These past couple weeks I’ve been working with one of my first official freelance design clients, making small updates to the original brand and website I created for her 5 years ago.

As I’ve revisited fonts and tweaked colors, I’ve found myself subconsciously using designer tricks that I’ve learned both in design school and by experience.

I haven’t been shy in sharing these design secrets. In fact, you’ll find many of them scattered throughout past Elle & Company blog posts.

But I’ve never compiled them all in one place.

Whether you’ve designed your own brand, hired a designer to create the elements of your brand for you, or you’re a self-taught designer trying to improve your design skills, implementing these insider tricks will help you create a more cohesive, professional brand.

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.

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.

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.

While a logo isn’t a brand, it is one of the most memorable and recognizable components of a brand.

But where do you even begin to create a logo? What do you need to keep in mind? And if you already have a logo, how do you know if it’s up to par?

Today’s action step and how-to will help you create your logo from scratch if you don’t have one, or give you some important things to consider to see if your current logo needs revising.

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 rounded up some visual inspiration, it’s time to clean it up a bit and compile your images onto an inspiration board.

An inspiration board is simply a graphic compiled of photos, colors, and patterns that provide visual direction for a design project (in this case, your brand).

You’ll come back to this board in the coming weeks for visual reference.

As you build out your brand, you’ll be able to weigh all of the visuals (like your logo, color palette, patterns, fonts, icons, etc.) against this board to ensure that every component stays consistent.

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 considered some non-visual aspects of your brand, it’s time to take all of the work you’ve done up to this point and create some visuals.

But here’s the thing: It can be difficult to create visuals for a brand solely off keywords and a mission statement.

What does “vibrant, authentic, refreshing, and bold” actually look like?

Well, it can look like a lot of things. And that’s why it’s helpful to have a visual starting point.

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.

I know, I know. I promised to help you come up with a visual direction for your brand this week.

But before we get into inspiration boards and logo designs, remember that your brand isn’t simply a logo and a color palette; it’s an experience.

There are two key components to a brand: tangibles and intangibles.

We often think about the tangible components, like logos, color palettes, and fonts.

But intangible components, like the words you use in your social media captions and the names of your products, can have a big impact on how your brand is perceived.

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.

So much of branding has to do with communication.

In fact, while I often tell people that I majored in graphic design in college, my real degree was in “Visual Communication Design.”

Because the visuals in every design are always communicating something to people.

That’s why it’s important to make sure that the design of your brand is saying the right things to potential clients and customers.

And that’s why we’ve been spending so much time on this “groundwork” stage of the branding process. Through your future goals, mission statement, client profile, and the 5 adjectives you’ll come up with to summarize your brand in today’s action step, you’re determining what needs to be communicated.

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.

We’re on Day 4 of the Brand Challenge, and you might be surprised that we still haven’t jumped into any of the major visuals like fonts, colors, and logos.

I promise we’ll get to those soon!

But branding (and design, in general) is about much more than making things look good.

The purpose of branding is to catch the attention of potential clients and customers and build trust with them so that they’ll purchase your products and book your services.

In order to do that, you have to know:

1. Whether your current brand is effective

2. Where your business is headed

3. The mission of your business

4. And what type of clients you want to be working with

You’ve conducted a brand evaluation, set business goals, and written your mission statement in Days 1-3 of this challenge.

And today, you’re going to zero in on the type of clients and customers you want to be working with.

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.

You wouldn’t drive across the country from California to New York without a map. And you shouldn’t operate your business without a mission statement.

A mission statement gives you a framework for evaluating opportunities and deciding whether they fit your core business model and strategy.

It can help you define your business and establish your brand, and it can help you (and your employees, contractors, etc.) focus their efforts and suggest ideas that fit with what you’re trying to do.

But what does your mission statement have to do with your branding?

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.

Big decisions require future planning.

You wouldn’t major in political science if you eventually want to become an art professor.
You wouldn’t sell your van and buy a 2-door sedan if you’re expecting your fourth child.

You have to consider where you want to be in order to put the steps in place to get there.

The same is 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.

My husband and I just finished renovating an old 1930’s bungalow in our small South Carolina town.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on it. It was dirty and dingy with dark paint, busted windows, and a caved-in kitchen floor. I hardly wanted to set foot in it, let alone live in it.

But beyond the grime, there were remnants of what the house looked like in its glory days. Large trim, built-in bookshelves, original hardwood floors, french doors. I knew that with a little creativity and a lot of elbow grease, we could restore the house to its former beauty.

We put an offer on the house early last year (the same day we brought our son home from the hospital) and excitedly started dreaming up plans for the renovation.

But before we were able to dive into the demo, we had to take an inventory of all the work that needed to be done.

The same is true when you “renovate” and revamp the design of your brand.

Before you can dive into the obvious details like fonts and colors, you have to evaluate what is and isn’t working with your current brand.

Running an online business has numerous benefits (less overhead, more flexibility, the ability to work from home, the potential for passive income).

But it comes with its own share of struggles. The biggest one, I’ve found, being a lack of community and interaction with other people.

We’re unable to see the faces of those who are reading our posts, tuning into our webinars, and following along on social media. It’s more challenging to get to know people when you aren’t seeing them and interacting in person.

