Designing a brand on a budget

Where to start when it’s time to uplevel your brand.

Do you feel like your business has plateaued?

Or are you starting a new business and unsure of what your first step should be?

When you’re selling a product or service (no matter how brilliant it is), the benefits of said product or service will only take you so far. Without great business branding to support you, that plateau is inevitable. When it’s happening to you, you’ll start to notice things like:

•         you keep getting irrelevant enquiries.
•         your customers are increasingly challenging to work with.
•         you’re not feeling proud of your business.
•         the money isn’t coming in!

Whether you’re currently experiencing these things, or you’d like to avoid them happening in the future. Let’s work through some ways you can design your brand on a budget. 

You Must Start Here >

This, my friends is THE ultimate guide for establishing a s$%t hot brand. The Essential Branding Workbook > was created by us, for you. It’s kinda like walking hand-in-hand with a highly experienced and accomplished brand designer, while you make all the critical decisions which lay the foundation for your brand.

Without the price tag.

From home.

With a cuppa and slippers.

Basically you’ll be guided through, establishing your target audience, creating your mission statement, defining your purpose, and much more.

Moodboard. And then, moodboard some more.

A moodboard is a collection of all the elements that make up your brand identity. It should include the images, fonts, colours and words which appeal to your dream client.

It may be that you can re-fresh or make some tweaks to your existing moodboard OR it might be time for a complete overhaul. How little or much you’ll need to do depends entirely on how well your brand is connecting you with the right people.

If you’re ready to get started but would like a little guidance, check out this helpful blog which shows you how to moodboard like a boss >

Now all the advice contained in this blog should come with a little disclaimer: I am, in fact, a brand designer.

So of course I wholeheartedly believe in the value of investing in your brand.

I am also a realist however, and a business owner, so I know that spending thousands of dollars on your branding is not an option for many small businesses. For this reason, let’s talk through your options (in order of most expensive to least) for creating your brand.

Your options for creating a new visual brand  

1. Hiring a brand designer.
   
   100% your best option. They have the skills and the impetus to create the best results for you…if you have the money to throw at them. It’s literally their job.
   
   Superficially it may seem like an unnecessary expense but, it’s reasonable to compare creating impeccable business branding to laying the foundations for your house. Your brand is often one of the most important assets your business will have and is the platform on which the rest of your business is built on. Without a solid foundation you will only get so far before the walls start to crumble.
   
   
2. Go deep on the interwebs.
   
   You could try fiver, 99 designs, design crowd. They are certainly a more affordable option and, you could get lucky and end up with something good. There are decent designers on these platforms, it can just be hard finding them.
   
   In reality, it’s more likely that your initial upfront cost will be minimal but the money you spend trying to rectify what you’ve received, will bring your final spend up to (or beyond) what you would have paid if you’d simply gone with option 1. And let’s not talk about the time you’ll have spent going back and forth and the frustration and emotional investment working with a bunch of people who often literally throw spaghetti at a wall and see what sticks.
   
   
3. DIY.
   
   While this is certainly the cheapest option, it will require a lot of your time. That said, if you’re ready to get creative, I would definitely recommend you head to Canva > for a user-friendly design experience. The most important thing to remember here is to make your brand memorable and legible. With your logo, for example, go with simple colours, shapes and forms. Don’t choose script fonts which are impossible to read. 

At the end of this process, you should have (at a minimum):

• A new logo + potentially some brand marks
• Your colour scheme
• Typography
• Image style.

Which you can add to this free downloadable Brand Kit >

This brand kit will help you combine all those precious elements which make up your business brand. You’ll have pages for layouts for your logo, fonts, colour palette and brand moodboard. All of which you’ll be able to easily share with anyone who has anything to do with your brand. From employees to copywriters, and everyone in between.

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