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A BETTER BRAND:<br />
ECOMMERCE BRANDING GUIDE
One of the most important elements of building an ecommerce business is developing<br />
a longstanding and likable brand with your audience. However, many<br />
people outside of advertising and marketing still hold the notion that a brand is<br />
little more than a logo. A brand is in fact so much more.<br />
Over the years, branding is one topic I have found most people avoid when<br />
starting their business. After talking to hundreds of ecommerce entrepreneurs,<br />
it was a common and reoccurring theme. Most understood the importance of<br />
building a brand, but beyond a logo, many didn’t know what exactly a brand was<br />
and they had absolutely no idea where to begin to craft one.<br />
Seth Godin nailed it when he said:<br />
“<br />
<strong>Branding</strong> is problematic. <strong>Branding</strong> is ill-defined, usually<br />
vacuous, often expensive and totally unpredictable.<br />
Even when I first started in marketing and ecommerce I had very little idea what<br />
a brand was and how to build it. Searching online provided only vague and very<br />
general articles on the elements and process of branding. Nothing felt tangible,<br />
practical or noteworthy.
Why I Wrote This <strong>Branding</strong> <strong>Guide</strong><br />
The act of branding can be expensive but doesn’t have to be. If you try to work<br />
with a branding agency, or even a freelancer, it can cost anywhere from a few<br />
thousand dollars to $50,000+. The problem is, most new ecommerce businesses<br />
and entrepreneurs that are bootstrapping their business can’t even come<br />
close to justifying that cost, nor should they try to.<br />
I wanted to demystify the elements and process of building a brand so that all<br />
entrepreneurs could understand what it is, and how to do it themselves.<br />
A Better Brand<br />
Several years ago I was very fortunate to be able to work with a brilliant brand<br />
strategist on a branding project for a fast growing tech company. It was a sixmonth<br />
project that gave me ample time to understand his unique approach to<br />
building a brand from the ground up. I took everything I learned from him, combined<br />
with my experience and the best gold nuggets available online. Over many<br />
months I distilled everything, sifted the gold, and developed my own unique<br />
brand building process.<br />
What follows in this guide is a simple, easy to apply, brand building strategy that<br />
anyone, including you, can follow to develop your own, better brand.
What’s Covered in This <strong>Branding</strong> <strong>Guide</strong><br />
– Why Is a Brand Important?<br />
– What Exactly Is a Brand?<br />
– Breaking Down the Elements of a Brand<br />
– What Does a Brand Consist Of?<br />
– Controllable Brand Elements<br />
1. Brand Persona (Personality)<br />
2. Brand Visual Assets (Looks)<br />
– Uncontrollable Brand Elements<br />
1. Customer Experiences<br />
2. Customer Expectations<br />
3. Word of Mouth<br />
– Breaking Down a Brand Persona<br />
1. Brand Pillars (Attributes)<br />
2. Brand Promise<br />
3. Mission Statement<br />
– How to Craft Your Brand Persona<br />
1. Who’s Your Customer<br />
2. Building Your Brand Pillars (Attributes)<br />
– How to Develop Your Brand’s Visual Assets<br />
1. Creating a Mood Board<br />
2. Identifying a Color Pallet<br />
3. Designing Your Logo<br />
4. Selecting Your Typography<br />
5. Establishing Your Tone of Voice<br />
6. Choosing a Photography Style<br />
– Creating a Brand Bible<br />
– Conclusion
If you follow this guide, in the end you’ll have a much better understanding of<br />
branding, a simplified brand persona for your business, a logo, a selected color<br />
pallet, fonts for both headers and body text, your product photography style,<br />
and tone of voice. In short, you’ll have a complete and cohesive brand for your<br />
new ecommerce business.<br />
Why Is a Brand Important?<br />
Crafting a killer brand can have a massive impact on your business. It unites<br />
everyone working on the project and gives the business a common goal and<br />
focus, beyond selling product.<br />
If your ecommerce business has many competitors, a brand can help you stand<br />
out from the rest and provide a competitive advantage. Remember, people buy<br />
from people they like. They also buy from brands they like. With all else being the<br />
same a customer will always purchase from the brand they like most and most<br />
closely relate to.<br />
Ultimately, every business has a brand and every new business will have a brand.<br />
Crafting your brand upfront gives you the chance to better define and communicate<br />
your message and story.
