As a designer committed to making branding feel more accessible, one of my main issues with the industry is how our use of language negatively affects our audiences. If you’ve been researching branding, you might have noticed some unfamiliar language. If you find it confusing, you’re not alone.

There’s a lot of designers in the world. That’s good news for you, if you’re running a business and looking for branding. You’ve got options! Congratulations.

It’s not all rosy, though. More options doesn’t necessarily make decisions any easier. In fact, it makes them way more complicated. Ever heard of choice overload?

What does your brand stand for? What actions do you take to uphold your ideals and beliefs?

If you can’t answer these questions clearly, you’re missing a major piece of the brand puzzle: clear core values.

An audience persona (commonly referred to as “buyer persona”) is a creative way of using market segmentation. It’s a profile of a fictional character that embodies notable traits of a definable group within your target audience. By combining broader characteristics with individualized ones, you can identify how to reach people and deliver messaging appropriate to their particular life experiences.

Does a small business really need branding? There isn’t one right answer. To get to the core of this question, we have to do a little bit of decoding. Specifically, we need to talk about the word “brand”.

There are thousands of articles, blog posts, and infographics out there that attempt to explain color psychology in a simple way. But is this information really getting to the truth about how to use color in brand design?

Need a bit of color inspiration? Check out these five brands using color to tell a story and stand out like champs, in totally unique and thoughtful ways.

Brand voice is the personality attributes you take in all aspects of verbal and written communication. This includes language and word choice, tone, and style. Your brand’s voice determines the execution of internal communication (staff emails, memos, meetings, interviews) and external communication (marketing, customer service, social media, packaging, blogs, ads). Brand voice is a little more elusive than visual design, but it’s just as important to creating a brand that works like a system.

Even if you’re not a super visual person or someone who works with images a lot, moodboarding is an incredible tool for any situation that requires creative and visual thinking. Moodboards help you collect ideas and reference material, and provide a way to translate abstract ideas into concrete visual examples. Leaning into a feeling and sensory-based process provides context for your ideas. What’s hard to describe in words can often be better conveyed through images.
But not all mooodboards are created equal.

Our brains have evolved to latch onto stories. We remember information better when it’s presented in a narrative than we do when presented with straight facts and numbers. This is why brand storytelling is important. We’ve all experienced the feeling of connection that stories create. Our ability to connect with our own stories connects us to our audiences, and this is infinitely more powerful than any marketing tactic. Human-scale brand design is an approach that highlights this quality and inherently challenges the status quo.