Visual marketing – as the term probably suggests – is using visual content to help reinforce your brand identity and message, across your marketing efforts.

There are lots of ways to go about this, and lately I’ve noticed a huge rise in small business owners using Canva to create blog headers, and graphics for their social media platforms. It really is great way to add visual identity to your brand message.

However, the approach many small business owners are taking could actually be doing unintentional harm to their brand and message.

The Canva approach

Canva offers lots of pre-existing design elements for you to choose between. Many of them are free, the rest are really cheap. It’s a process that’s gives you design freedom without you needing to spend time learning how to use difficult (and expensive) software. It also handily circumvents that challengeing moment of staring at a blank page and wondering where on earth to begin.

In short: it’s easy and it’s fun.

The downside is that everyone else is using the same elements and the same approach. The result? Visual content that is not necessarily linked to your brand, but to the Canva brand.

Time and again, across various social media channels, I’ve seen business owners create visual content. The responses from their friends and followers often follow some variation of the below comments:

“Love your visual. You created it using Canva right?”

“Ah..I see you’ve discovered Canva! It’s great, isn’t it?”

“Awesome graphic. I love Canva too! It’s so easy to use.”

How is Canva diluting your brand?

To me, the immediate thought that springs to mind is that this just proves how visually literate you all are. Canva has an identifiable design aesthetic, and most people seem to be able to identify it.

The point of visual marketing is to create imagery that connects back to your brand. In the same way that you want your blog’s voice to be consistent and reflective of your brand, your visuals need to fulfil the same role. If you’re creating visual marketing that is readily identifiable as ‘Canva’ rather than you, you’re wasting that opportunity to connect visually with your readers and followers.

I’m not for one second advocating not using Canva, or creating your own materials. But make sure you’re adding value to your brand while doing so, not diluting your brand.

How to use Canva to promote YOUR brand (not theirs)

Brand identity is generally built using some basic foundational elements. Keep these consistent, and your visual marketing materials will be a much closer reflection of your brand and business.

1. Keep fonts consistent.

Fonts are really important.

It may seem like a little thing, but picking fonts is one of the key ingredients in your design and brand identity. Stick to the fonts already used on your marketing materials and website.

If you’re not sure what they are, go back and ask the designer which fonts they used. You may not have access to the same ones, but some research on Google fonts or Font Squirrel, and you’ll be able to find an equivalent that closely matches.

For example, if your website is using handwritten fonts, and has a crafty feel, then creating (popular and trendy) retro-themed marketing material isn’t going to match your brand or reinforce your identity.

2. Colours

Stick to your brand’s colour palette.

Use the colours in your logo and the colours on your website. You can create tints of those colours to increase your options. This tool can help you create some darker and lighter tints of your existing brand colours.

If you feel like you need more colours, spend some time one day using a colour palette mixer to create your own custom palette. Try to end up with a maximum of 6 colours, together with some tints.

Once you’ve decided on these colours, save them down somewhere and use them as your reference. And then stick to them!

Keep in mind, that fewer colours often work better in designs, so you might be best just sticking to the 2 or 3 colours in your logo and website.

3. Gather your own design materials

Canva is great and has a wide range of pre-existing elements for you to use, but you don’t have to be restricted by what is on offer. You can also upload your own design elements.

We’ve got a Pinterest board of Freebies that we’ve been collecting from various place on the internet, that is updated regularly. It’s a board of illustrations, icons and fonts. Follow ours, or start your own.

Start your own library of brand-relevant illustrations and photos. Be strategic in what you collect, keeping your brand, your industry and your audience in mind.

4. Keep your range narrow

It’s tempting, when faced with a smorgasboard of options such as offered on Canva, to want to try and use everything. My best advice is to resist that temptation.

Think about your brand, and its identity. Get your fonts decided, pick your colours and then set up some templates. Think about how you can keep them consistent, and then try to work within those guidelines and constrictions. It might feel less ‘creative’, but it will make your brand message much stronger.

