6 DIY Branding Resources to Help You Get Started ASAP
Starting a new business and needing a brand? Redefining an existing business and need to spice things up? Branding (and all the terms that fall under it, like rebranding, brand refresh, etc.) isn’t something you want to go halfway on.
Of course, if you’re doing your branding yourself, it can be incredibly overwhelming. There’s so much you don’t know.
But fear not! We’ve rounded up our favorite DIY branding resources to help you get started. Take a peek below to find what you need to get started (and keep going) on your branding.
Before you start DIYing your brand
Before you dive right into comparing color swatches and font pairings, there are a few things you should know about DIY branding. And it actually has nothing to do with your visuals at all!
We’re talking about your brand position. Where does it stand in the market? What makes it unique?
Your brand is only as strong as your business idea and its viable offers. If you don’t have a (somewhat) clear idea of where you want your biz to be in a few years, there will be a pretty big gap in direction. And that will translate to how your dream clients see your brand… read: NOT seeing it.
What do you need to make your brand’s positioning STAND OUT so your brand’s visuals, can too? In the video below, we’ll walk you through the 5 things you need to do right now before you go any further with your branding.
Do you know your values yet?
So you know your business, its positioning in the market, what you want to offer, and to who. But do you know your values yet?
This is something we see many brands skip over so often. But between us? It’s one of the most important pieces of your branding puzzle. Think about it like this: As a human being, your values are what drive your action. Everything you do stems from what you find most important.
Your business is NO different! You need to know your values before you do anything else with your brand. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a clunky, disjointed brand — like a pair of one-size-too-big mismatched shoes.
Want to know what happens when you have a values-aligned business? We’ll let our friend Megan Dowd explain…
Read: The Intersection of Values and Design With Megan Dowd
Time to find your style
OK so you wanna talk about your brand’s visuals? Who doesn’t? This is the stuff everyone gets excited about. But… what if you don’t know what your brand should look like? What if you’re frozen with decision fatigue like when you have to pick out that outfit for a night out?
If you don’t have your brand’s style sorted out yet, we have a guide that can help! In the Brand Style Brainstorming Worksheet, you’ll find ten questions that can help you find clarity on your brand style.
Pssssst….this is the same worksheet we use with our branding clients to guide our design decisions!
DIY branding still requires a style guide
Just because you’re DIYing your brand — and you’ll be the one creating all the stuff for it — doesn’t mean you don’t need a style guide.
Your style guide is so much more than a glorified list of color swatches, typefaces, and a few pieces of photo-inspo from Pinterest. A style guide isn’t just a one-pager either — it’s a giant document of rules and formulas you need to follow when creating content.
It has all of your logo, your colors, your fonts, PLUS how to use them together and patterns, icons, graphics, language, photography, and more.
A style guide doesn’t just show you the visuals of your brand, it tells you how to use them too. And it’s like a cheat sheet so you always have what you need in one place.
Find out more about what a style guide is and why they’re so important in the post below!
Read: What is a Brand Style Guide?
And if you’re sold on creating a style guide… it’s time to actually create one.
Read our guide to find out the five things every brand style guide needs. With these, you and your team (or your soon-to-be team) will have everything you need to create on-brand graphics, every single time!
Read: 5 Basic Things Your Brand Style Guide Should Include
DIY your brand like a pro
Still unsure of how to do it all yourself? The Balanced Brand Lab Kit, a course created to help you develop your own brand style guide, is just about ready for you!
With this upcoming email course, you’ll get in-depth guidance on how to put everything together, complete with templates and video training to take things a step further. You’ll be up and running, DIYing it like a pro in no time!
Interested? Be the first to know when The Balanced Brand Lab Kit is ready by joining the waitlist here.