But all hope isn’t lost!

The internet actually allows us more opportunities to build and foster community around our businesses; we just have to know where to look for them.

Designing a logo is much more difficult than it appears on the surface. 

As with anything that looks easy, there are many tricks of the trade involved to make a logo look visually pleasing and appeal to the right audience.

You may have discovered this already, whether you’ve tried your hand at designing your own logo or you’ve designed logos for other business owners.

But over time, as you learn more about design and gain more experience, you start to pick up some tricks of the trade and learn to avoid some common logo mistakes.

Here are 7 that I come across fairly often (along with some easy ways to fix them!). 

I put a lot of emphasis on branding your business. After all, I am a brand designer.

I’ve written several posts on branding, I created a course on the topic a couple years ago, and I started a 1-month Brand Challenge earlier this year.

But what I haven’t covered quite yet is creating a “sub-brand” for your offerings. That is, until now.

Because while each product, service, or course should take on the overall aesthetic of your business’s brand, each one should have it’s own distinct style so it’s easily recognizable.

Striking that balance can be a little bit tricky, but it can also be a lot of fun.

So in today’s post, I’m guiding you step-by-step through how to brand your course, product, or service.

How would your life be different if you were able to generate more sales? 

Would you be able to quit your day job? 
Spend more time with your kids? 
Take that vacation that's been taking up space on your bucket list?

The key to making sales is trust, and building trust with your potential customers starts with making a killer first impression through visuals.

Your promotional photos, graphics, and videos should not only look amazing; they need to be intentionally designed using strategies that are proven to increase sales. 

If the potential to build trust with your audience, create a killer first impression, and make more sales isn’t enough to convince you to step up your business’s visuals, the following stats might. 

Consistency is key to creating a streamlined, professional brand. But it’s difficult to create consistency if you don’t have a homebase for all of your brand standards (like your logo variations, color values, fonts, graphic style, etc.)

That’s where a brand style guide comes in. 

What makes a great logo?

It’s not enough that a logo looks visually pleasing or stands out among the competition; it’s most important that it appeals to potential clients and customers.

But if you’re starting from scratch, it can be difficult to know where to start. 

There’s definitely creativity and a basic design knowledge involved in creating a one-of-a-kind logo, but there’s also a system behind it all. 

Creating a brand can be a little overwhelming at the outset. 

With so many details to pull together - colors, fonts, patterns - it can be difficult to know where to start. 

That’s where an inspiration boards comes in.

It takes an average of 5-7 brand impressions before someone will remember your brand.

Which means that people have to come into contact with your brand through website views, social media posts, or third-party mentions an average of 5-7 times before they can recall your business from memory.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather someone remember my brand during the first or second point of contact. 5-7 seems like a lot.

But in today’s day in age - where all brands seem to run together and look the same - it seems to be getting even harder to stand out from the crowd and create a brand that potential clients and customers will remember. 

There’s so much competition. 

So how do you stand out? How do you catch people’s attention and increase the likelihood that they will remember your brand?

The answer lies in consistent, one-of-a-kind visuals. 

Tiffany blue. 

You know you have a strong brand when something as simple as a color becomes an actual trademark for your business.

If someone is carrying that signature blue box with a white ribbon, you know they’ve made a purchase from Tiffany’s. You don’t even have to see the logo to recognize the brand. 

Logos definitely help create brand recognition and add a visual face to your business, but seemingly insignificant details like colors and fonts can have just as big of an impact.

And in Week 3 of this month’s Brand Challenge, we’re diving into those details headfirst.

One of the biggest benefits of branding your business is the opportunity to set it apart and differentiate it from all the other businesses in your industry.

But nowadays, too many brands look the same.

And it’s for one of two reasons:

1  |  There are so many businesses out there that it’s hard to come up with anything new
2  |  Business owners don’t know how to come up with a distinct aesthetic for their brand

I don’t buy the first reason. We’re creative business owners; new ideas should be a fun challenge for us.

I blame the boring brands on reason #2: People just don’t know how to make their brand stand out.

Most people don’t struggle to come up with their brand keywords or identify their ideal client. Or at least that isn’t their greatest branding struggle.

The biggest challenge in creating a brand comes at this stage of the process, when you’ve written your mission statement, identified your ideal client/customer, made a list of brand keywords... and now all that’s left to do is to take all of that information and create some visuals that reflect it.

No big deal, right?

Psh. That’s an overwhelmingly big deal. And if you’ve never branded a business before, you’re probably at a loss for where to start.

That’s where Week 2 of this month’s Brand Challenge comes in. 

Squarespace is a great website option for business owners who want a lovely, professional website that’s mobile friendly and easy to update.

I chose Squarespace for the Elle & Company website and I highly recommend it to all of my design clients because of the beautiful templates, intuitive user experience, and compatibility.

But with all of those great benefits come limitations on customization.

Unlike Wordpress where the possibilities are endless, Squarespace isn’t as flexible; you have to work within the parameters of their templates and features.

This might be a problem for you if you’re seeking a website that has all of the bells and whistles, but it isn’t an issue for those of you who are seeking to create a simple, intuitive site. 

With these 6 tips (and a little creativity), you can customize your Squarespace site to fit your brand and make it memorable.