There are branding strategy rules that professional graphic designers follow to make your website and designs appealing not only to the eye but also to your brain – your brain needs to be impressed before your eyes are.
Branding Strategy: 7 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Own Branding
1. Too much of everything.
It’s tempting to overload your space with more visuals, more info, more words, widgets, gizmos, ads, pop ups. You want to make sure you get EVERYTHING in but really, more is just more. White space is crucial. Remember Myspace? Your grown up, professional website should not be reminiscent of your pubescent, hormonal Myspace page with your favourite song blasting, your flashy flair, videos and ALL that. Let’s leave something to the imagination.
2. Margins.
What sets your $15 logo apart from the 2k package could be as simple as the margins. If your designer isn’t implementing this very simple, foundational graphic design rule they’re going to be breaking more of those rules and also our hearts. If the margins are missing you can bet your hard-earned bottom-dollar that there will be more missing and you are only going to look as professional as they do. Hint: they absolutely do not look professional.
3. Alignment.
Centre alignment is aesthetically pleasing but it’s almost always not appropriate – and this is another one of those basic concepts. Our eyes read from left to right. That’s biology. By centre aligning your text you’re messing with the readability of your content – your eye can’t find the next line as easily and your brain struggles to process what you’re seeing. Consider your audience.
Appropriate times for centre alignment include headlines, information on invitations, short quotes.
4. Fonts.
Let’s not get too crazy, or let’s but let’s do it professionally. Don’t be using script fonts in all caps, it’s not readable and it looks terrible. Let’s pair your wild, fun font with a good solid font that compliments and balances it out. Yin and yang. Your font pairings should never make the viewer question if they accidentally took a hallucinogenic.
5. Inconsistent branding.
You’re a bakery but you’re posting cat memes? You’re a business coach but you’re posting controversial, political posts? Don’t. If you have a dream to slay within your niche this is probably not the best strategy. Infuse your branding and your voice into your posts.
6. Including all your personal favorites.
I like purple too but sadly, it doesn’t add anything to my branding identity. That script font you use on your letterhead is lovely but again, let’s build you a brand that is a mind-blowing representation of where you want to be in 2, 5, 15 years – and that probably doesn’t involve the colour you just painted your living room or the font you used on your Christmas card last year.
7. We are your “team.”
When you’ve worked together for weeks with your designer, they give you their opinion and then you say, “let me show my team.” We know that you’re showing you husband and your mother, probably your sister too. Remember, we are the ones invested in your branding. We have researched, sketched, interviewed you about your business and your goals, we’ve checked out your competitors and we’ve taken it all into account. We know what you want to achieve. Our job is to help you get there and also to produce something that we’re ourselves are proud of – our name goes on your branding too, as the creators! Don’t “run it by your team,” who haven’t been involved in this journey with you, they are most likely not your target audience and they have very little investment in your success. Trust us.
+Laura
What branding strategy is working for your business right now? Let us know in a comment below!
