You and your New Brand Identity
Congratulations on creating your new brand you must be super excited to dive in and start creating and using your new brand identity.
Getting to grips with your new brand, and all the font’s colours and how to actually put them together can well, be a bit overwhelming.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered – let’s dive in and fast forward and turn you into a super creative in the next 3 minutes!
Colour Pallette
When you created your brand identity you would have spent a good amount of time doing a deep dive into what you wanted your brand to say about you.
This would’ve involved listing out words and phrases that described your brand to help you narrow down what you wanted to convey with the overall look and feel of your brand.
The result, your colour palette, you will have 6 colours that make up your brand like this:
1. 2 base (or brand) colours,
2. 2 action colours,
2. 2 grounding colours.
1 – Your brand colours, the darker colours in your palette, or the colours from your logo, pictures, etc. are all examples of ‘base colours’.
2 – Buttons, callouts, and other elements can benefit from the “action colours,” which add a little “pop” to the design. In order to draw greater attention to all the colours in the group, these colours can be brighter or bolder, but they don’t need to be the brightest colour in your colour palette as long as you stick to the same colour as your call to action colour consistently.
3 – Grounding colours are more modest and could be variations of the two base or brand colours that you chose. Colours like these allow for your design to breathe while yet adding a splash of vibrancy. You’ll need a text colour, so make sure that you have a colour that is readable on screen!
Now the fun part (or for me at least!), start by putting two or three of your colours together with your brand fonts, messaging and layout or design you create. You should find that there is harmony in your design.
What? Just think it’s like getting dressed to go for a night out. literally, if you got dressed for a night out do I look great does this dress go well with these shoes, or does this clash, will I get noticed?
You want your designs to be scroll stopping, but in a good way!
Less is more.
Give your designs space to breathe. Try and limit your copy, keep it short and engaging.
Try to use words that show your reader how their life would be better after they use your product or service.
Everything you need to roll out a successful brand intantly.
File Types
You know by now or at least you should that you need three logotypes for your biz.
When you got your branding board you will be able to edit it in Canva. This will allow you to create a couple of file types.
Plus you will have the native files in your file folders.
PNG
Png files in case you’re at all curious stand for portable network graphics, they can be downloaded with a clear background which makes them perfect for use on your marketing materials and social posts. When you need a clear background.
In Canva you can increase the size of the PNG you download by toggling the little slider under file type, then ‘clicking’ transparent background. PNGs are perfect for web use.
JPG
JPG files are great for both web and print, however, if printing you should always make sure your files are saved to at least 300DPI or higher.
This format does not support transparency, as JPGs do not have a transparent channel and must have a solid colour background.
JPG is also a flattened file format, meaning that you cannot edit the file, as the layers are not separated.
If you are creating social media posts for Facebook, download them as a JPG.
SVG
This is one of the questions I get asked the most, and as if creating your brand wasn’t overwhelming enough now you’re faced with Canva!
Don’t worry we’ve got you covered!
Did you know that you can use SVG files in Canva? The best part of this feature is having the ability to re-colour and customize them.
To use SVG files in Canva and re-colour them, you need to have a template open. You can select a standard template provided by Canva. Then click the Upload media button, locate and select the SVG file you want to upload.
Most, if not all SVG files are made from compound paths. This is what Canva needs in order to read the file and allow you to change the colour. But, in rare cases where the SVG file isn’t a compound path, you might get an error message like this.
To fix the error in Canva, you will have to convert the elements into a compound path using a third party program. Two examples of programs would be making a compound path in Illustrator, or using Silhouette Studio business edition v4.1 and up. Ask your designer to do this for you if you run into problems.
Once uploaded you can change the colours by clicking on the colour swatches in the top left-hand corner.
When signup for our 2-Day Business Brand Identity Intensive and Our Semi-Custom Brand Design you’ll receive a Branding board this is where you’ll get to edit the colours of your logo when it comes time to create a dark version of your logo, or you just want to make some changes to your brand colours.
It’s a great time saver because you don’t need to keep having to wait for your designer to make changes for you.
There you go, now you know how to use SVG files in Canva.
The SVG format is so versatile you can use it across many of your projects. Once you are done with your edits, you can download your Canva files to your desktop or device as an SVG, JPG, or other formats.
Vector Files
Let’s keep this short and sweet.
Vector files are designer files that can only be opened in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
What is good about them is that they can be scaled up to the size of your house or bigger without losing any definition. So If you’re thinking of designing a billboard or Exhibition stand then vector graphics are the way to go.
Brand Font Pairings
I have to confess to being a bit of a font junkie, I have a huge collection, but that’s not the point here.
You will have three, and here is how to use them.
Your brand will include three different types of font, One Heading font, One for body copy and a script font.
Heading Font – These are usually classic typefaces that have what we call “feet”, like Bodoni, Times and Playfair, and should be used for All of your heading across all of social, website and marketing
Body Font – This is usually a Sans Serif font- you guessed it — fonts with no “feet”, like Helvetica, Montserrat and Aileron. The reason for this is they are super easy on the eye and make it pleasant for your audience to read.
Finally, some sort of script face. Just make sure you can read it.
Finally, make sure you stick to these fonts across all your brand collateral, I know I must sound like a broken record.
But it can be so tempting to stray when you see another pretty font. DON’T! DO IT.
Brand consistency is key.
Brand Photos
You might not have the budget to go all out and get branded photos created from the get-go.
Out top tip is to try and pick photos that match your brand colours that evoke the feelings and emotions or lifestyle that your customers aspire to.
If you are the face of your brand make sure you include some photos of yourself. There are some free programs that can help brighten up your pictures and make them look professional.
Files we Send you
If that still has you spinning in circles, just remember this the files we send you are labelled, for print and for the web.
As long as you can understand that the web images are a smaller file size so should only be used on the web. You’ll be on the right track.
Please let me know in the comments if you found this blog helpful, and if you have any questions just send them in by clicking on the little orange button in the bottom left of your screen.
