Q&A - How Do I Amplify My Brand With Graphics?

In today's episode, we're diving into our very first Fearless Q&A session!

Morgan will be answering some of the most pressing questions from our incredible fearless community, starting with the best way to get started with graphics to amplify your brand. 

We'll cover everything from setting up your brand foundations (yep, logos, fonts, and colours), to ensuring consistency across all platforms, and even planning your content creation efficiently.

And stay tuned for a special announcement. 🤫 One lucky listener is in for the chance of a lifetime, courtesy of The Fearless Designer!

Transcript

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Fearless Designer podcast. I am so excited that you're here. Thank you for joining me and I'm going to get straight into it today. Hello and welcome to the Fearless Designer podcast. I'm your host, Morgan Macdonald, aka the.Fearless designer, and I'm here to help.

You embrace your fears, level up your visual brand, and take your business to fearless new heights. For two decades, I've worked with business owners just like you, designing brands that are bold, consistent and authentic. I've lived a profesh corporate life as a graphic designer and I've also spent the last 13 years running my own Brand and graphic design business.

So whether you're running a six or seven figure business, craving a brand refresh, or just ready to add a little more wow to your visuals, I got you. Each week we'll dive into fearless brand strategies, design tips that you actually can use, live brand audits, and interviews with fellow business owners who have dared to do things differently. So if you're ready to stop playing small, take control of your brand and leave with confidence, you're in the right place. Let's go. Today marks the very first fearless Q And A session that I will be having on this very pod.

And it's an opportunity for me to answer some amazing questions that come through my community or my clients, or my inboxes or my DM's during the week, I thought I had a couple of really great ones to share with you.

So here we go. I'm going to hit you with my very first question.

What is the best way to get started with graphics to amplify your brand?

So the absolute first best step to get started creating graphics to amplify your brand is to set your brand foundations.

Now, I'm talking about the logos, the fonts and the colors that form your visual brand. And these should really reflect our brand Values and brand vibe.

When it comes to fonts, the choices that you make need to be legible and give you options. And what I mean by that, you need to choose a number of fonts. I'm talking a heading font, a subheading font, and a body copy font. And sometimes we can select a feature font, like a script or something that stands out, but we only use it very rarely, so it has impact when.

It comes to colors. You need to form a cohesive and adaptable palette. Research your competitors and make sure that your choices are unique to your business. You don't want something that's super similar to someone else because it's going to make it increasingly difficult for customers to understand which is your brand and which is their brand. I also would like you to think about at this stage, what is the amount of design work and content that you need to produce yourself at this stage as your business grows, how much content am I posting weekly? What actual pieces of artwork do I need? Like do I need a banner?

Do I need a profile picture?

Am I doing email marketing? What graphics do I need to produce? This should give you an accurate guide of how much actual physical content you will be creating or you will be briefing to your VA or your team to create for you. It will then also assist in knowing what's what's going to look like and give you some opportunity to plan your content creation in your weeks. When it comes to marketing your business, I would highly recommend also setting up.

A really basic style guide that demonstrates your foundations on it. Just on a single a four page. It can be your brand cheat sheet. It's something that you can give to your VA or your designer or use yourself as you create graphics as you go.

The first step in the best way to get started with your graphics to amplify your brand is to set your brand foundations. I'm talking logos, fonts and colors. These form our visual brand and they should really reflect our brand values and vibe. Your font choice needs to be legible.

And give you options, at least a.Heading font, subheading font and a body copy font. And a bonus would be a feature font like a script and that's used very rarely, but it has impact. Your color choices need to form a cohesive and adaptable palette. Research your competitors to make sure your choices are unique to your business. The last thing you want is something so similar that competitors look the same as you. It's also a really great time to get a good understanding of the sheer amount of design work and content that you need to produce, especially if you're doing it yourself. As your business grows, I'd ask yourself, how much content am I posting weekly? What banners, profile pictures, YouTube headers, email marketing graphics do I need to create to begin with? This will give you an accurate guide of how much physical content you or your VA need to be creating every week. It's really important at this time to set up a basic style guide that easily demonstrates your foundations on a single a four page.

This can be your brand cheat sheet. You can find a template on canva super easy type in style guide and just put in your colors and your fonts and your logos and that will give you the backbone that your visual brand needs to get started. So once you have your visual brand in place, it's time for consistency.

