3 Steps To Creating A Brand Identity

Building a brand identity isn't only important for your business, but it's also important for your YouTube channel. So in today's video, I'm bringing in a brand expert to tell us how we can create a brand identity. Hey, guys, my name is Trena. Welcome back to another episode of Just the Tips. If you are new here, make sure you click that subscribe button down below because I'm posting new videos every single week to help you create a video Strategy here on YouTube. But for your business. Did any of you hire a brand expert before you started your business? Let me know down in the comments section below. I hired somebody to set up my website, and in the process, we also set up my branding with my fonts, colors, and a few different textures, but that's as far as my branding went for my business. So I'm really excited to have Alison Burns of Ally Marie Designs here to tell us all about how to create a brand identity.

Hello, my name is Alison Burns. I am the graphic designer and brand stylist behind Ally Marie Design. I create videos, visual branding, and print collateral for small businesses with big hearts just like you. And I'm so excited to be here with you. We're gonna chat about brand identity today, what it is, why it's important, and then I'm gonna give you three simple tips to implement in your own business to help you present yourself in a beautiful and professional way. Thank you so much to Trina for having me. Let's dive in. First, let's begin by talking about the difference between brand and brand identity. Because it's really easy to get them confused. I think it's an important distinction to make as we move. Brand is the experience people have when they interact with your business. So it's what you're known for, the emotional connection you make with them, the lasting impression they have, whether they are visiting your website or you're giving them a business card, whether they receive an email from you or you're having a conversation with them in person, it's your overall personality and impression that you give people of your business. Now, your visual identity is kind of under that brand umbrella. So if you think of your brand as this umbrella, with copywriting and your client experience, your company culture, if you have a team, your visual brand identity is under there as well. It's one aspect of your brand, and it is the design scheme or the design styling that you use to visually represent yourself in the world. So it's your colors, it's your photography, it's your logo, and any other Marks that you use to consistently communicate visually who you are as a business, your personality and what you're all about. Why is a brand identity important? There are many reasons, but above all it's really about consistency and cohesiveness, which is important across the board in business, as we all know. But having a really cohesive and set brand identity with all of your colors, your fonts, your logos and all your marks, all really consistent and laid out, all of that really helps present you in a very professional way and makes you recognizable to your ideal client. So whether they are receiving a business card from you or they're going to your website, everything should be looking the same and they should be able to recognize you right off the bat. This appears a lot on Pinterest. If you are on there and you are starting to recognize pins by just the layout and the colors and the font someone is using, you start recognizing them by their branding or by their visual brand identity. So that just goes to show. That's a very small example, but it goes across the board. We want to make sure we're being recognizable and we are distinguished from our competitors as well. Lastly, it makes it so much easier on you when you have everything set out so there's no more trying to decide on a font on the fly or choose between different color palettes. When you're creating your Instagram imagery, when you're creating some website graphics or you're updating your site, all of your brand styling will already be there. So all your colors and your fonts and the marks that you have to choose from, all that will already be decided so you can focus on what you do best and you can get back to work. And then all of that other design style stuff will be so much easier in the end, and it'll save you so much time. Depending on where you're at in your business, hiring a professional graphic designer to help you with a brand identity might be the right route to go. However, it is an investment of time, energy, money, of course, and sometimes we're just not quite ready for that, especially as new business owners. And that is totally okay. You can do this yourself. I am going to help you by giving you a few tips to implement that will help you create a professional visual identity for yourself and for your business so you can get things started, you can feel confident about sharing your brand with the world and you can hopefully grow as well. My first tip for you is to always keep your ideal client or customer top of mind. Yes, you want to infuse your own personality Your mission, everything you're about into your brand identity. However, you have to balance that out with what's going to actually attract your people, your tribe, the people that you want to come to you. So we have to balance that out. You have to think about who they are, how they think, what you want their lasting impression to be, what their style is, what kind of clothes they wear, where do they shop. All of those kind of details that seem kind of silly actually make a really big difference and help paint a picture of who this person is. So when it comes to your brand styling or your brand identity, you can create something that's going to attract them, that they're going to look at and say, I really love that, or I really connect with that. And even if they can't put their finger on it, you will have thought that through and you will know they're going to love this and they're going to totally dig in and they're gonna. It's gonna resonate with them and they're gonna love it. So always keep those people at top of mind, your people that you love. Something that I really have found really successful with my clients is diving into a brand discovery process. I have a workbook on my website if you're interested