Having a robust Visual Identity System is crucial in today’s business age. Nowadays your brand has many more touching points along your customer’s journey of working with you or buying from you.
What does this mean?
Your brand now has to work seamlessly across your social media presence, your website, the deliverables, and any other piece your client may come into contact with. So the days of having one logo and one color are over.
In this blog, I will be going over all the items that a cohesive visual system needs to establish its brand without feeling like they are putting its logo on every single Instagram post.
First, let’s briefly go over what your brand is:
Brand
Your whole business.
Visual Identity System
This is where the logo comes into play, keep in mind your logo is a very small piece of this whole puzzle.
This can include:
Logo
Patterns
Color
Fonts
Image styles
Illustration styles
Now, let’s break these items down and figure out how to use these and how to ensure you build out a robust Visual Identity System.
Logo:
You will need your logo in various formats.
Stacked
Horizontal
Emblem - People also call this a bug, icon, insignia, etc.
Wordmark
You will need your logo to work in all of these formats. The stacked and horizontal versions are to ensure your logo looks proportionate to where it is being placed.
The emblem needs to work at the size of a penny. Usually, these are used for Instagram and TikTok profile photos. If your icon is too complex it will be muddy and not legible. The best rule to good icon designs is
It works at the size of a penny
You could easily redraw it on a piece of paper — not exact, but overall shape and idea comes across
This is because people remember simple shapes. This is a reason Nuevo Studio utilizes a lot of geometry in our visual identity systems
The wordmark can be utilized on letterheads, invoices, etc.
Keep in mind your logo must work in one color!
Patterns
Patterns are a great way to showcase your emblem or to fortify your visual identity system, especially if your system doesn't include an emblem. Here you can utilize illustration to create a pattern. This can be used primarily on pieces along the customer journey.
Think: wrapping tissue for client gifts, wallpaper in your office, Thank you notes, social media posts, website background styles, etc.
Not all brands need to have a pattern but it does help make your visuals feel more fine-tuned and comprehensive to not visually bore your audience. Sometimes patterns can be pieces pulled from the Icon of the logo to create a dynamic layout in social posts, blog posts, etc.
Color
Color is a really strong component of your visual system because people have such a strong reaction to colors. When selecting your clients be sure to look at what colors mean or look to your industry to see if there is a prominent color theme. Always keep in mind your target audience when choosing color than simply picking your favorite color. We recommend all visual systems have 5 colors having 2 of those be neutral (either cream, black, white, or gray)
Fonts
It’s easy to get caught up in the trendy fonts. However, we highly suggest you choose typefaces that truly align with your target audience.
Ex: If you are a modern tech company and you use old school serif typefaces.. it makes you feel stuffy and old, not current and modern. However, if you are a law firm and only are using sans serif fonts you may seem fresh or too new which can cause hesitation when hiring an attorney.
We recommend you have 2-3 fonts in your suite. But make sure they are all different from each other in proportions. A way to use 3 fonts is using a script (sparingly) paired with a sans serif and a serif while designating one to be your font to use for body copy. We highly recommend you look at Pinterest for font pairings to see the overall feel certain typefaces can give off.
Image styles
We always recommend you get professional brand photos taken for your website and social media. This helps to create a cohesive look. A great way to use image styles is to ensure you consistently use the same filter on all of your images. Lightroom is a great tool to do this if you are wanting to edit outside of the Instagram app. Also, keep in mind the color in your photos to ensure it remains cohesive with your visual colors.
Illustration styles
If your visual identity system includes illustrations or icons, ensure to keep the consistency of the same style. Going from hyper-realistic illustrations to blobby modern illustrations will cause a disconnect.
When you have a visual identity system that is this comprehensive it makes using your visuals consistently easy. By spending time and defining these items for yourself or hiring a designer to help you with your visual identity process will save you loads of time as you build out your customer journey or start creating graphics for your social media.
Drop any questions you may have in the comments below
xo naoma