What Exactly Is a Brand?<br />
Before we get into building your brand, there’s a bit of background we need to<br />
get out of the way. Asking the question “What is a brand?” may seem like a silly<br />
question but most people don’t fully know or understand exactly what a brand<br />
is. I would argue that most marketers don’t even know.<br />
For most people a brand is usually boiled down to the most iconic representation<br />
of a business, the logo. While the logo does tend to act as a centerpiece for<br />
most brands, a logo is one very small part of the overall brand.<br />
First, it’s actually really important to note what a company/corporation is. According<br />
to Wikipedia a corporation is defined as the following:<br />
“<br />
Despite not being human beings, corporations, as far as<br />
the law is concerned, are legal persons, and have many<br />
of the same rights and responsibilities as natural people<br />
do. Corporations can exercise human rights against real<br />
individuals and the state.<br />
That’s right. In the eyes of the law, a company is essentially a person, minus the<br />
right to vote.<br />
Seth Godin in a blog post titled simply define: Brand, stated the following:<br />
“<br />
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories<br />
and relationships that, taken together, account for a<br />
consumer’s decision to choose one product or service<br />
over another.
So if a brand is in fact expectations, memories, stories and relationships, how can<br />
we better craft and control these to help ensure customers see our brand in a<br />
positive light?<br />
As mentioned in the intro, every business has a brand, the question is, is that<br />
brand how you actually want to be seen? Crafting your brand (branding) allows<br />
you to better control your message and more effectively tell your story to help<br />
shape customer’s expectations, memories, stories and relationships.<br />
“<br />
A brand is how someone thinks and feels about<br />
your company and is based on the sum of all<br />
interactions they have with your business.<br />
- Richard Lazazzera<br />
Breaking Down the Elements of a Brand<br />
If we’re going to develop a brand we need to break down the major elements of<br />
a brand further. We briefly touched on the fact that all businesses have a brand,<br />
and in the eyes of the law, a business is practically seen as a person. Much like<br />
a person, a brand is made up of two major components: personality and looks.<br />
What Does a Brand Consist Of?<br />
A brand consists of both controllable and uncontrollable elements. Let’s break<br />
them both down in the next section.
Controllable Brand Elements<br />
Controllable brand elements are the things you have some level of control over<br />
and the opportunity to craft. This guide will teach you how to develop these<br />
controllable elements.<br />
1. BRAND PERSONA (PERSONALITY)<br />
A brand persona is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand<br />
name and is the personality in which you deliver your customer experiences. A<br />
brand persona is something to which the consumer can relate, and an effective<br />
brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. Keep in<br />
mind that customers are more likely to purchase a brand if the brand’s persona<br />
is similar to their own or in which they aspire to be.<br />
You brand persona can be reflected in every touch-point with your visitors and<br />
customer’s including everything from your policies (strict, lenient, friendly), the<br />
tone you use to communicate with customers in emails (Richard, vs. Hello Sir vs.<br />
Hi Richard vs. Hey Richard!), and even through your advertisement’s image and<br />
copy.<br />
When you define the persona of your brand, you can much more effectively<br />
communicate it and relate to your core customers through all your marketing<br />
touch-points.
2. BRAND VISUAL ASSETS (LOOKS)<br />
A brand’s visual assets are the things that are front facing and can include everything<br />
from the look and feel of your website, the color pallet you use, your logo, your ad<br />
designs and even your packaging and unboxing experience.<br />
Humans are a very visual species so your visual assets are really important. The<br />
fact that most people sum a brand up by it’s logo supports that notion. Your<br />
brand’s visual assets help to create a style and mood while also reflecting the<br />
brand persona and providing an overall visual representation of your brand.<br />
Uncontrollable Brand Elements<br />
Uncontrollable brand elements are things that add or subtract from your brand<br />
that are out of your immediate and direct control. Although through your controllable<br />
brand assets above, you can positively or negatively influence the uncontrollable<br />
brand elements on the following page:
1. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES<br />
Customer experiences are the interactions, touch points and ultimately the<br />
feeling customers develop towards a brand. It is the sum of what they see, hear<br />
and feel through all their interactions and touch points. To some extent, you’re<br />
probably thinking that you can control your customer’s experience, and much<br />
of the time you can. However, the experiences your customers have with your<br />
brand ultimately belongs to the visitor/customer and each of them have their<br />
own methodology for evaluating each of the touch points. So while you have<br />
some control over your customer/visitor experiences, you don’t ultimately<br />
control the final experience in the end.<br />
2. CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS<br />
Each customer has their own expectations not just for your brand, but for business<br />
and purchasing online in general. Unfortunately you have little control<br />
over these expectations. For example, some customers might be Amazon Prime<br />
members and have been conditioned to think that shipping should always be<br />
free and orders should arrive the next day so they even expect it with much<br />
smaller businesses. If this is something your business can’t deliver on, you may<br />
fall short of your customer’s preconceived expectations.<br />
3. WORD OF MOUTH<br />
What your visitors and customers end up saying about you online and to others<br />
is out of your direct control. Word of mouth and what people say about your<br />
brand online can significantly contribute or detract from your brand.<br />
Breaking Down a Brand Persona<br />
There are several essential elements that make up a brand persona including brand<br />
pillars, brand promise, and brand mission.<br />
Again, you can think of these elements in a human context to make them easier to<br />
understand.<br />
For example, brand pillars are your personality attributes. They’re words someone<br />
might use to describe you if they were telling a friend about you.