Canva has created a really clever, easy-to-use tool, to help you take charge of your own visual marketing. Use it to your advantage, and reinforce your brand identity.

The post Is Canva diluting your brand? appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

Audience: ‘Good design’ isn’t a one size fits all approach. When you’re adding design touches to your website, or even designing your own fliers or brochures, as with all your marketing, you need to consider your target client.

If you’re a technical business, then a vintage, colourful approach will not impress your target market. They want to see a design that reflects your competence and professionalism.

The final product: A good example of this is designing a cover for your ebook. A particular design may look great at full size on your computer, and it may look alright shrunk down on a tablet or phone.

Have you considered how it also works as a thumbnail image?

If you’re going to be using that cover image primarily as a device to grab the attention of your website visitors, then it needs to jump off the screen, even if it’s only tiny.

Consistency: Don’t use loads of different fonts in your designs. Usually 1 or 2 fonts is plenty. You can mix and match their bold and italic forms to create contrast.

Keep your design consistent. Once you’ve picked your fonts, colours and general layout pattern, stick with it. The most common mistake people make is that they think ‘good’ design should be complicated. The opposite is true – good design generally is simple.

Don’t confuse simple with ‘easy’ – it’s not necessarily easy – but simple, uncluttered and consistent is what you’re aiming for.

The editing process: Just as it takes time to craft a good blog post, or put together the copy for your website, you can’t expect to just sit down and knock out a good design. The approach to take is very similar to writing, actually.

Put aside some time to do a first draft, and try not to let your editing side take over yet. Try a few different things, move images around, put text over the top, make your text box transparent. Create a couple of options and then leave it alone.

Come back a day or 2 later, and see what your reaction is when you look at it. I often find that I have a gut instinct that something is working or not working. My client may not always agree with me, but most of the times I do get it right.

Photographs: A really simple and effective design approach is pairing photographs with text. A strong image, with text overlaid can look really nice. Make sure you put the text over a clear space in the image so that it stands out.

If there isn’t really a good existing spot, you can draw a box or rectangle behind the text and then reduce the opacity of the box.

To ensure your imagery is unique, why not take your own photographs to use in this way?

Typography: A nice simple design technique is to just use text on a simple, coloured background.

Mix up your fonts (not too many, less is still more here), and experiment with having all the text centred, or all pushed into one corner.

Avoid tacky clip art. Seriously. It is not doing anything to help your cause. I’m talking specifically about the cheesy, overused visual metaphors that are sprinkled all over the internet.

There are so many resources out there where you can get great illustrations for little to no cost. There is absolutely no excuse for clipart. None.

Negative space: is the amount of space left around the elements of your design. (white space is another term you may come across, but don’t feel you need to take it literally).

The whole point of design is that you want to get a message across, and to be successful that message needs to be clear. Visual breathing room lets the viewer read your message more clearly.

A page or website that is cluttered with too much stuff, is going to leave the visitor bouncing around, their eyes falling on one thing, then another, then another. It’s chaotic, confusing and – for me at least – annoying.

Alignment: So easy to do, and it makes such a massive difference. Take the time to make sure the elements in each group of your design are aligned properly. Even in programmes like PowerPoint there are built-in tools to help you achieve this.

Elements that are all sitting on the same vertical and horizontal plane make visual sense and therefore add to your message. Elements that are higgledy-piggledy are confusing, annoying and generally unpleasant to look at.

In conclusion: These are really very simple techniques, and not hard to achieve by yourself.

Instead of having yet another generic stock image at the top of your post, put aside some time one day to come up with a template or idea that you can then use for all your posts. It will give your posts a visual consistency that ties back in with your brand, in the way that yet another picture of a kid in a cape wearing oversized glasses just doesn’t.

The post Simple ideas to help you take charge of your visual marketing appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

As a small business owner, you probably already do some of your own writing – blog posts, your website copy and marketing copy. You may not be a ‘professional’ writer, but the point is that you do write, and you also think like a writer.

