Brand Building
What’s Your Company’s Brand Personality?
Branding is how consumers perceive your brand. It is absolutely critical to your business because it can drive new business and increase positive awareness or your company long into the future.
The First Step
in branding is to determine your company’s personality as it will drive every aspect of branding.
In a study on brand personality, Stanford professor and psychologist Jennifer Aaker found that five characteristics play a role in a brand’s personality.
While brands can occasionally combine traits, for the most part, their “personality” is focused on one. For example, a company that sells athletic equipment would identify with “ruggedness,” while a fashion brand might aim for “sophistication.”
Establishing your brand personality guides all other branding decisions.
Psychology of Color
Color can play a major role in showing consumers what your brand’s personality is like.
Choose A Winning Color Scheme
Color wields enormous sway over our attitudes and emotions. When our eyes take in a color, they communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which in turn sends a cascade of signals to the pituitary gland, on to the endocrine system, and then to the thyroid glands. The thyroid glands signal the release of hormones, which cause fluctuation in mood, emotion, and resulting behavior.
A famous study conducted by neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, presented scientific proof that emotions impact our brain and directly influence our decision-making process. adjusting color, among other elements, can increase conversion by as much as 24%.
So, the bottom line is: use the right colors, and you win.
Color Popularity
Blue is the favorite or 57% of men and 35% of women while purple is favored by 23% of women and ZERO men!
Typography
The perfect brand fonts should be unique & memorable, be legible, work on all devices and communicate your brand personality
As can be seen by the font choices of these iconic brands, typography is just about as important as color.
Classic
Classic, Traditional, Trustworthy
Serif fonts are the oldest font style, originating way back in the 15th century. They’re named for the feet (called serifs) seen at the top and bottom of each letter.
Because serif fonts are the original font style, we generally perceive them as classic, traditional, and trustworthy
Favored by brands that want to convey a feeling of respectability and tradition, like Tiffany & Co, Vogue, and Time Magazine.
Playfair Display
Times Roman
EB Garamond
Lora
Modern
Clean, Modern, Versatile
Sans-serif fonts didn’t emerge until the 19th century, much more recently than the traditional serif fonts, so we tend to perceive them as more modern.
Sans-serif fonts are also much simpler in form than serif fonts, so they tend to evoke a sense of cleanliness and aid in giving you a minimal design.
Sans-serif fonts have taken over the web in recent years, with many of the top tech companies choosing bold sans-serif brand fonts
Helvetica
Ariel
Roboto
Source Sans Pro
Bold
Bold, Quirky, Confident
Slab serifs, a special breed of serif fonts, feature larger, blockier serifs. As a result, they look a bit more rugged, bold, and quirky than traditional serif fonts.
This type of font works well for companies with a long and proven history of producing quality products who still want to appear current
Courier New
Roboto Slab
Alfa Slab One
Arvo
Elegant
Upscale, Feminine, Fancy
Script fonts are designed to imitate cursive handwriting and have character strokes that connect one letter to the next.
Just as everyone’s handwriting looks very unique, each script font feels very distinctive. They tend to follow the design trends of the day, making script fonts a risky choice for a brand font, as they might fall out of fashion too quickly.
Still, the script fonts used by brands like Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Cadillac, and Instagram have stood the test of time (so far).
Lucida Script
Pacifico
Dancing Script
Satisfy
Unique
Artistic, Creative, Unique
Handwritten fonts are pretty self-explanatory…they’re fonts that look like they’ve been written out by hand.
They sometimes incorporate weird letterforms, and they’re about as different from traditional serif fonts as you can get.
They’re a fun choice if you want to present yourself as a playful, informal, approachable, or artistic brand
Permanent Marker
Patrick Hand
Amatic SC
Just Another Hand
Dramatic
Distinctive, Stylized, Dramatic
Decorative fonts are the most diverse. They include any font that uses unique shapes, forms, or proportions for a highly stylized look.
The logos of Lego, Disney, and IBM feature distinctive decorative fonts that make their brands especially memorable
Fredericka
Fredoka One
Lobster Two
Bangers