How do you weave your most important business strengths into the visual elements and essence of your brand?

The visuals that your brand conveys, from headline graphics to the subtle color nuances and emotional subconscious placements, are a bouquet of brand synergy.

The emotion behind your brand visuals accentuates the impact factor.

Your brand is an incredible entity of your business. It has personality and breathes life into your entrepreneurial presence.

The brand visuals are like the cloak of your brand. Is yours a flowing, semi transparent material studded with elaborately sequined curvy patterns? Or is it a hand woven crimson-nutmeg wool shawl that enfolds warmth and comfort, trimmed with cream stitching and adorned with a hood for sacred space?

Maybe a it’s an charcoal-gray leather ruched vest with a thick cloth tailored belt and designer riding boots? Bamboo-canvas retro Mary Janes? Lace-up Kate Spades?

{My clients get to answer this question: “If your brand could put on an outfit, what would it wear?” when they take my Brand Revealer Questionnaire.}

Graphic design takes a lead role in your brand perception.

Have your brand visuals created by your designer who is intuitively poised to align the many subtle nuances that is the future of your business. Your designer also designs your visuals to speak to the hearts of your right people, your potential clients.

Your brand visuals drive your marketing, pushes business forward, and allows you to naturally glow in your marketplace.

When you get well-defined in all the elements of your brand, including the visuals, you grow and flourish brand value and most of all it is the conduit for your business growth as your right people will be inspired and motivated to buy from you.

If your brand visuals aren’t connected to your voice and essence, there is a subtle disorientation that happens and things don’t feel lined up on an intuitive level. It all needs to be tuned into your message’s essence and deeper story through your website and any other promotional materials.

Your brand thrives on consistency and coherence. Your designer needs to understand what that looks like on a profound level – what you’re saying to the head and the heart, so your finished piece makes sense at a core level.

The four main brand attributes that deliver impact:
Color, Continuity, Connection, Core Essence.

{These are the brand elements that will speak to their heart and subtle emotional level as a state of being, the value that will be received by your client — that which in turn creates memorable impact, and transactions. It’s infused in your brand essence.}

1. Color

Color is a key component that conveys your essence. Deeping on where the range of the hue falls in the color wheel, its brightness, the color can convey different aspects. Also if the color is beside another color it can have different effects, too. Combinations can present a collaborative montage of essence.

The psychology behind individual colors usually conveys some of the following:

• Green – Charm. Youthful. Growth. Abundance. {Here’s a quick example of differing specific values/hue tints: Deep green – mystery, richness. Celery green – energetic, eco-friendly, and some more of the above.}
• Blue – Depth {think the color at the core of a flame}. Trust. Authority. Calm. Peace.
• Red –  Enthusiasm. Exhilaration. Desire-fire. Intensity. Passion. Conduit.
• Purple – Intuitive. Free-spirited. Aspirational. Dignified.
• Yellow – Optimism. Cheer. Friendliness. Energy. Warmth.
• Orange – Magnetic. Bold. Confidence. Eastern spirituality {when appropriate}.
• Pink – Sweetness. Femininity. Soft. Nurturing.  Security.
• Brown – Approachability. Organic. Earthy. Reliability.
• Gray –  Timeless. Solid. Practical. Simple. Humble.
• Black –  Power. Sophistication. Elegance. Cosmic. Depth. Mystery.
  

2. Continuity

Keep the artistic style succinct within the frame of continuity.

Your colors, along with artistic elements such as your social media icons or your headline graphic fonts, say a lot about your brand styling. Your consistent image will create recognition, back up your voice and language, and cultivate connectivity your clients will begin feeling comfortable with, like swinging by a familiar café when they come to hang out on your website. They’ll find a comfy seat, sip some latte, and then ultimately buy some dark roasted organic beans from you.

Which leads me to the next point…

3. Connection

When people land on your site, they need to know why you are there for them. They need to feel what your values are about. Your visuals can speak to the heart.

How do your visuals speak to their human emotional needs, which creates the lasting impact and change their life was in need of?

You won’t be able to resonate on a soul level to everyone. And you don’t want to. Your right people will get the authenticity that you are. Your designer/brand strategist should have you filled out a detailed questionnaire that gets to the spirit of your brand at its core intrinsic level, and pull out the elements that need to be illuminated so your right people feel this connection, and use you as their resource or service provider.

The many elements from font choices, stock images, custom art, etc. connect your specific client type to your brand.

4. Core Message Translation

This is about the succinct relevance in the feel of your message. Keep it to the point and keep it on-topic to your brand. In my 10 Mini-Manifestos of Brilliant Design, point #4 is “Brilliant design maintains a core message translation.”

What are you laying down? What is the feeling behind it?

Are you about empowering others, and therefore need a powerful and inspiring brand? Are you a life coach who connects to your clients in an intimate loving way and need an open-hearted brand with warm splashes of light play, hues and swashy inviting fonts?

Or are you a life coach who shows up to challenge your audience to take the next step of their evolution? To push them into a new territory of the adventure of their life like a tough-loving papa with more edgy, exciting, torch-lighting visual branding?

Your core message essence needs to be conveyed in your brand message and its visuals. Here is the Light Rae Design brand as an example of my core message translation:

“Light Rae Design illuminates brands for transformational entrepreneurs so they gain the recognition and identity within their realm of right people. Lucinda of Light Rae Design brings her intuition, strategy and comprehensive design expertise so you can get your brand and web space empowered and on target.”

My brand and its visuals have a core message of “transformation.” I’m an alchemist in my work as I take the vision of a company and infuse it into manifested graphic and website design. Many of my clients are also transformationals in that they change the lives or businesses of their clients. My brand and work is a change-agent in the potential of the path paved before my clients and the people they will attract. After learning about my business more, you would find that these elements in my tagline are my core message, and it conveyed in my brand visuals, voice, and mission.

The symbolism and essence of my logo in my brand visuals are also translated on my website.  It’s on topic for my target audience, relevant, and continuous across the landscape of my brand.

Here are a few more examples of how to stay true to your visual core message:

If you’re a creative… flowing elements that dance around on the page or website might be lovely and just what you need to show your ever-expanding flow of ideation.  But what if you are a slightly more rebellious type of creative? You make bold statement-based impact art; your brand would look different in your brand with edgier bright or high-contrasted graphics and brand elements. All depending on exactly how your message needs to be conveyed.

If you are an inspirational life coach… and you are about empowering others and perhaps through heroism — you’ll want to represent and instill confidence and inspire self-righteous leadership in your people’s own lives. What does that style look like? Depending, you’ll want to match up the correct blending of colors and font choice to instigate your motivated action in your potential client.

A business coach empowering larger corporations? Imbue power. Authority. Solidity. Results. Understated, but bold. Put that in your brand image.

A tantric relationship coach helping couples/individuals fulfill an inner sense of intimacy? Sensuality. Silky. Warm. Deep. Compassionate. Softness. Weave it into your gorgeous brand visuals.

A yoga instructor for a boutique spa? Aligned. Enfolding. Opening. Aesthetically pleasing. I needs to flow identity and appearance.

How do the subtle ways of your deeper story get conveyed in your brand image?

Carefully plan your branding and design strategy. Having an expert work with you will ensure your brand identity aligns with the value you’re proposing. Remember it’s about the experience conveyed and the emotional impact your service/product is beautifully veiled in. If you make them feel connected and a part of something, your business will blossom along with your clients’ satisfaction.

How do you feel your brand story’s visuals are presenting itself to others? Are you in alignment?