Your brand promise is what you work towards delivering to your customers and<br />
is just like the goals you work towards everyday to help others around you, like<br />
being a better husband, father or friend.<br />
Finally your brand mission is your ultimate and overarching direction and to some<br />
extent represents the legacy you want to leave.<br />
Let’s take a look at each one in more detail below:<br />
1. BRAND PILLARS (ATTRIBUTES)<br />
Brand pillars are a few key words or attributes (usually 3-4) that embody what<br />
your brand is about and serve as a starting point for developing your brand persona.<br />
Later, these words are used as a check against most activities of the brand.<br />
For example, when creating your website, an advertisement or even a conversation<br />
with your customer, you do a check against your brand pillars. Does your<br />
design/website/ad/conversation represent the essence behind those words?<br />
Your brand pillars act as a simple tool for keeping your brand consistent through<br />
all of your activities and serves as the foundation for your brand.
2. BRAND PROMISE<br />
A brand promise is a statement to your customers that outlines the distinctive<br />
benefits that customers can expect with every interaction of your brand.<br />
Below are two examples of well known companies’ brand promises along with an<br />
example of them delivering on it:<br />
Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.”<br />
Example of Coca-Cola delivering on this brand promise: Click here<br />
Virgin: “To be genuine, fun, contemporary, and different in everything we do at a<br />
reasonable price.” Example of Virgin delivering on this brand promise: Click here<br />
3. MISSION STATEMENT<br />
A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of your brand, it’s your reason<br />
for existing beyond making a profit. The mission statement helps to guide the<br />
actions of your company and brand, spell out its overall goal, provide a path,<br />
and guide decision-making. It provides “the framework or context within which<br />
the company’s strategies are formulated.” It’s like a goal for what the company<br />
wants to do for the world.<br />
Note: For the purpose of this guide, the step-by-step section will exclude<br />
higher level elements of creating a brand, including brand promise and<br />
brand mission statement.<br />
How to Craft Your Brand Persona<br />
Now that you understand the major elements of a brand persona, it’s time to<br />
create yours.
This brand development process can be completed on your own or in a group. I<br />
would recommend that you find at least one partner (spouse, partner, friend) that<br />
understands your vision so you have someone to discuss and bounce ideas off of.<br />
If you have a team of three or more people that will be involved in the branding<br />
process, it’s a good idea to appoint one person to lead the strategy session. Not<br />
only will they lead the session but they should also act as a devil’s advocate in the<br />
process. There is a tendency when branding to get too creative and far-fetched<br />
sometimes. It’s the job of the leader to question these notions and keep the team<br />
grounded.<br />
Before beginning you should have one to two hours together with your team<br />
for your strategy session. It’s a good idea to also have everyone put their<br />
smartphones on silent and place them in the middle of the table to avoid<br />
distractions. It can really suck the energy from the rest of the group to have<br />
even one person disengaged and always checking their phone.<br />
WHO’S YOUR CUSTOMER<br />
Before you develop your brand persona, you should assess your current business<br />
(if you are already established), and who your target customer is. After all, your<br />
brand should ideally cater to them.<br />
There are two key things to consider:<br />
1. What do you, can you or will do better than anyone else in the market?<br />
2. Who is your main customer?<br />
For the second question, you’ll want to build a basic customer profile of this<br />
person. To build a customer profile, you need to assess who your existing and/or<br />
potential customers are. If you feel strongly that there are several types of core<br />
customers, you may decide to build multiple customer profiles.<br />
A customer profile is simply an outline of character traits for each major core<br />
customer group.