Here’s a little secret. You can take all those tricks you already know about writing and use them to create your own visual content.

“But I’m terrible at visual stuff” I hear you cry.

You know what, you absolutely are not. You can create branded, visually literate imagery to spice up your content. You just need a bit of practice, some faith in yourself, and some commitment to your cause.

Don’t believe me? Let’s get started.

1. Train your brain

One piece of (really good) advice handed out to writers is that they need to read. Not just within their own genre, but across lots of different genres. Exposure to different types of writing gives the little writer homunculus in your brain plenty of fodder to work with when it comes time for him to get to work.

It’s no different with your visuals. Spend time really looking at design and images, and you’ll start developing a keen eye. The good news is that you’re doing this already – just think about the bombardment of imagery you’re subjected to every single day.

The only real change you need to make is to be more present and pay attention.

2. Start collecting

Build on your attention practice with collecting.

Online, there are endless examples of design that will grab your attention. If you love working socially, you’ve got Pinterest, and Instagram. Use folders and bookmarks on your devices if you’re more of a private collector type.

Don’t limit yourself to the virtual though. You know how everyone loves a vintage, textured background? That’s because they look and feel so nice in real life. Now, don’t you wish you had a nice collection of vintage stock postcards to flick through right now?

Start thinking of business cards as more than just a way of emailing someone you met at a networking event. Start collecting them with visual intent. Keep them handy as a reference tool, because chances are at some point you’ll want to look at one of them again to see what it is that made you remember it.

Take the same approach with postcards, magazines, posters, photographs. Start looking at this imagery with a critical visual eye. Think about how they work as marketing tools, and how they go about selling their product.

There you go! Now you’re starting to think like a designer.

3. Create an outline

OK, so you’ve been paying attention to the visual world around you, you’ve got your collections of fun stuff you like, and you’re ready to start getting all visual with your content marketing.

Where to start?

As with a piece of writing, think about it in terms of drafts and revisions.

How do you go about crafting a written piece? Personally, my approach is piecemeal. I tend to write over a few days, in different stages. Initially, I write down some headlines, subheadings, and jot down sentences that may or may not make complete sense. It’s just getting down the framework of what I’m going to come back and massage into shape.

Same deal with your visuals. Start putting colours together using online tools such as Adobe Kuler or Color Blender. Select some fonts that you might want to work with – Google Fonts are pretty extensive and free to use.

Hopefully you’ve already got the words that are going into your design. Professional designers often work to a brief without all the content, and then need to revise the design to fit it all in. It’s inefficient at best, and a total design wreck at worst.

Get all your content in first, and then you can see what you’ve got to work with.

4. Create your headline and subheadings

As with your written pieces, your design needs to have a logical progression that your reader will look at. Use ‘headings’ to draw your reader through the message of your design.

Graphic design is marketing, not art. You are asking your audience to ‘read’ your message, you guide them through the process. As with your written marketing, you need to include a Call to Action.

Colour, boxes, different font sizes, photographs and illustrations are all tools to draw your reader through your message.

Visuals can be more efficient than words though, and that’s why the right photograph, illustration, series of shapes, or even font, can really nail your message.

5. Create your first draft

As with writing projects, you are going to have to go through a few rounds of drafts before you get your final result.

Personally, I’ve always found the editing part of writing easier than the initial stage. No matter how horrible a first draft is, having something to work on is more motivating that staring at the dreaded blank page. Filling in the guts through the editing process is hard work, but somehow is an easier process.

Same with design. Get your first draft done, and then step away and leave it for a while. Next time you come back to it, you want to look at it with fresh eyes.

Don’t get too bogged down in the details at this stage. Look at the overall layout, place the call-to-action of your piece where you think it should go and add your initial colour and font choices.

All or some of this will probably change through your revisions, but it’s important to just get started.

6. Edit, edit and edit

As with writing, your final piece may bear no resemblance to your initial piece. If the colours you have chosen aren’t working, try some new ones, or just different shades. Keep moving the pieces of your design around, and trying different things. I can’t count the number of times the ‘a-ha’ moment of my design has come while trying something else.

