bpbrewer
Contributor
In my experience, "branding" is kind of like dog training. Half the time it's not the dog that needs training, it's the owner (no offense).
Branding studios are great at creating beautiful and complex design guidelines, but in my experience, they are most useful to artists and graphic designers who know how to utilize them. Most business owners do not know how to utilize them because they're not graphic designers.
So unless you're intending to hire a graphic designer for all of your marketing assets, then hiring a branding agency may not be an optimal solution.
However, there are three things you can do to make branding easy on yourself.
1. Learn basic concepts of color, typography, and layout. It will take you 15 min, and will provide a huge ROI.
2. Pick a color and font scheme that you like, and save yourself some money.
3. Keep it simple and consistent. That's the key.
Unless you're a design studio or an art gallery, you do not need to wow your customers with insanely clean designs. Often, all you need to project is that you got your shit together, and consistency is the key here. Simplicity is to help you keep it consistent. The simpler your design is, the more consistent it will become.
Colors:
1. Learn something about colors:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMS3VwGh3HY
2. Pick a color scheme (2-3 colors max). keep it simple.
I like to use https://color.adobe.com/explore to find color combinations and check out trends. Or use
ColorSpace - Color Palettes Generator and Color Gradient Tool to generate color schemes.
Typography:
1. Learn something about choosing fonts:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4cW79vF1mU&t=427s
2. Pick one or two fonts from the video above. Keep it simple.
You can also use Generate font pairing using neural nets to generate font pairings as well.
If you want to take it a step further, use Why add Golden Ratio Typography to your projects? to generate appropriate font sizes and line heights to make typography look neat.
Layouts:
1. Learn:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg76CMOO__Y
2. keep it simple!
And go down the rabbit hole if you'd like.
The beautiful thing is that you do not need to be a photoshop wizard to utilize fonts, colors, and layouts. All of these things are applicable to MS Word documents. I'm sure you know how to use that.
Branding studios are great at creating beautiful and complex design guidelines, but in my experience, they are most useful to artists and graphic designers who know how to utilize them. Most business owners do not know how to utilize them because they're not graphic designers.
So unless you're intending to hire a graphic designer for all of your marketing assets, then hiring a branding agency may not be an optimal solution.
However, there are three things you can do to make branding easy on yourself.
1. Learn basic concepts of color, typography, and layout. It will take you 15 min, and will provide a huge ROI.
2. Pick a color and font scheme that you like, and save yourself some money.
3. Keep it simple and consistent. That's the key.
Unless you're a design studio or an art gallery, you do not need to wow your customers with insanely clean designs. Often, all you need to project is that you got your shit together, and consistency is the key here. Simplicity is to help you keep it consistent. The simpler your design is, the more consistent it will become.
Colors:
1. Learn something about colors:
2. Pick a color scheme (2-3 colors max). keep it simple.
I like to use https://color.adobe.com/explore to find color combinations and check out trends. Or use
ColorSpace - Color Palettes Generator and Color Gradient Tool to generate color schemes.
Typography:
1. Learn something about choosing fonts:
2. Pick one or two fonts from the video above. Keep it simple.
You can also use Generate font pairing using neural nets to generate font pairings as well.
If you want to take it a step further, use Why add Golden Ratio Typography to your projects? to generate appropriate font sizes and line heights to make typography look neat.
Layouts:
1. Learn:
2. keep it simple!
And go down the rabbit hole if you'd like.
The beautiful thing is that you do not need to be a photoshop wizard to utilize fonts, colors, and layouts. All of these things are applicable to MS Word documents. I'm sure you know how to use that.