Congratulations! You’ve officially made it through Elle & Company’s Brand Challenge.
But before you start implementing your new brand on your website and collateral items, take some time to compile all of your hard work and create a beautiful reference for your brand by creating a brand style guide.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
DAY 20 ACTION STEP
Compile it all together in a brand style guide
A brand style guide is a multi-page PDF that outlines all of your brand standards, including your:
Mission statement
Ideal client
Brand adjectives
Logos
Color palettes and color system
Graphics (patterns, icons, etc.)
Basically, it’s a cleaned up version of all the notes you’ve made these past 4 weeks in your workbook.
Graphic designer Melissa Yeager is a pro at putting together brands style guides, so I asked her to join me for an Ellechat webinar to walk you through exactly how to create a brand style guide from start to finish.
You can watch the replay of that Ellechat here.
You’ve officially made it through our first Elle & Company Brand Challenge!
I hope these last 4 weeks have helped you create a consistent brand you’re proud of. All that’s left to do is implement the systems you’ve created this month on your website and collateral items!
Best wishes and please keep me posted on your progress in our Facebook group. I can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with!
You can do a killer job on all of the steps we’ve covered over the past 3 weeks.
But if your photos are amateur or inconsistent with the rest of your brand, your brand will fall short. Every. Single. Time.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Just like icons, patterns are another fun way to add interest to your brand and make it more memorable.
When you create a custom pattern that’s unique to your brand alone, you have the opportunity to stand out from competitors, communicate the message of your brand, and add some flair to your stationery, packaging, designs, and website.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Differentiation is all in the details.
While borders and backgrounds may seem insignificant and small compared to logos and color palettes, they can have a large impact on the consistency and professionalism of your brand.
You already determined your graphic style last week, so considering your borders and backgrounds should be a fairly easy task.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your logo is taken care of, your fonts and colors are good to go.
Next up: graphics.
Something as simple as an icon or a border can make your brand distinct and memorable. Much of branding is considering and accounting for the small details.
But before you create fun brand assets like icons, patterns, and borders, you need to consider the overall style of your graphics.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Your colors are all set! Now it’s time to dive into fonts.
But finding, choosing, and pairing fonts for your brand isn’t as simple as grabbing Comic Sans and Baskerville from the list of included fonts on your computer and calling it a day.
Actually, please don’t use Comic Sans as a brand font. Ever.
Today’s action step and blog post will walk you through what to consider and how to go about choosing fonts for your one-of-a-kind brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Remember those black and white primary logo and alternative logos you refined/created last week?
It’s finally time to add some color to them.
(And now that you’ve already outlined your color system, this step should be easy!)
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Now that you’ve determined your color palette, it’s time to create your color system.
I know what you’re thinking, “What in the world is a color system?”
Let me explain.
Your whole brand should be viewed as a system.
It’s sort of like an equation; you plug in the values to the framework and you get the right answer.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Color is a great way to distinguish your brand and create recognition.
In fact, color increases brand recognition by up to 80%.
Think about Home Depot, Target, and T-Mobile. Did their brand colors (orange, red, and pink) automatically pop into your mind? Of course they did!
The same should be true for your brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Whenever I’m designing a logo, I’m constantly thinking about how each element (like fonts, colors, and illustrations) can be pulled apart and used elsewhere in the brand to create consistency.
Especially for logo variations.
Chances are, the logo you just created/refined in Day 9 either fits well in a horizontal format or a perfect circle; but not both.
And that’s where today’s action step comes in.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
Congratulations! You’ve officially made it through Elle & Company’s Brand Challenge.
But before you start implementing your new brand on your website and collateral items, take some time to compile all of your hard work and create a beautiful reference for your brand by creating a brand style guide.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.