How To Create a Brand Board + Checklist
What is a Brand Board and why do you need one? A Brand Board is an at-a-glance document that shows every element of your visual brand - from the fonts you use to your design elements. It brings consistency to your marketing and help convey the values, personality and attributes of your brand! Also, having a cohesive look through out your platforms will make you more recognizable to your fans or clients! I made this printable Checklist to help you on your way!
Lets chat a bit about each individual element, keep in mind every brand is different and you may not need every single element listed to have a complete board. I use too many colors in my marketing to really need patterns as well, so I chose to leave this off my personal Brand Board. Make your Brand Board as unique as you are and do what feels right!
Logos:
I recommend at least one variation of the logo. Its always a good idea to include one in color and one in black and white. Keep it simple when designing your logo. Its important to be able to understand what your brand is about at a glance. If you logo is text based, try playing around with a few different font combinations.
Brand Color Palette:
The best place to start with your color palette is with a style inspiration board on Pinterest. If you already have a blog or graphics for your brand use these treasures to come up with the colors that best represent your brand. I would say 3-5 colors is a good place to start, but there are no limits, my color palette was a grand total of 12 colors. Be sure to get the Hex Code for each color so that you have consistency through out your branding.
Brand Fonts:
Start with 2-4 fonts for your brand. I recommend a bold font for titles and a complimenting yet contrasting font for tag lines. Pick a readable font for content and maybe one other alternate font. http://www.dafont.com is a great place to start looking for fonts, if your planning to use them long term or for publishing projects it might be a good idea to purchase your core fonts.
Design Elements:
I chose to make my own design elements in Photoshop. It is fairly easy to create black and white line designs and turn them into a brush that you can reuse at any time. Here is a tutorial for further reference. You can also purchase Photoshop brushes or use design elements in photo apps.
Brand Inspiration (optional)
Going back to the style inspiration board on Pintrest, if you want you can include some of these pictures to bring color and life to your brand board. If you can include original product shots for your board or original artwork, even better!
Brand Patterns (optional)
If you use recurring patterns in your marketing use these to solidify the look of your brand and fill out your brand board!
Website and Social Media Icons:
Its a good idea to include your website and other relevant information for someone to find your brand. If you use social media for marketing be sure to include the icons for your favorite Social Media platforms. Its also really important that your name is the same on every SM platform so potential fans and clients can find you on whatever platform works best for them!
Put it all together!
Now that you have all of your essential elements, its time to use that creative third eye and put it all together! I used Photoshop to create my brand board, but you can achieve the same results with free programs like Gimp and Picmonkey. Design your board with your specific needs in mind. Maybe a square format would be more appropriate if you do most of your marketing on Instagram. Maybe a horizontal layout would look better for your brand, don't be afraid to try new things. Here's my brand board for a bit of inspiration!
I hope to see some beautiful brand boards soon! Reach out if you need help, you know where to find me.
XOXO Chelsea