As the online space becomes more and more crowded, it’s becoming increasingly<br />
important to have an ultra targeted brand. You shouldn’t dive into building your<br />
brand without identifying who your buyers are or will likely be. Knowing and understanding<br />
your buyers is imperative to crafting a brand that will match your<br />
audience.<br />
To understand core customer groups, it has become a standard to create buyer<br />
(or customer) profiles. Buyer profiles are fictional, generalized characters that<br />
help paint a picture of your ideal customer and your target market. They usually<br />
encompass not only demographic information like age, location and income, but<br />
also psychographic information like interests, reasons for buying, and concerns.<br />
Your Buyer Personas Will Evolve and Change<br />
When you’re first starting out and creating personas for a brand new business,<br />
much of you customer personas will likely be based on personal thoughts, feelings<br />
and hunches. However, as your business progresses and you make sales, you will<br />
start learning a lot more about your core customers. It’s important to know that<br />
your buyer personas will change as business goes on and you learn more about<br />
your customers and what motivates them.<br />
Defining Your Buyer Persona Details<br />
So where do you start when it comes to defining your customer personas?<br />
There’s a lot of possible information you could research, however, a great place<br />
to start is by looking at what information you can practically use. Facebook is<br />
one of the fastest growing ad networks and it’s also one of the easiest to use.<br />
Most importantly, it also has a lot of targeting options that go hand in hand<br />
with your customer persona. This makes Facebook Ads a great place to start<br />
for determining buyer profile demographics and psychographics to define.
Here are some of the major elements you may want to consider defining for each<br />
of your personas:<br />
• Location – Where do people from this persona live?<br />
• Excluding Location – Where do people from this persona not live?<br />
• Age – What is the average age range of this persona?<br />
• Gender – What is the dominate gender of this persona?<br />
• Interests – What are the interests of people in this persona?<br />
• Education Level – What is the education level of this persona?<br />
• Job Title – What field of work do your customer work in and what types of job<br />
titles do they carry?<br />
• Income Level – What is the income range of this buyer persona?<br />
• Relationship Status – What is the relationship status of this buyer persona?<br />
• Language – What languages do people in this persona speak?<br />
• Favorite Websites – Why type of websites do people in this persona frequent?<br />
• Buying Motivation – What is this persona’s reasons for buying your product?<br />
• Buying Concerns – What is this persona’s concerns when buying your product?<br />
Keep in mind that you don’t need to answer all of these questions about each<br />
of your buyer profiles and you may opt to answer different questions altogether.<br />
However, the purpose should always be to understand your customers more, to<br />
be able to communicate more effectively, and to be able to target your ads more<br />
precisely.<br />
Even just discussing your core customer and answering these questions as a group<br />
can help everyone better understand the customer profile you’re targeting so that<br />
everyone’s on the same page.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND PILLARS<br />
(ATTRIBUTES)<br />
As mentioned previously, brand pillars are a few, usually 3-4 key words (attributes)<br />
that embody what your brand is about and serve as a foundation for your brand.<br />
Building out these brand pillars is the most important part of building your brand.<br />
Review Customer Profile: Begin the strategy session by reviewing with the team<br />
your customer profile so that everyone is starting with the right mindset of<br />
thinking about your core customer. Remember, you are building your brand to<br />
appeal to this type of person.<br />
1. Worksheet A (Brand Attributes)<br />
To begin, hand out Worksheet A to all group participants.<br />
Worksheet A<br />
Active Academic Actionable Ageless Agreeable Aggressive Altruistic<br />
Approachable Artistic Assured Authoritarian Bold Brave Broad-minded<br />
Budget-conscious Business-like Calm Careful Caring Classic Coarse<br />
Colorful Comfortable Committed Complicated Composed Concerned<br />
Confident Conservative Conventional Cooperative Creative Cultured<br />
Dedicated Deep-thinking Deliberate Dependable Determined Different<br />
Distinctive Distinguished Down-to-earth Dreamers Dynamic Easy-going<br />
