9 Brand Design Elements Your Brand MUST Have for Designers and Entrepren...

I've just discovered this guy, Philip VanDusen!  What a fantastic tutorial video :)

Here are some of the key points I took from it, but it's totally worth watching in full - particularly for the examples at the end that crystalise it all nicely.

- Brand design is a lot more than a logo.
- You have a full Brand Ecosystem - where your visual aspect will show up in Brand Touchpoints
- You need to be consistent across all Brand Touchpoints e.g. across all social media platforms, websites, ads etc.

1. Logo should be simple, with just one or two colours
2. Fonts have personalities, so choose carefully.  [I'm going to have to look into that more, and understand what different fonts portray.]
3. Brand colour palette should have maybe 3 or 4 colours in it. Think about what your end consumer would like.
4. Some brands use patterns and textures really effectively - think of Louis Vuitton
5. Photography and animation styles can also be very distinctive.  Try to find a style that gels with your brand, and stick to it to keep consistency.
6. Illustration and iconography - these also have many different styles, so do the same here
7. Sound - some brands use sounds that are instantly recognisable.  The example he gave was of the 'Intel inside' "ding, ding, ding, diinnng' :)
8. Layout - again, keeping the layout of your pages consistent really adds to the overall immediate recognition that we'd love to have...
9. Tone of Voice in your copy.  Think about what your brand voice is, and keep this consistent - is it formal, jokey, serious... 

All of this should be brought into your brand guidelines, and Philip provides us with a one-page template where we can put all our examples, to make sure they work together.  

It's also an ideal brief to give to anyone we're outsourcing to, to make sure we don't lose our consistency.

Here are some screen shots taken from this video, that I found really useful:

Thanks Philip VanDusen!!