How to Decide on Your Brand Style and Keep it Consistent

Creating a cohesive brand style is key to building brand recognition and establishing a strong identity in the market.

One effective way to define your brand style and maintain consistency is by developing a blueprint or mood board. Here are some tips to help you get started:

Define Your Brand Identity: Before diving into a mood board, it’s essential to have a crystal-clear understanding of your brand.

Start by thinking about your brand values – what’s important to you as a business?, who is your target audience/ideal customer, and what makes you different from your competitors – your unique selling points. It might take a bit of time to work this out, but it provides the solid foundation for everything else and will give you so much clarity.

These elements will steer the visual direction of your brand. What is the message you want to convey through your visuals?

Research the Market: Look at trends, check out your competitors and industry in general. But use what you find to help create your own uniqueness rather than copying what everyone else is doing. This is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

Get Inspired: Start by gathering images that you like, pick out photography images, styles, colour schemes, fonts, and designs that resonate with your brand identity. Browse websites, flip through magazines and scroll through social media. Look for visuals that evoke the emotions and aesthetic you want to convey.

What truly speaks to you and captures the vibe of your business? Are you a bold and colourful brand or bright and airy? Are your visuals geometric lines or soft curves? Its up to you..

Create a Mood Board: Use a digital or physical platform to arrange your collected images into a cohesive mood board. Focus on visuals that keep aligned with your brand’s personality and appeal to your target audience.

I know it can be easy to be attracted to lots of different styles but the point of this is to hone in on a style that makes your brand become clear and recognisable. That will be harder if you are bouncing from one style to another. You must decide what is right for your brand identity and try to stick with it.

Refine and Simplify: Pay attention to the overall look and feel and you’ll start to see a cohesive brand style develop. You’ll find that your mood board will evolve as you become more clear on your brand identity.  Periodically review and refine your selections to ensure consistency and cohesiveness. Remove any images that no longer fit your brand vision and focus on the most impactful visuals.

Establish Guidelines: Once you’ve finalised your mood board, use it to pull inspiration from, especially when your stuck for ideas. It is ideal to define how your business imagery will look and will help you remain consistent. Be sure to use your brand colours, props and of course inject your personality into the images.

Use the moodboard as a reference to establish brand guidelines. Send to your designer or photographer and even your team if you have one.

Regularly Review and Update: As your brand evolves, you may tweak your brand style and mood board to ensure it stays relevant and aligned with your business goals. Update as needed to reflect any changes or growth in your brand identity.

By following these tips and creating a comprehensive blueprint or mood board, you can establish a clear brand style and maintain consistency across all your marketing efforts.

Are you in need of a beautiful brand identity? I assist my clients with brand style ideation. It comes as part of my brand packages. If you’d like to know more contact me