Welcome to Part 4 of the Branding Basics Series!
So far we have talked about what goes into creating your brand. From the very first brainstorming session, through choosing your colour scheme, to your brand voice. In last week's post we discovered how your typeface effects your brand voice and why it's important to match the typeface with the overall mood and theme of your brand.
This week we are going to pull it all together into a cohesive plan. That plan, or guideline is called a Tone Guide.
Tone Guides: why you need one!
Now that you know how important it is to create a consistent voice and mood throughout all of your business' external pieces of media, (all the stuff that your audience sees) it's time to learn the best way to accomplish that.
When you're posting to 3 or 4 different social media platforms, sending out print media like flyers or postcard ads, printing in the newspaper and maintaining a website, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Sometimes you just want to get it done so you can get back to building your business and helping your customers.
When you're in that state of mind, it's really easy to just accept whatever font or colour scheme the platform defaults to, or to randomly pick a nice template on Canva, toss in your company name and hit SEND.
I've done it myself once or twice. Now that I've gone through the effort of refining my brand, and identified how I want people to see my brand, I'm making a conscious effort to maintain it. When I started this journey, I collected lots of images, colour schemes and typefaces, mostly on Pinterest and saved them on an Inspiration Board. This is the first step to ensuring that everything you've chosen so far works well together.
Inspiration Board
The first thing I did once I had decided that I wanted my brand to exude calm dependability, wisdom and down-to-earth comfort was head to Pinterest and start saving colour schemes that included lots of blues.
The very first version of my website used images of beaches, and waves, and shells. Mostly because I love the water, I live in a tropical place, and it fit the blue colour scheme. I had it my head from the very beginning that I wanted my main heading (of the company name mostly) to be gold. It gives a touch of class and mystery to things and ties in with the business name The Copy Goddess.
The image above shows the colour schemes that I saved and that I was trying to choose from. I made notes about what I liked about each one, and what I didn't like. My favourite one is at the top in the center. I loved it so much that I tried to make it work for quite a while. Even though when I put the image through a colour picker tool to get the number codes and put them into my website, what came up really didn't match. The gold especially is really hard to get. Most gold colour codes come up looking like a dingy yellowy brown.
Once I had a general idea of what I wanted colour wise, I headed out to look for fonts, and font pairings.
Lambresia was my favourite, I loved the nice smooth lines and sprawling look of it. It was a royal pain because it was naturally big and wide so I had to adjust the sizing on all my headings to make it fit.
Before I got stuck on the idea of Lambresia, I also considered Euphoria...
And Romantic Lovely. Both have nice rounded shapes and flowing lines...
As you can see from the notes in blue, sometimes the fonts I like just didn't pair well.
Still, I picked the ones I like the best and created a basic website theme... (excuse my typos!)
It included my favourite colour scheme, the font pairing, my handmade logo, a headshot that matched my colours and an image to use as a placeholder or filler on the website.
This is what the first version of my website looked like. It had a background that showed waves flowing onto a beach and the text scrolled up over the picture.
To be honest, I had a lot of problems with it. The text didn't show up well on the background so I used white text and added an opaque layer of darker blue over the image to provide contrast.
Sometimes you have to kill your babies
This is a phrase writers use to remind ourselves that sometimes, no matter how much you love something (like a headline or a piece of copy), it doesn't always work with the project you're working on. You have to be willing to let it go. You have to be able to kill your baby.
It took me a long time to talk myself into making some changes on my website. It wasn't until I tried to make a Spanish translation of my copy that I had to admit it wasn't working. The font I had chosen for the body copy was in all-caps, and it didn't support accents.
When I asked a Spanish-speaking friend to read over the translation, she pointed out that there were letters missing in the copy. Whenever there was supposed to be a letter with an accent on it, the program left a blank space. Needless to say, large portions of my website was gibberish once it was translated.
If I wanted my Spanish-speaking neighbours to be able to read my site, I had to go back to the drawing board.
