A Brief Guide on Defining and Creating Brand Boards

What is a Brand Board?

Branding is one of the most important features of building a business. A brand represents a business identity or personality and it isn't about a sentence or a symbol. A brand portrays the vision, purpose, and visual identity of the company altogether. Brands are a source of emotions and feelings. They create meaning for the individuals and customers you serve through business.

You should take advantage of these ideas in developing visual branding. Fonts, colors, spacing, patterns, and graphical elements make our brands alive and dynamic. These ideas combine to form a Brand board.

A brand board is a quick reference document to your brand's unique flair and visual identity. A Branding Board is a guide that includes your brand elements like the logo and banners. It's a unique combination reflecting the mission, values, and description of the company. It describes the story, attitudes, aesthetic details as you see, and others' perceptions. The base of a brand board are fonts, colors, and a logo.

Why You Should Create a Brand Board

Qualities of a Great Brand Board

Every detail of the brand, designed and compiled in a visually elegant document. Brand boards are important as they convey brand value, attributes at a glance. Designing a brand board creates a business opportunity. It attracts potential customers through creative visuals.

The Brand Board showcases the designed graphics and prints. It could have content related to the brand too. So, it's helpful to look into the brand board to get an insight into the company. A brand board is a pointer to check that the design is in line with the colors and font. The graphic identity is also a checkpoint.

Your brand contains italics, interesting patterns, images, pastel shades. In that case, select web templates according to it. Your board may have modern elements like patterns, colors, and abstract art. Then go for similar web templates. This way it will be easier to select web templates according to your brand board and reject others.

Besides those reasons, a Brand Board markets your business in your absence. The brand board can help another designer too. Use it to enhance existing templates for a new assignment. This will help to retain the boards as reference for future designs as well.

A good Brand Board summarizes the brand's identity, style in a cohesive manner. The audience viewing the brand board can look and feel the brand's personality and values of the brand. In this, you don't need a guide to explain the board to the viewer or reader. In a way, any visitor can recognize your logo, graphics, or banners outside the social media or website. This is possible only when visitors consistently follow the uniqueness of the brand.

Build Your Brand Around a Central Theme

Creating Your First Brand Board

It’s pretty easy to create a brand board from scratch. Collecting and sort your graphics and visual elements. Then line them up together in a one-page document. Here is a list of what you must incorporate

  • Logo - This is the main graphic representation of your business and brand. This is often used on your website, formal documents, cover letters, collaterals, etc.
  • Logo variants - This is similar to your logo graphic with some twists for some versatility.
  • Submarket - This is a basic version of your graphic logo. Use it as favicons, watermarks, social media profile photos, and media posts.
  • Color palette - This is the specific color combination and color scheme of your brand. Split the palette into a primary color palette and a secondary palette. This color pattern represents the color's hex codes.
  • Fonts - This is the special font you use to represent your business and brands globally. You can use two fonts complimenting each other. And also, you can include different header and tagline fonts different from the main fonts.
  • Patterns and textures - This is an artistic design to give your brand some depth and bring your brand alive.
  • Inspirational Images - These is photos or images to represent the appearance of your brand. It could be typically coloured from your brand color palette.

Start working on the process of creating the Brand Board. These are the steps to follow:

Set the Mood

Decide a direction to arrange your visuals and images. e.g. like light or bold, adventurous or light-hearted. Choose the right words describing the brand. Set your vision to see your brand in the next 5 years and communicate the same message to your audience.

Select Your Color Palette

After selecting the right pictures to set the mood of the brand board choose the color palette. The color palette should complement the visuals, message, and emotion. It should be legible across display mediums.

Design a Logo

The logo is the center of attraction of your brand. Everything originates from your logo. Elements include the color, graphics, and font. Introspect and check multiple times before finalizing your logo.

Select the Font

Choose colors and fonts which complement the logo. You can select additional fonts for brand materials like social media. banners, websites, etc.

Icons, Patterns, and Graphics

Adding more depth and dimension to your brand use patterns and icons. Patterns and icons work as extensions to enhance the logo and create a vibe among customers.

Tools to Create Your Brand Board

  • Design brand boards using graphic design tools like photoshop, illustrator, or Indesign.
  • Illustrator is easy to create simple layouts or designs.
  • Photoshop works well with photos and raster images.
  • Canva is good if you are creating a brand identity or on a template for client work.

Branding is a strategic and smart way to position your brand from other businesses. Use it as a marketing tool to attract potential customers. A brand board is a quick way to create an impression of your brand identity. A board conveys personality, values, unique style, color schemes, logo to customers. So, it is indispensable to have a brand board of your business or brand in this new digital world.