Edgy Elitist Emotional Energetic Enterprising Entertaining Ethical Exciting<br />
Exclusive Experienced Extravagant Extrovert Fair-minded Fatherly Fast<br />
Firm Flexible Focused Forceful Fresh Friendly Frivolous Fun Generous<br />
Gentle Genuine Greedy Heavy-handed High-class Honest Hospitable<br />
Imaginative Immaculate Impersonal Impressive Independent Individual<br />
Innovative Inspired Inspiring Intelligent International Inventive Inviting<br />
Kind Leader Level-headed Logical Logistical Loyal Maternal Mature Middle-class<br />
Modest Mould-breaking Obliging Passionate Patient Patriotic<br />
Peaceful Persuasive Pioneering Pleasant Popular Posh Powerful Predictable<br />
Presumptuous Professional Proud Questioning Quiet Reassuring<br />
Recognized Reliable Reserved Responsive Robust Serious Showy Shrewd<br />
Simple Slick Small Smart Smooth Sophisticated Spiritual Status-conscious<br />
Stimulating Sociable Solid Strategic Strong Superior Supportive<br />
Sympathetic Tactical Thoughtful Traditional Transcending Trustworthy<br />
Understanding Unique Unusual Visionary Welcoming Well-known Wise<br />
Worldly Youthful<br />
Note: To save your own copy for printing, go to File – Download As – PDF<br />
Document (.pdf)
2. Set A Timer<br />
Set a timer for ten minutes and ask everyone to write their name on the worksheet<br />
and to circle up to ten words that they feel best represents the brand you’re trying<br />
to build and the personality you want to convey to visitors and customers.<br />
Consider these questions: How do you want to see your brand? More<br />
importantly, how do you want your target customers to see your your brand?<br />
3. List Everyone’s Brand Attributes<br />
Upon completion of the exercise you will need to take all the selected words<br />
from everyone and list them out in a word processor by person.<br />
For example:<br />
Mike<br />
Bold, Brave, Artistic, Confident, Creative, Cultured, Distinctive,<br />
Exciting, Fun, Fresh, Inspired, Kind, Passionate, Sociable, Unique<br />
Christopher<br />
Artistic, Colorful, Comfortable, Confident, Extrovert, Exclusive,<br />
Independant, Mold-Breaking, Powerful, Proud, Trustworthy,<br />
Youthful<br />
Ashley<br />
Colorful, Cultured, Deliberate, Individual, Mold-Breaking, Passionate<br />
Simple, Smart, Youthful<br />
Rachel<br />
Artistic, Bold, Confident, Different, Mold-Breaking, Visionary, Edgy,<br />
Pioneering, Proud
4. Categorize<br />
With all participant’s selected brand attributes, you will need to distill this information<br />
down. To begin, you’ll want to group the words into similar categories.<br />
For example, from the list above, you might want to group the following together<br />
as they all carry a similar underlying sentiment:<br />
• Bold<br />
• Brave<br />
• Confident<br />
• Powerful<br />
• Proud<br />
• Extrovert<br />
It wont always be possible to fit all the words neatly under several groups, but<br />
the idea is that you start to group similar thoughts and sentiments of the words.<br />
Here’s an example of the attributes from above grouped:<br />
Bold<br />
Distinctive<br />
Kind<br />
Artistic<br />
Brave<br />
Recognized<br />
Passionate<br />
Creative<br />
Confident<br />
Exclusive<br />
Genuine<br />
Cultured<br />
Powerful<br />
Independent<br />
Honest<br />
Inspired<br />
Proud<br />
Mold-Breaking<br />
Trustworthy<br />
Extrovert<br />
Individual<br />
Assured
5. Group Discussion & Distillation<br />
Now that you have all (or most) of your chosen words grouped, it’s time for everyone<br />
to discuss each grouping and distill each grouping into one word that everyone feels<br />
works best and articulates the brand you’re trying to craft.<br />
Your final goal should be to settle on 3-4 words that truly represent the brand you<br />
want to build. There is no formal process to this, as it becomes a matter of debate.<br />
In larger groups, your group mediator should act as a devil’s advocate here making<br />
sure to challenge other group members on their stance.<br />
As an example, I decided on the following four brand pillars:<br />
Cultured Bold Independent Genuine<br />
The 3-4 words you select now become your brand pillars and serve as a very<br />
important foundation for the rest of your brand, so choose carefully.<br />
6. How To Use Brand Pillars<br />
Making use of your brand pillars is simple. These 3-4 words should become a part<br />
of your brand as much as your company name and logo. As you move forward<br />
with your business, whether you’re creating an ad, choosing a hero image for<br />
your website or a new promotion, or even selecting your shipping packaging,<br />
you’ll want to do a check against your brand pillars.<br />
It’s as simple as asking yourself: “Does this image, packaging, or ad, embody our<br />
brand pillars?”.
