Want more people to trust your brand? A strong visual brand identity can be one way of doing this. A distinctive logo design or unique colour scheme can help to make a brand more memorable. This familiarity can then lead to greater trust.

Most people seek out the help of a graphic designer to help them establish a visual brand. However, you’ll probably still need to come up with a basic concept so that a designer has something to run with. Here are just several tips that can help you to start building your visual brand.  

Choose a colour theme

The most famous visual brands such as Coca-Cola and Walmart all have identifiable colour schemes. Choosing a colour is something worth considering carefully as certain hues may have a certain psychological impact that makes them better suited for specific products. As this article written by the University of Southern California delves into, colours can be used in visual branding to attract specific consumers of different ages and nationalities. Colours may also affect our mood – while blue is generally calming, red is much more energetic.

Design a logo

A logo can be another key aspect of a company’s visual brand. This could be a simple image, a symbol or simply the company’s name in a unique typeface. Try to choose a logo that doesn’t look too similar to a competitor. At the same time, make sure that the logo clearly relates to the theme of your company. Guides as found at 99Designs can help you to build a winning logo.

Stick to the same fonts

When it comes to all forms of media from flyers to your website, try to keep to a consistent font. This can help to add to your overall visual brand identity. The font needs to be easily readable and should relate to the formality of your business.

You don't even have to spend a lot of money to get a nice font for your brand. You can find many free fonts on a website like Creative Fabrica. They offer a variety of premium fonts, including handwritten, display, sans serif, and much more!

A toy company, for instance, may want to stick to a soft sans serif font (although probably not something generic like comic sans), while a cybersecurity company may want a more formal serif font. This guide at Monotype offers more information on choosing a font.

Establish other consistent elements

There may be other consistent elements that you can bring into your visual branding. This could include a specific style of photo or image or maybe even a certain style of formatting. Consumers will subliminally pick up on these consistencies and it will help your brand to become more distinctive.

Try multiple marketing channels

Incorporating your visual brand into a range of marketing mediums will help it to get noticed by increasing its exposure. A few places in which you may be able to display visual branding include your website, social media banners, flyers, business cards, posters, billboards, magazine ads, internet ads, packaging, bags, uniforms and even promotional products such as pens and mugs. Target as many locations as you can so that your brand is unavoidable – very soon people will start to recognise it, even if they can’t put a name to it. 

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.