It’s good to pre-visualise, but be open to happy accidents.

7. Don’t forget to proofread

This is the stage to just go over the whole piece, and check all the little details – the design equivalent of spelling and grammar (don’t forget to check your actual text for these errors too!)

Follow a simple checklist to make sure everything is neat and consistent.

• Are  all your elements are aligned correctly?
• Do all the boxes and tables have consistent margins?
• Is your heading text is a consistent size?
• Body text and subheadings – are they consistent too?
• Do all the colours match?

Really go over it with a fine-tooth comb to check the itty-bitty details.

8. Tools to use

Finding free and cheap tools to do your own designing has never been easier.

Photoshop Elements is watered down version of that design workhorse Photoshop. Elements is much cheaper (buy it outright for around $150), easier to use, and will do all the light design tasks you ask of it.

GIMP goes one step better, and is absolutely free. You can use it to work with your photos, add some text and shapes over the top. The interface is a little clunky, so you might not enjoy the learning curve that goes with using it. Picmonkey is generally pretty popular, and you can use some of the basic tools for free.

If you like mucking around with illustrations and drawing, Inkscape is a free vector program. You can draw and create to your heart’s content.

The new kid on the block – Canva – is on a mission to make graphic design simple and accessible. They’re still working out some bugs on their beta launch, but if you’re patient, you can create great things using their software.

And finally, you can create your own infographics using Visual.ly

9. Commitment and practice

I do truly believe that any business owner can take charge of their own visual marketing and output. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, though! It takes time, committment and practice to develop your eye and your skills.

As with most of your business decisions, whether you want to take on the challenge comes down to whether you want to spend time doing it yourself, or spend money to have it done by someone else.

Have you taken control of some or your own visual marketing? How have you found the process?

The post 9 tips to help writers with visual marketing appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

The post 4 DIY design tips for visual content appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

The post 4 photography tips for small businesses appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

As the client, you need to find someone who ‘gets’ you and your business. Industry design experience is where we learn our trade and skills, so it is definitely worth knowing a bit more about the background of your designer.

Here at Two10, we have a mix of corporate and agency backgrounds. It is part of the reason we teamed up in the first place, so we could offer our clients the benefit of our complementary backgrounds.

So, what is  the difference between corporate and agency design, and why should it matter to you?

Why you should hire a graphic designer with agency experience

Why you should hire a graphic designer with corporate experience

The post Secrets You Should Know About Your Graphic Designer’s Background appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

Popular brands all have one thing in common: they’re successful. They usually have the kind of earnings that most people could ever dream of achieving. It’s obvious that they made a number of good decisions to get where they are, but which of those decisions were the most influential in getting them there?

The answer to that question is relatively simple. Each of the most well-known brands have a logo that represents them in a way that seems perfect. It’s not just about color, nor is it about the font that they use. The logo that each company uses represents it perfectly in terms of style. That means when a customer sees a product with a red bullseye, they immediately know who made that product and they can guess as to how reliable that product is.

You can probably understand why logos can be considered one of the most influential elements in a business’s marketing strategy. This begs another question: which elements of a logo make it successful? The best way to understand this is to see a breakdown of logos from the top brands.

This infographic was originally featured on TastyPlacement.com.

The post How important is the design of your logo? appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

Your awesome business needs an awesome logo.

What is it that makes a logo awesome? We know the answer to that question – great logo design is our job!

If you would like to find out, just follow along…

1. A great is simple

A well designed logo is simple to look at, simple to understand and immediately recognisable. A quick glance and your clients know that it’s your logo and therefore they associate it with your business.

Simplicity of design is one thing. Executing a great logo concept, however, is anything but simple. The hidden trick to great logo design is that what looks simple on the surface is actually quite complex. Good design is all about balance, and for your logo that means getting it just right – a simple (but strong) appearance tied up with a complex (and strong) concept.

