorly or not implemented at all can leave your customers confused about the products or services you offer.

As a business, your brand deserves just as much time and planning as the other aspects of your company.

WHAT I MEAN BY “BRANDING”

Branding includes a logo, yes, but the logo is a single element of the entirety of your brand. Branding is a package deal: it’s an entire set of elements that make up the look and feel of your business. And this is not to be taken lightly!

The elements of a brand can be divided into two sections: one being the visuals, and the other being the language.

THE VISUALS

The visual elements in a brand communicate the tone of your brand purely aesthetically. They include: primary and secondary color palettes; typography (a pre-defined set of fonts that your brand uses for everything); a defined graphic style used for supporting graphic elements as well as iconography; photography style; company template design (including letterhead and business cards); web guidelines; as well as numerous other visual applications.

It’s so important for your visuals to be unified. If your visuals are all over the place, and poorly designed, then your customers will slowly lose trust in you as a company. People inherently avoid ugly things. You’ll look messy, like an amateur.

THE LANGUAGE

The language-based elements of a brand are a little more abstract than the visual ones. This section is all about the tone of your brand. It includes the way your social media posts are worded, and how that differs from your advertisements or emails. In this section, you sit down and outline what kinds of things your company says, and how it says them. This includes your tagline as well as your mission statement.

Language is important because it proves to your customers that you really do have their best interest in mind, and it shows them exactly how they can relate to you as a company.

When the visuals and the language come together and support one another, they beautifully give body to your company and its goals.

WHY IT MATTERS

I mentioned in the beginning that a lot of business-owners are largely concerned with making money. Well, in order to make money, you need a dedicated customer base. People are more willing to invest in your product or service if they have built a deep trust in who you are and what you say to them. If you know exactly how you help your specific customers, and what pain points you solve for them, they are more likely to build trust in you over your competitors.

Know what you’re about and your customers will, too.

Think about a few companies with the most established branding, ones you recognize without even needing to think about it: Coca Cola, Nike, Volkswagen, Apple…all of these companies have solid branding that resonates across the board, in all aspects of their companies. They are also extremely good at storytelling. They know how to link their brand with stories that connect with real people. In fact, a lot of their advertisements aren’t even directly about their product. They present a visual or story that resonates with their viewers, and evokes a certain reaction. They then associate that with their brand to offer viewers an experience instead of a product.

Before I set out to do any sort of branding work with my customers, I first send them a comprehensive branding questionnaire to nail down their goals and mission. It’s so important to have a road map before you bring a designer into the mix. We do our best to deliver amazing design, but it’s important for you, as the customer, to sit down and hash out the big ideas of your brand. When you do this, it allows you and your designer to be on the same page regarding your company’s goals and mission. This makes for clear communication to your customers, which is what design is all about!

If you’re interested in filling out a branding questionnaire to either build a new brand or refine an existing one, click here!

Posted in Branding
Tagged with Branding, Logo, Typography

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