For example, if we use the brand pillars I selected from above (Cultured, Bold,<br />
Independent, Genuine), which image would you use?<br />
It may not be a perfect match to all of your brand pillars every single time, flexibility<br />
is allowed, however, your brand pillars help keep you on the right track,<br />
keeping each of your business decisions, as well as your brand, grounded and<br />
consistent.<br />
How to Develop Your Brand’s Visual<br />
Assets<br />
Once you have defined your brand pillars and persona, it makes it much easier<br />
to develop your customer facing assets. Your visual assets can include any or all<br />
of the following:<br />
• Logo<br />
• Tagline<br />
• Tone of Voice<br />
• Color Palette<br />
• Fonts & Typography<br />
• Photo Style
BONUS: Teaching design fundamentals like color<br />
theory and typography go beyond the scope of this<br />
guide, however, a foundational understanding of<br />
design is crucial and can have a significant impact<br />
on the success of your brand. I highly recommend you check out the<br />
Design For Founders Ebook which covers all aspects of understanding<br />
design for non-technical entrepreneurs.<br />
CREATING A MOOD BOARD<br />
The first thing you’ll want to do is to build out a mood board. A mood board is<br />
essentially a collage of images and elements that visually represent the brand<br />
you’re trying to craft. Your mood board can contain anything including, but not<br />
limited to, photography, website screenshots, packaging examples, font styles<br />
and color swatches.<br />
One of the easiest ways to create your mood board is to use Pinterest and create<br />
a new board for this project. From here, you can start searching for and pinning<br />
items to that board to begin building it out. I would suggest you add somewhere<br />
between 5-15 elements to your mood board.<br />
This can be done together, as a group or separate, then brought all together to<br />
finalize just one mood board that everyone agrees on.<br />
Some other tools you may want to consider for building your mood board are:<br />
• Dropmark<br />
• Niice<br />
• GoMoodboard
Here’s a quick mood board I put together with a bit of hipster flavor:<br />
Now that you have a finalized mood board, you can and will use this as well as<br />
your brand pillars for reference as you move forward to build the rest of your<br />
visual assets.
IDENTIFYING A COLOR PALLET<br />
The color pallet you choose for your brand is important because it not only helps<br />
identify your brand, but it also sets the tone for your brand visually. Ideally, you<br />
want to choose between three to five colors, as that will give you some options<br />
to work with.<br />
There are two ways that I’ll show you to help select your brand’s color pallet.<br />
1. Extracting Color Pallets From Images<br />
The first is the easiest way. Using a service like Adobe Kuler (Free), you can<br />
upload your mood board. The Adobe Kuler tool will then automatically select<br />
the predominant colors from the images and present you with a color pallet of<br />
five colors.<br />
You can slightly adjust the presented colors by using the Color Mood menu,<br />
and selecting one of the preset moods: Colorful, Bright, Muted, Deep, Dark or<br />
Custom.
2. Community Created Color Pallets<br />
You can also opt for choosing or being inspired by a color pallets created by others.<br />
There are many services that allow people to make custom color pallets that are<br />
then voted on by the community.<br />
Two of my favorites are Color Lovers and Adobe Kuler. Start by spending some<br />
time scanning through the highest voted and most popular color pallets:<br />
Colour Lovers – Check out the most loved color pallets and patterns of all time<br />
Adobe Kuler – Check out the most popular color pallets and the most used color<br />
pallets.<br />
Here are several additional resources for picking great color pallets for your<br />
brand:<br />
• Brand Colors: Colors used by famous brands.<br />
• Coolors: Super fast color schemes generator.<br />
• 0 to 255: A simple tool that helps you find variations of any color.
DESIGNING YOUR LOGO<br />
Finally. It’s time to create what many people consider to be the centerpiece for<br />
a brand: your logo.<br />
Before we go creating a logo, let’s first understand what makes a good logo. A<br />
good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic and simple in form, and it<br />
conveys your brand’s intended message. There are four basic principles to creating<br />
a great logo for your brand:<br />
• Simple<br />
• Memorable<br />
• Timeless<br />
• Versatile<br />
You’ll also want to keep the following questions in mind as you’re creating your<br />
logo:<br />
• Is your logo still effective if it is displayed in one color?<br />
• Is your logo still effective if it is displayed with colors inverted (i.e. light logo on<br />
dark background)?<br />
• Is your logo still effective if it is displayed at the size of a coin?<br />
• Is your logo still effective if it is displayed as large as a billboard?<br />
A good trick to creating a versatile logo is to design in black and white and add<br />
color later. By doing this, you’ll be more focused on the core elements of shape<br />
and simplicity.<br />
Designing Your Logo<br />
Again, during the logo design process, you want to keep in mind your brand’s pillars,<br />
you may also want to take a look at your finalized mood board again as well.<br />
I have a secondary worksheet to complete, specifically to help you better plan<br />
your logo design.