In other words, your awesome logo needs to look simple, but in fact have lots of layers. A lot like a good business idea really.

2. A great logo is unique

When starting up a business, the one key attribute you need to think about, and then articulate, is your uniqueness. Your proposition. What is it about your business that is different to all of your competitors?

Put another way, why should a potential client choose you over the next girl (or guy)?

A good answer to that initial question will send you heading off down the right path to creating an awesome brand for your business. Your logo then becomes the lynch–pin to build your brand around. So it goes without saying, really, that it needs to be unique.

Your logo should stand out from the crowd, and identify you separately from your competitors. It should be distinctive and unique. Just like your business.

Unique usually doesn’t mean off-the-wall though. Which brings me to the next point:

3. A great logo is relevant

Although you do want your logo to represent your business in a unique way, it pays to not lose sight of who you are communicating with.

You might think of that as a strange way to look at things, but if you imagine your logo (and all your related branding) as part of your sales team, it becomes clearer that you need them to look a certain way, and to talk a certain way. A way that is appropriate for your clients.

To state an obvious example – a business moving in the corporate world will have a very different look and feel to their logo than a business selling kids clothes or toys. The real magic is in knowing how to get that specific ‘feel’ into your design, while still coming up with a unique look for your business.

Yes, it is as tricky as it sounds. No-one said logo design was easy.

So, your logo needs to be relevant to your business, and your clients, your industry and your audience.

You are the best source for that industry-specific information, and that is why we have an initial consultation with our clients. We ask you some tightly focused questions, and use your answers as a springboard for our own further research.

4. A great logo is adaptable

One of the main functions of your logo (perhaps its main function), is that it can be used across all of your marketing tools.

From the everyday (your business card) to the ginormous (a billboard), and down to the teeny weeny (your Twitter avatar) – your logo needs to be adaptable.

(Sure, you may never want to use billboard advertising, but the point is that a well-designed logo means you can if you want to).

It has to be able to be shrunk, and then stretched, sit on a white background or a colour background, print clearly onto paper and look great on a computer screen. It’s a busy life that your logo is going to lead, so it’s so important to make sure the design can cope with such a hectic existence.

Great logo design is distilling the essence of your business into a shape that can size-shift relentlessly without losing its soul.

Technical tip:
When you receive your logo from your designer, you should receive it in lots of different formats such as different sized JPGs and PNGs. If you don’t know what all these different files are for, don’t stress. Just make sure you double check that you’ve got the original vector file (it will have .ai or .eps at the end of the file name) in there somewhere. And then file them in a safe place.

At some point in the future, you will have a designer work on a different project, and there’s a good chance it may not be the same designer who created the logo for you.

When you receive an email requesting your ‘logo in vector format’ or your ‘logo EPS file’, just dig it out from wherever you’ve saved it, and send it on over to them. They know why they need it, you just need to be able to provide it.

5. A great logo is memorable

Your logo needs to be easy to remember from a single glance. Recognition builds familiarity, which generates trust in a brand. Clients who trust your business will remain loyal.

Your marketing objective is to create associations around your brand that are relevant to your business. Tie in brilliant marketing campaigns with a memorable logo, and you will be well on the way to creating a strong foothold for your business idea in your industry marketplace.

Does it all sounds like lots of work? Well, that’s because it is!

It takes experience, expertise and creativity to pull a great logo together. Our branding expert ticks all of those essential boxes.

Take a look at some of our work, and feel confident that we will come up with a logo for your business that you will love.

Ready to get started?

That’s great! Fill out our contact form, and we’ll get back to you with what we need to do next.

The post 5 features of great logo design appeared first on Two10 Solutions.

It’s a short demo video to give you an idea of some cool stuff that can be done with your logo and brand.

It’s a great piece of visual marketing that can be used on different social media networks, to hook people to come back to visit your website.

Pretty awesome, right?

Take a look at some more branding ideas we came up with for the same client. Who knows, you might find some fun inspiration for your own business and brand.

The post Logo branding video appeared first on Two10 Solutions.