in going more in depth with this, it's free. If you go to allymariedesign.com you can check that out. But even just answering these simple questions like where do they shop and what is their style and, you know, Write down the 10 that describe your client experience or your customer experience or the lasting impression you want to give them, all of that, those simple exercises will really help. And if you want to dive deeper, definitely check out my workbook. My second tip for you is to keep it simple. I think to some, creating a brand identity and doing design work can feel really daunting and scary, and it is really easy to overcomplicate things. But really simple is better. Simple is always better. And I think that it also helps you be really versatile as well. As you're moving from social media platform to platform or website to print, keeping things really simple helps you remain versatile. And you can jump from thing to thing while still being really consistent and not having to rework anything. You know, in this world where we're constantly being bombarded with imagery and ads and visuals, keeping it simple is really good because it stands out against all that. So I highly encourage you to think about that as you dive in. You can start with a really simple logo in Canva or Photoshop, or you know whatever design program you like to use. I know Canva is really widely used and I know they have even some logo templates that you can use. So you can certainly start there. If something really connects with you or if you think something specifically will connect with your target audience, as we talked about earlier, you can definitely start there. Otherwise, in your desired design program, you can even just choose a really nice font that you love and that you feel is a really good fit. And you can just type out your business name and create a really nice wordmark to use across the board. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. You could also go the route of going to someplace like Creative Market, which is a great place to find little icons or symbols or little illustrations that you could use too. But like I said, you don't need to do that. But you know it's something to think about. I just think always keep it simple and you cannot go wrong. The other things I would recommend is limiting yourself to one to two fonts. Don't use more than three, I would say for sure. And same thing with colors too. You don't want to go overboard either. I would say three to four primary colors. Colors to use would be a really good route to go. The other thing would be using lots of white space around all of your elements on your website. That will help you keep things really simple as well. So not cramping things right next to each other. Making sure everything is grouped in a specific way that makes sense as you're reading it, making sure you're giving people kind of breaks. Think about it in a book like you use a paragraph to indicate it's a new thought or stream of thoughts. Think about that with your website too. Give your reader space or a break so that they can process the information they're receiving and that then go on to the next thing. So think about that not only in your brand identity, but how you're actually executing your brand identity. And I think you'll be in a really great spot, everyone will love it and you'll feel really good and confident as well. My third and final tip for you is to set all this brand identity styling and then stick with it. I do encourage you to not be afraid to spend time developing your logo, choosing your fonts and colors, making sure it resonates with you and your ideal clients or customers. Definitely take that time and definitely put your creative energy there. However, after all that is set, really let it go. Let it sit, do its job for you. Allow your clients and customers to get used to it and to recognize it, whether it's on Pinterest or whether it's on your site, knowing what to expect, that can really do a world of a difference in terms of gaining brand recognition and brand confidence as well with the people that you're trying to attract. So just let it be, let it do its job, and I think that you're gonna be awesome. The thing I will say to help you with this is creating a style guide. And this can be a really simple thing. Even in a Google Doc, if you want, you could put your logo at the top and then underneath, just kind of list out your fonts and then list all your color codes for your color palette. And then every time you're going to create a new graphic or creating a postcard or whatever it may be, whenever that comes time to do that, you can just refer to this document and you know exactly what you need to use in terms of colors and fonts. And then you can grab the right logo file and you're good to go. So it'll help you be consistent. Again, I recommend doing whatever you can to resist the temptation to dive into those little website tweaks that I know we all do. I'm totally guilty of that. But try to resist that temptation and really let things ebb and flow the way they're going to. And then evaluate, let's say six months later, or maybe it's four months later. Evaluate and see where you're at. And then if it's time for a refresh, do a refresh and do it intentionally and strategically. I hope you found these tips useful and I hope I've set your mind at little bit about creating your own brand identity. It is a really fun process and I think if you really always keep those client and customers in mind who you're trying to reach. If you remember to keep things simple and then you just stick to that brand identity that you create, you can't go wrong. I can't wait to see what you create.

Those were some great tips, Alison. I'm really excited to start incorporating them into my business and my YouTube channel. Learn more about Alison and where to find her down in the description box below. Ready to get on YouTube now? Make sure your grab my channel checklist right here. It's going to walk you through the 10 steps you need to complete to make sure your channel is set up for success. If you like this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up, you share it, and you click that circle subscriber button for more videos. On how to use YouTube in your business strategy. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.