Starting a new business is an exciting journey, but it’s rarely without financial pressure. Time management, too, is doubly hard for entrepreneurs. Product development and legal representation are the two non-negotiable costs of entry to an up-and-coming start-up — but when it comes to creating a design identity that leaves a lasting impression, founders often find themselves choosing between paying exorbitant prices for agency work or settling with below par – and crushingly disappointing – visual identity.
That's good, because today digital tools have leveled the playing field so in this ZandaX article we show how even early-stage startups can present the kind of polished front you expect from bigger brands, and without breaking the budget.
1. Define Your Core Brand Identity First
Define what your company represents before sketching one line or selecting a colour palette. Visuals should
always follow strategy - not the other way around! Designing a brand without a message equals an impossible task. Ask yourself these foundational questions:
- What problem does my business solve?
- Why would someone choose to buy from me, Who is my best customer?
- Your customer service in three words
Once you have answers to these, write them down and they will be a guide compass for your creativity so all your visuals can stay consistent with your goals.
2. Use Smart Visual Design Tools
You can create a complimentary visual presence without the giant corporate budget. The online world has enabled you to leverage incredibly flexible, cost-effective tools for creating your core assets.
While defining your visual identity search for an interactive online
logo maker that lets you play with typography and minimalist iconography. The key here is simplicity. Many of the world's most well known corporate marks are refreshingly simple and translate easily to social media profiles, website banners and physical packaging. While we want a clean layout and something that still remains legible when scaled down to the size of a smart phone screen.
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3. Establish Content Consistency
Visual inconsistency is one of the most common blunders that new businesses make. Different fonts on your LinkedIn profile, a hodgepodge of colors on your website and an untailored look for email newsletters undermines your authority.
To avoid this scenario, write up a simple one page styleguide. Select two fonts with the opposite style (one for headings, one for text) and stick to a short three-colour palette (a principal colour, a background shade, an accent colour). Stay consistent with these decisions on every digital touchpoint. This practice gives your young company an appearance of legitimacy and helps build consumer trust.
4. Source High-Quality, Free Visual Assets
First you have your new styleguide and then you need an ongoing supply of images and graphics that will keep the pump running for all of your marketing channels. One of the most common mistakes made by bootstrap founders is to rip low-res images from search engines, which exposes them to claims for copyright infringement risks and looks horridly unprofessional. Rather, explore the immense ecosystem of open-source and creative commons repositories
For photography, you could use Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay to find amazing lifestyle and product background photos that are free without paying royalties. If your brand is more technically inclined or perhaps modern, generic photographic images will not suffice. In this case, you can use a library of open vector illustrations like unDraw, manypixels or Humaans. Each of these platforms give you the ability to customize the primary hex color of the illustrations, right on their websites immediately before downloading. This means you can haul in a fully custom library of spot illustrations that complement your brand color palette to create a custom feel without spending any money.
5. Embrace Free Web Typography
Typography is the
silent ambassador of your brand, which sets the tone for how everything written will be received. You need not spend top bucks on licenses from expensive type foundries to be unique. Next up are Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts (free with any basic CC subscription), which give you thousands of professional, web-safe typefaces for commercial use at no cost.
Also when matching those two fonts, ensuring a high level of contrast yet structural cohesions. An example would be using a clean, geometric Sans-Serif header (Inter or Montserrat) with an old-school, highly legible serif body font (Merriweather or Lora). This establishes a balanced visual hierarchy. Do not use decorative or "trendy" display fonts for bodies of text, because it will decrease readability on smaller mobile devices. Legibility should always take precendence over novelty.
6. Utilize Free Multi-Channel Templates
If you are a solo founder or at most, lean team, then there just simply isn't enough hours in the week to create social media graphics, slide decks and invoices totally from scratch. Master Template Curation: The Secret Weapon of Budgeted Branding Graphic design suites provide extensive collections of templates for small business owners.
The secret to using templates without coming off as an “average joe” is savage customization. Get a plain presentation or Instagram template, and remove its default styling. Insert your tri-color color palette, swap the default typefaces for your selected branded fonts, and plop in a minimalist logo/image of sorts. Keeping the template to your exact brand guidelines will give you a professional looking layout whilst keeping total alignment to your brand.
7. Audit and Evolve - and Do It Safely!
Keep in mind, a brand is not some stone statue lost in the mists of time, but it is actually an evolving living thing. Your visual identity should evolve with your customer traction The first principle is : Perfection is the enemy of launch. Your objective is to simply create a simple, consistent baseline that conveys legitimacy with early adopters and VC.
Do a visual audit every sixth month. Get your website on one monitor, put your email signatures up alongside them, find an example of a pitch deck you have sent out lately, take a look at any social media accounts that have been used recently. Look out for brand drift: the gradual, creeping introduction of rogue colours or fonts that can slip into your ecosystem. Organise your assets in a tightly governed central digital box, so no matter who works on what means they pull from the correct version. With discipline and the power of modern digital design tools, your startup can appear as powerful, stable and well-polished as an enterprise competitor from day one.