If at first you don't succeed...
Since the typeface was the main issue, I hauled out my old font files...
I tested all the fonts to see which ones didn't support accents to make sure I didn't have that problem again. I added new notes in red. Once I ruled out those ones, it was back to the drawing board to see which of the other typefaces looked best with my Lambresia (yes, I was still stuck on that pain-in-the-butt typeface... I don't know why.
In the end, I chose Rounded Elegance. I updated my theme so that all my copy used it, and was able to finish the Spanish translation for my site.
It wasn't until I met and worked with a Graphic Designer named Lohar that things changed again. She took the time to look over my site and give me some feedback.
She went through page by page and pointed out areas where the layout needed work, or the font I loved so much made it hard to read the titles. She also offered to make me a professional logo.
When my new logos arrived, I showed it to friends for their opinion. She had given me several versions to choose from and I got lots of great feedback. Most liked the same image that I did, but found the font hard to read.
Almost everyone said they liked the font from the first, second and third version.
I had to agree they were right. It was much easier to read but still had the soft lines and curled tails that I wanted.
I asked her to give me the last version with the font from the first version.
Then it was time to kill another baby.
I went back to the site, updated it with my lovely new logo and changed all the script headlines to match.
(Thank you Zohar Levin! She rocks, so if you need a graphic designer, you can look her up
on LinkedIn or visit her portfolio)
Since I was removing the old logo I decided to use the mandala I had made for that logo and replace the other mandalas I had been using. I also got carried away and changed a few other things.
don't be afraid to admit you were wrong...
As You can see, I changed my colour scheme a bit. I also got rid of a lot of the background images and went with simple backgrounds so that it's easier to read.
Getting everything just right can take time. Don't be afraid to admit something isn't working and change it. Also remember, your business will grow and develop and adapt. Your brand should too.
Now that I had my colours and themes and typefaces all worked out, I was ready to create my tone guide. Most of the work was already done at this point. All that was left was to pull it all together in one place.
Now any time I want to create a piece of media, no matter what type, I can use my guide to keep it consistent. In some cases, if the platform doesn't accept my specialized font, I just head to Canva and make my post there. I can upload my colour scheme picture and the program will pick colours out of the image for me to use in my post.
Now, when I go and look at my Instagram page or my Facebook feed, my posts are unified by the same colours, and fonts, and language. Eventually this consistency will mean that my audience will be able to identify my posts at a glance.
Becoming familiar means that when they need a service or product that you provide and they think to themselves... "Okay, I need _______, where can I find that?" ... your name, or business will pop into their head. It may not be the only one that does, but competing with 2 or 3 companies is a lot easier than competing when you're a nameless face in a crowd!
Especially if the person who remembers you LIKES your brand and what it stands for. If they do, chances are you will get their business.
And THAT is why we create a Tone Guide.
Sure, figuring out all the parts that go into creating a brand can be tough, and time consuming but it is WORTH IT!
Especially if you have employees who are also writing and creating media pieces for your company. Imagine all those different people writing about your company or your product using all their different voices. The potential for confusion is HUGE!
Remember what I said before? Confusion makes them guess.
DON'T MAKE THEM GUESS! Make sure YOU are the one telling them who you are, and what you do so that they understand exactly what you mean.
Provide anyone in your company who writes anything your audience will see with a copy of your Tone Guide. That way they can all speak with one voice.
Your brand voice. You worked really hard to get it just right, so use it!
Okay, lecture over... I really hope this series has helped clarify what branding is and what branding does. I also hope you take the time to go through the process yourself.
It's actually really enlightening in some ways. If you didn't have a clear vision of what your vision is or what your goals are when you start the process - you will by the time you finish.
So go forth and BRAND!
Or... let me help. Head over to The Copy Goddess contact page and drop me a line. I offer a Free 30 minute Consultation, we can talk about what you need and then I will put together a proposal. There is no pressure or obligation.
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