Worksheet B – (Logo Communication)<br />
The purpose of Worksheet B is just to get everyone on the same page as to the<br />
elements you want your logo to convey. This will not become part of your final<br />
brand; rather it’s just meant to get everyone on the same page and to think more<br />
critically about what you want your logo to convey.<br />
1. Handout Worksheet B<br />
Worksheet B<br />
What do you want to communicate?<br />
Example Brand<br />
Maculine<br />
Complex<br />
Obvious<br />
Young<br />
Luxury<br />
Serious<br />
Loud<br />
Classic<br />
Feminine<br />
Simple<br />
Subtle<br />
Mature<br />
Economical<br />
Playful<br />
Quiet<br />
Modern<br />
Note: To save your own copy for printing, go to File – Download As – PDF<br />
Document (.pdf)
2. Complete Worksheet B<br />
Each participant in the branding strategy session should complete Worksheet B<br />
by making a check on the scale for each attribute, with the middle circle being<br />
neutral. There is also a line beside each attribute if participants want to give an<br />
example of another brand’s logo to better illustrate their stance.<br />
3. Group Review<br />
As a group, you will want to go through each attribute listed in the worksheet<br />
one by one and discuss each in detail. Going around in a circle, ask each participant<br />
what they rated each one on the scale and why.<br />
There are no right or wrong answers since they are all personal opinions. It is the<br />
job of the moderator to lead the discussion and have the group all come to an<br />
agreement.<br />
You’ll want to come up with a final worksheet with everyone’s agreed stance for<br />
each attribute and possible examples for each.<br />
Note: There should be general agreement on each criteria but all opinions don’t<br />
have to be exactly the same. The purpose of this worksheet is to bring everyone<br />
together on the general tone you want the logo to convey.<br />
4. Create Your Logo<br />
Now that you have a better idea of the attributes you want your logo to convey<br />
as well as keeping in mind your brand pillars, it’s time to create your logo.<br />
There’s lots of different ways at different levels of cost to create a logo for<br />
your new brand. Traditionally you would go to a designer and pay anywhere<br />
from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars for several logo concepts<br />
and revisions. If your budget supports this, this is definitely a great way to go,<br />
however, for most of you bootstrapping your new business, a designer won’t<br />
be a viable option.
In my opinion, your best option is to use one of the more advanced logo generators<br />
on the market. A logo generator can help you create your brand’s logo cost effectively.<br />
In another blog post, I put ten online logo generators to the test and the one<br />
that came out of top was TailorBrands.<br />
TailorBrands is a revolutionary branding platform that allows you to easily design<br />
a logo for your brand with very little effort. Using advanced machine learning<br />
and powerful algorithms, Tailor Brands will analyze your brand’s name, values<br />
and industry and will create a series of unique, beautiful logos within minutes<br />
that you can choose from. The automated process requires no technical skills<br />
and most importantly, the logos look great.<br />
By just entering a few details about your brand and selecting a few preferences,<br />
TailorBrands will generate six different logos for you. From there you can select<br />
and further edit and refine them, until you find one that fits your brand perfectly.
SELECTING YOUR TYPOGRAPHY<br />
Next up is your brand’s typography (fonts). Essentially, you’ll want to choose two<br />
fonts, maybe three.<br />
Body Font<br />
The first font you’ll want to choose is your body text. Your body text makes up<br />
95% of the text on your site, so you’ll want to choose a really clean, simple and<br />
easy to read font.<br />
Header Font<br />
The second font you’ll want to choose is a header font. This font will be used<br />
for headers, titles and sub-titles. This should also be clean, simple and easy to<br />
read, however, because this text is used much less than body text, it doesn’t<br />
need to be as clean and simple.<br />
Finally, you may wish to also choose another font that can be used in certain<br />
occasions, like promotional banners. This font can be a little more fancy since<br />
the text will only be used occasionally and usually only in very short sentences<br />
like “50% Off!”.<br />
As an example, can you spot the three main fonts (Header, Body and Promotional)<br />
below?
