Brand Success Tips for Small Business
Navigating through the bustling market of brands, standing out requires more than just a flashy logo or a catchy name. If you’ve been wondering how to make a brand for your business, you need more than just visuals—you need a brand identity that embodies your values, voice, and vision. Let’s dive into the essential steps to create a brand that resonates and retains loyalty.
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Brand Design Strategy: Aligning Illustration with Brand Identity
Creating art that aligns with a company’s brand requires a strong brand design strategy that reflects the brand identity, values, and audience needs. Whether building visuals from scratch or enhancing an existing brand, following proven brand success tips for small businesses ensures a cohesive and compelling brand presence.
Before any project, it’s essential to get thorough information about the company’s existing brand via a brand book, including mission statements, personality, target demographic, and current visual style.
Next is the brainstorming and sketching phase, during which we create rough ideas for concepts that reflect and align with the company brand. This is also a great time to experiment with expanding the visual brand even further.
New and exciting techniques, styles, and technology are constantly evolving. As an illustrator/designer, I must stay ahead of these trends and apply them effectively. Staying relevant in any field requires continuous learning and building on skills, including the visual extension of your expertise.
Brand Success Tips for Small Business
Case Study – Feel the Beat
We worked with one of our favorite brands, Feel the Beat, whose mission is to make dance accessible to all by allowing those who are deaf and hard of hearing or who identify with disabilities to literally feel the beat, granting them access to music.
The company already had a clear focus and target audience but recognized it was stuck with stock icons that worked but didn’t elevate the brand. We took the time to add unique dance icons that showed accessibility that stock icons didn’t offer and fun, energetic illustrations of dancers of all sizes, abilities, and backgrounds. These have become a staple on all their digital and social ads, making the brand feel alive, dynamic, and fun while honoring its primary goal and style.
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Brand Design Strategy in Action
Dance Ed Tips Case Study
Another example is Dance Ed Tips, a company that sparks creativity in dance teachers by providing resources like card decks, games, and teaching tools to keep their classes fresh and exciting.
We worked with them on a new card deck showcasing correct techniques and beginner positions and poses of Ballet. Since they already had various technique decks and games, it was essential to review their past work to maintain consistency. However, we also identified opportunities to modernize their visual identity.
Ballet is traditionally tied to strict, regimented movements that inform a formal aesthetic. We saw an opportunity to break these stereotypes by using a gender-neutral color scheme and incorporating varying body types, shapes, ethnicities, and gender fluidity.
This new deck still fits their existing brand, adding a fresh visual perspective and greater accessibility and representation.
Brand Success Through Strategic Design
Creating art that matches a company’s brand is an interactive process that requires communication and refinement. Keeping the brand’s mission and visual identity at the forefront ensures that new ideas enhance the brand rather than dilute its essence.
Small businesses can transform their brand identity into a powerful asset by implementing a strong brand design strategy. Using brand success tips for small businesses, you can refine visuals, enhance recognition, and attract your ideal audience.
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