Ringing in the new year with a new look for your brand

Most people look forward to the New Year as the best starting point to fulfilling their personal resolutions, which primarily is for the betterment of their lives. For businesses, the New Year is also a great time to assess the visual identity of their brand to see if it’s meeting the standards of 2017. Overlooking the importance of keeping your brand’s visual presence up to standard is easy to do, especially when your main priority is running your business.

Though operations are the heart of any business, it’s important to remember the visual identity of your brand carries responsibility as well. The branded elements of a business usually are the first things that a potential client sees. A professionally created and maintained visual identity will create trust in a brand through its quality and consistency.

Below are a few pointers to keeping your visual identity relevant.

1. Keep up with branding trends

Having a visual identity that is not following any current trends may cause your business to seem outdated and irrelevant. Keeping your visual identity up-to-date can range from a complete branding overhaul to possibly just updating your current logo and collateral to better align with current design trends.

2. Make your brand memorable

Designing your visual identity takes creativity. The goal is to make you stand out among your competitors. This starts with creating a strong logo that captures the audience’s attention. Creating a logo that is outstanding can require using a unique font or a graphic element, sometimes even both. Using a consistent visual identity will allow viewers to associate all collateral with the same brand. Consistency is the key to creating a truly memorable brand.

3. Check the versatility of your brand

It‘s very important that your brand is versatile and works within all aspects of marketing your business. You should have files of your logo in both horizontal and vertical orientations, full color and one color, vector and raster formats, as well as high- and low-res for use in print and on the Web. Having a “brand guidelines” document is also important as it will allow your brand to maintain consistency throughout all aspects of your visual identity. The brand guidelines document primarily outlines the proper do’s and don’ts of using your logo. It also includes the typefaces and colors used for future reference.

If you are interested in starting off the New Year for your business with a new approach to your brand, contact S&A Communications to begin the process.