Podcast 77: How to Pick Your Brand Colours and Fonts

branding ethical marketing finding clients marketing podcast Aug 05, 2021

Branding on a Budget - Part 1

Branding is hugely important to provide you with a look and feel to help you to stand out and be recognised by those who need your help. Ultimately your brand reflects you and your service and consistent branding will help you find clients and thrive.

Prospective clients will have a perception about working with you based on your branding, so you need to ensure it fits.

If you don’t currently have the budget to invest in professional branding, there’s a lot you can do on a budget to create a brand that looks great.

This is part one of a series of three blogs and podcasts looking at how you can create a great brand on a budget.

Picking your brand colour

The colours you pick for your brand have a huge impact on how it’s received. Colour creates emotional responses and different colours have different meanings. Whilst these can be different in different cultures, you need to look at who your clients are and what you’re trying to communicate to them.

A few examples include:

Blue – trust, loyalty, serenity
Purple – wisdom, luxury, spiritual
Green – health, hope, nature
Yellow – optimism, creativity, happiness
Black – sophistication, power, security

Google the psychology of colour for ideas on what all the different colours mean. Use your findings to help you decide if your favourite colours are a good reflection of your brand.

Contrasting and complementary colours

Once you’ve decided on your main colour, pick two or three complementary or contrasting colours to use alongside it, to add interest.

Teal is my main colour and I also use tints of the teal (lighter versions) plus navy, coral and gold to add different dimensions to my brand.

If you’re not sure what colours to use with your brand colour, search ‘your colour + colour palette’ on Pinterest for ideas and inspiration. It will give you an array of different combinations to choose from.

Logo and typography

If you have the budget, creating your logo is definitely a job for professionals. A graphic designer will be able to create graphics that will not only look beautiful but represent your brand brilliantly.

Even though I’m a qualified graphic designer, I found investing in a designer gave me a logo and look that I would have never come up with – I’m just too close to my own brand.

If you’re not in the position to invest yet, you can use simple typography to get a professional, clean look for yourself.

Pick a font for your business name that you like, you feel reflects your brand values, and is legible.

A great place to look is Google Fonts as it has a library of over a thousand free and open-source fonts which will save you having to pay for licences, and they’ll work online. Google Fonts can also be added to Microsoft Office and Canva if they don’t have the font in their libraries.

Keep the number of fonts you use to one for your business name and a complementary one for your headings and text. When you pick your fonts, Google provides you with ideas for complementary ones or ‘popular parings’ so you know which will work well with your chosen fonts.

It’s fashionable to also have a feature font that’s a script style if you haven’t used one for your name. These need to be used sparingly and only for short sentences as although they look good, they can be hard to read.

Create branded templates

If you’re creating branded artwork for your website or social media, create templates for yourself so you can keep a consistent look. This will help everything to work together and make it easy for you to update as you go.

If you’re using software like Canva, you have a choice of using lots of ready-made templates. If you use them, update them to your own fonts and colours so they fit with your brand. This will also stop them from looking like anyone else’s.

You can get a designer to create these for you in Canva which is what I did when I first re-branded. This investment has saved me so much time over the last few months and keeps everything looking good.

Create your brand style guide

This may sound technical, but it really doesn’t have to be. All you want is a page that includes your font, colours and any other aspects of your branding that you’ve decided on. This is your reference point for any marketing you do, whether it’s creating your website, social media posts, a presentation or client information.

This brand style guide will provide anyone who’s helping you such as a VA so they understand how you want your brand to look. It will help you to keep a consistent look and feel for your brand whoever is working on it.

Now you have the basic elements of your brand, the key is being consistent. People are visual and will notice your marketing because it has a common feel and look to it. It will help prospective clients to identify you from the crowd and decide if you’re the right practitioner to help them.

Stylish Branding Made Easy - Mini-Course

Learn how to create a professional-looking brand on a budget to attract your favourite clients.

Work along with me in these practical sessions to create your branding in a way that represents you and your business brilliantly.

This mini-course is running live at lunchtime each day for 4-days starting on Tuesday 31st August 2021 with workbooks, replays and a pop-up Facebook group for support. After this date, it will be available as an online course that you can work through at your own pace.