Creating a visual identity for your business on a budget

As children, we're taught never to judge a book by its cover. However, that lesson doesn't necessarily apply to business, and customers will often judge a company by how their brand looks.

Consequently, it's crucial to create a visual identity for your brand that is appealing to customers and communicates the right messages.

Why your visual identity matters

Visual identity plays a key role in the branding strategy of any business, regardless of size or industry. As the visual expression of a brand, it may encompass many design elements such as shape, colour, imagery, typography and composition.

A consistent style should be identifiable across all visual communications, from print collateral to digital media. Today, to be taken seriously, you need a clean web presence, supported by professional stationery and collateral to help reinforce your visual identity.

Once established, this strong identity helps to define your company, set it apart from the competition and encourage brand loyalty.

Designing your visual brand

While thinking visually is important, before you start designing, it's essential that you're very clear about the key messages that you're trying to communicate.

Invest your visual brand with the same importance that you afforded your business plan. Write a strategy that clearly outlines your ideas and what you want to achieve.

Look through your content and pick out the key concepts and themes that appear throughout. Using these ideas as 'keywords', begin searching for design elements and imagery that reflect them. Bear in mind that imagery should serve as visual breaks for your content that will help the viewer comprehend what's written.

Keeping it simple

While it ultimately depends on the brand, a cardinal rule of design is that, typically, simple is best. A clean, smart illustration will communicate an idea quickly and from a distance. A picture can say a thousand words, so the images you choose will speak volumes about your brand.

Select imagery that has a unique element – something that will stand out and make your brand memorable. And always match your visual style.

So, if you're using an illustration, check to see what else the artist has produced and consider how you could incorporate these visuals into other parts of your site or print collateral. This will give your communications visual cohesion and may even give the impression that you have had your imagery custom-made.

Knowing your competition

Don't forget to check out your competition. What are they doing well and what could they improve upon? What other brands (even outside your space) do you admire and why? Are there ways you can emulate what they've done well without being a copycat?

Professional creative tools that can help you

Many small businesses don't have the resources to hire design firms or professional photographers to create their content, and instead tend to co-ordinate this themselves.

Creating a cohesive visual identity does not need to be complicated or expensive. You might already be familiar with stock image companies like iStock and Shutterstock as a place to go for photos.

What you might not know is that it's also a great place to go for illustrations, including files you can use as backgrounds, borders or design components of printed materials.

Brand guidelines

Once you've committed to a look and feel, draft a set of guidelines to help make sure your brand stays consistent as it grows and evolves.

These guidelines should describe your company values and spirit, tone of voice, typography style, photographic or illustrative style, colour palette, layouts and so on.

Setting these guidelines up front and implementing them across all visual communications will help you avoid ending up with an amateur-looking site or company brochure that doesn't properly reflect the brand.

As time goes by, though, how do you evaluate whether the materials you have are in need of a facelift? Ask yourself:

• Has it been a long time since you've considered your presentation?

• Do you find yourself scrambling to put something together every time a prospect asks for information?

• Has your industry changed since your business was established?

• Is there a lot of competition, and how do competing businesses' materials compare to yours?

Key trends

We've been inundated with advertising in so many forms and for so long now that audiences can see through messages that are false, cheesy or insincere.

Imagery that captures an authentic moment, a slice of life, is instantly relatable, enabling the viewer to identify with the message being communicated.

What's changing lately is the way illustrations are used, and the styles that are evolving and growing popular. Reflecting the trend towards authenticity and back-to-basics sites like Pinterest and SMB marketplace Etsy, people are creating and using old-fashioned styles, moving away from heavily computer-generated illustrations.

Here are some key illustration trends to inspire and help get the ball rolling when you create the visual identity and collateral for your brand:

• Hand-drawn style: The handmade look is not a new trend, but it remains strong for the time being. Designers continue to explore the textures of chalk, paint, pen and ink, sketchy lines and brushstrokes on paper backgrounds.

• Organic techniques: The arts and crafts craze is reflected in the growing number of illustrators mixing their tools and techniques – adapting technologies to bring their crafty style onto the screen, rather than having the tools dictate what they can and can't do.

• Print-inspired: One particular offshoot of all this cross-discipline cross-pollination is the trend towards print-inspired graphics. High-contrast wood-block-inspired slabs of colour are paired with rich textures indicative of the pre-digital print era.

• Vintage charm: A versatile trend incorporating pretty patterns, lace and a retro feel.

• Greater detail: As resolutions increase even further – from the monitor on your desktop to the screen on your mobile device – designers are taking advantage of the extra pixels.

• Hero vector: We're seeing more and more illustrations front and centre, not simply overlaying and supporting other imagery.

Whatever style you choose for your visual brand, make sure you keep it honest and consistent. The visuals you use need to reflect your brand's key touchpoints, otherwise you risk creating a disconnect between your brand promise and experience, and undermining customers' confidence in your business.

Your brand is a reflection of your business, so stay true your company's core values and what it stands for.

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Relevant resources

• How to create a brand identity for your small business

• How to build a visual style guide to create a consistent brand identity

• How to create a brand for your start-up