Ways to find the right visual appearance for your brand
Hi Everyone!
You know those times when you're thrilled about a new idea you want to work on. An important question is how the visual design of the brand looks like as it reflects the identity of your solution.
Building a landing page, writing copy, and presenting the product is something I enjoy.
But it's hard for me beforehand to define the overall general appearance. This especially includes finding the right fonts, color pallets, and general visual language. I know what the brand should express and I'm able to articulate it.
Tools like Google Fonts or Adobe Kuler are completely lacking about context. They don't classify, whether a font or color fits into your identity.
How do you deal with this topic? Do you use any services or tools? What's your process?
Hi Dennis, that's exactly the problem we're trying to solve with Logology, a project I just launched in beta a few days ago!
You are right it's really hard to create a branding personality without the help of a designer. Most of the services/tools out there don't really provide advices on
what color fits with your marketing tone, your industry, what font you should use, etc…
That's why we created logology with a "brand discovery" questionnaire and why all design come with the meaning of each part.
Have a look at it and let me know what you think!
Hi Xavier,
you're perfectly describing my sentiment. I'm going to have a look at Logology. Oftentimes a logo is a consequence of brand identity. Picking colors, fonts, etc. happens in many cases beforehand. Is it something you want to offer in the future?
That's a good question, we started this project as a logo generator but there is a lot of value in the questionnaire himself for sure. We don't have any plan to split it into a whole product (or freebie) for now, but we're just launched it :)
That can be a good move, I going to think about it!
Can you tell me when (and why) you want fonts & colors before your logo?
Because the logo is not the most important thing to communicate with your audience visually.
Here's an example of the Stripe and Basecamp website without a logo.
Basecamp
Stripe
You probably see my point. Especially when the first contact with a new product is its website.
I do see your points yes! If you have the colors & the font(s) you've done 50% of your branding, at least. You can always create a "font logo" as Facebook does!
Exactly, let's call it the minimum branding toolkit. A rough base which can be used to develop the brand on.
Ask for advice.
show the landing page, and ask this font or that font?
Look at google font pairs. Should give you some ideas on what to try.
It'll always be a feeling and you should be able to change it later.
I launched a site a month ago, and only this week someone suggested Rubik font instead of Comfortaa, so I changed it. Looks nice now.
Small changes can have a big outcome. Rubik is a solid font. So what you do is before releasing anything publicly you're already talking to your target group in terms of design?
I launch almost every week to a new group, a new set of eyes.
It was about 48 hours from concept to launch for this last project. Not much time to dawdle.
It sounds just for enough time to execute the most important things.
for color palettes, I like testing colors on color.adobe.com ...there are other sites like coolor.co that generate colors too. design is a little bit of the site/products personality, so I don't think there is a one size fits all
Coolors.co looks very promising. Thank you for the suggestion.
It should never fit everybody. Those ambitions are actually a bad sign.
This is what I mean it has to fit in your market and target group. And these segments can be addressed through your visual language.
It's like mapping certain properties (just a few very naive examples):
My hypothesis is that if we know to which property a certain color or font matches we're able to create a better visual appearance. It doesn't mean that it'll be a perfect brand or something which is better than some agency work. In the beginning, it just has to be solid enough.
I'm not following what you are trying to do. Are you asking for general advice on design, or do you have a service that you have developed that you are vetting out here?
I'm just curious about tools, general strategies, and how others tackle this kind of challenge.
gotcha, when i said one size doesnt fit all, i meant that with design, i don't think you will ever find the perfect one. something one person likes, you may not like. so its personal i feel
Absolutely even well known and big brands are not everybody's darling. And if they try to be, they become generic. A pretty good example in Germany is Volkswagen. A well-known brand but no opinion it's just polished and shiny.