For more information and tips on how to pair fonts, check out the blog post The<br />
Only Font Pairing <strong>Guide</strong> You Need from Heidi over at Design For Founders.<br />
Bonus: Courtesy of Design For Founders, download a free PDF of 16<br />
gorgeous font pairings using all free, web-ready fonts. Don’t forget to<br />
check out the blog post on font pairing as well!<br />
ESTABLISHING YOUR TONE OF VOICE<br />
Finally, you want to make sure the things you say fall in line with the the rest of<br />
your branding. This applies to everything from the headlines in an ad, to your<br />
product descriptions, to the way blog posts are structured or the sentiment of<br />
a tweet.<br />
A brand voice is just as important as the brand style. Your brand should sound<br />
and look a certain way and you’ll want to keep it consistent.<br />
Outline the type of acceptable language that will be used. Should the tone be<br />
formal, or more conversational? You might include particular words and phrases<br />
that should always appear, or which words should be avoided. How should your<br />
emails start (i.e. Hi, Hey, Hello,) and how should they end (i.e. Cheers, Thanks,<br />
Best,).<br />
Using a consistent and distinct tone can help clients and customers identify with<br />
a brand, and creates an association with what the brand stands for. When creating<br />
guidelines for text and tone, think about your brand pillars, again your pillars will<br />
keep you brand consistent and grounded.
CHOOSING A PHOTOGRAPHY STYLE<br />
Photography is a reflection of your brand. Specific styles evoke certain responses,<br />
and if you’re really good, people can recognize a brand based off of a photo.<br />
As an example, what brand do you think the image below belongs to? 9 out of 10<br />
people tend to get it right. Click the image to find out.<br />
When developing the brand for your ecommerce business, you’ll want to choose<br />
several image styles. The first is general images and photography styles that<br />
you’ll use or homepage hero images and any other images for design. In my<br />
opinion, the best way to do this is to build a small portfolio of example images<br />
that you believe best represents your brand (again keeping in mind your brand<br />
pillars). Should your photos be monochrome, color, bright, dark, high contrast,<br />
still, lively?
The second photo style you’ll need to decide on is for your product photos. The<br />
most common product photo style for ecommerce businesses is to feature the<br />
product isolated on a pure white background.<br />
Although this is the most popular style because it keeps your images clean and<br />
the focus on the product, it also requires the most work to edit. Keep in mind, if<br />
you want your product photos to have a pure white background, you’ll need to<br />
enlist the help of a service like Pixc.<br />
Maybe an easier alternative to a pure white background is taking a photo on a<br />
solid background under consistent light. This prevents you from having to edit<br />
each image to remove the background. Keep in mind you’ll want to choose a<br />
pretty neutral color like Prospector Co. has done below.
Another alternative is to use different background for each image. This works<br />
especially well if you have a smaller collection of products, and if each product<br />
has it’s own brand that can be accentuated with a complimentary background.<br />
Below is an example from Beardbrand:
Finally, your third choice for product photos is to set the scene and show your<br />
products in their natural environment. This works better for some products than<br />
others. For example, Ikea is notorious for setting the scene and showing you how<br />
their products can be used and incorporated into your own home.<br />
Creating a Brand Bible<br />
A brand bible, sometimes called a brand deck is essentially a document that<br />
brings together all of your established brand standards.<br />
Normally, for large companies, a brand bible can be dozens of pages long and<br />
goes into way more detail than you’ll need. However, a simplified one page brand<br />
bible of your defined brand gives you an easy guide to refer to for all activities<br />
in the future.
Usually when I’m done a branding project, I’ll put all the major elements onto<br />
one page that I can then go back a refer to when creating all other material. It<br />
serves as a consistent reminder of my brand pillars, typography, color palette<br />
and tone of voice.<br />
Here’s a list of some things you may want to include in your brand bible:<br />
• Overview of Brand<br />
• Brand Pillars<br />
• Logo Examples<br />
• Typography<br />
• Color Palette<br />
• Image/Photography Style<br />
• Writing Style and Tone of Voice<br />
And here’s a simple example I put together for my brand, Finch Goods Co.:
Conclusion<br />
If you’ve read up until this point, you should have a much better understanding<br />
of what a brand is, what branding is, and how to strategically approach the process.<br />
If you’ve actually followed along and completed each of the steps, congratulations,<br />
you have built your brand from the ground up.<br />
Remember, every interaction with your visitors and customers brings the opportunity<br />
to improve your brand in their eyes. Referring back to your brand pillars<br />
can help you keep your brand consistent and help you respond appropriately<br />
in every situation you’ll back.<br />
Finally, branding is hardly a one time action or process, it’s constant and ongoing.<br />
Make sure you revisit your brand every six months or so to make sure it still<br />
reflects your audience and the message you want to portray.