Start rolling out your visual brand on all platforms, same fonts, same colors, same Logo, over and over again.

Consistency builds trust, but it also makes your brand more recognizable and it'll amplify your message without confusion. Use canva, it's a great tool. If you're doing it yourself, you can keep things streamlined. You can resize things easily so the artwork looks the same. I would use the same fonts in your reels and the same colors. If you're creating the captions in your videos, all this extra effort definitely goes noticed by your audience. And when I say consistency, I mean consistency. When you have photo shoots, make sure you wear your brand colors.

It will make it so much easier to work these images into your socials and website. If you're in an event, even if you're not speaking, make sure you wear your brand colors so that people can connect your business and your palette together really easily. Think about what you're posting and putting out into the world regularly. What content do you need to plan for consistently? Do you need some professional photos? Can you take your photos yourself? Whatever the option is, keep this super consistent. If you do decide to take them yourself, make sure your lighting is similar, that they're colorized the same whether they have the same filter used on them. For me personally, there's no point investing in a headshot day. If you need 30 photos a month and you're only getting five from that shoot, it may be a smarter choice to invest in a branding photo shoot something that you know that you've got high quality images and a lot of them to provide you with the content that you need for your socials and your website. And finally, I would keep it really small but intentional.

When you're starting out, focus on the key areas where your audience interacts with you and your brand most. This may be your social media, it may be a standout banner on your website. It may be a really strong email header. It's better to have fewer but high quality visuals than a ton of scattered, inconsistent ones. It is easy to focus on social media as it's simple and quick to get started. But quite often your website is where our clients and customers are going to inquire or book in or check out. So I would really focus on keeping your website really consistent with your social media when beginning as well. So they're my tips of how I would get started when creating graphics to amplify my brand but if you've got all those steps in order, it may be time to level up.

And these are really quickly what I would focus on. Expand your visual brand from your colors, fonts and logo to include maybe icons, brand patterns, social media templates, podcast covers and artworks. It's the perfect time to start delegating your work to a designer or agency because they can help you ensure your tone of voice and graphics are high quality and on brand. And if the sheer volume of content you're putting out there is increasing, it'll take all of that stress and effort off your plate. It's probably time to add some polish to your videos and professional photos. Make sure you brief your photographer or video person on your colors and brand vibes. Start putting out more video content, but ensure that it keeps everything really, really consistent. And finally, we need to be evaluating and evolving as a brand.

Regularly assess how your graphics are performing, your audience getting it? Are they understanding your brand messaging? Are you growing? Have a look at your analytics. Ask for feedback. Continue refining and expanding your visuals to ensure that they evolve as your brand grows. This approach helps you start a strong brand and build your brand visuals over time in a way that feels really strategic and manageable. If you decide that you need to add another color or a font to your foundations. If you need to add a sub brand for a product that you've launched, we know how to do it because we have a really clear set of foundations and brand voices, voice and vibe right there. So don't feel scared. These bad boys need to evolve as we do and a brand is something that should be super fluid and have the ability to grow with us.

So just to sum up, these are my tips to amplifying your graphics when you're just getting started. Number one, brand foundations. Number two, consistency, consistency, consistency. And number three is start small. But I intentional I hope these really help you. I have loved answering this question for you and I really look forward to any future questions that come through. Okay. And this leads me to something super exciting that will never happen again.

It is a one off. I am so excited and I can't wait for you to hear more about it right now.

Hey there, fearless business owners want a total brand overhaul for free. That's right, I'm giving one lucky listener the chance to completely transform their brand from new logo, fonts, color palette, the whole fearless package for free. Here's the deal. If you're ready to take your business to the next level and are open to a fresh and bold new look, well, this is your moment by talking full brand update. And yep, you'll get to share the whole process with our community, with your community. And we're gonna have a whole lot of fun doing it. To enter, all you have to do is drop your name and your business name in an email to hellofearlessdesigner.com, dot au or even better yet, head to my instagram. Find the post about the giveaway.

Tag yourself. Tag your besties, anyone that you think may love a total brand overhaul for free. So get ready for your fearless brand transformation. I can't wait to see who's ready to be bold and fearless with me. And that's it for today's episode of the Fearless Designer podcast. I hope you're feeling really inspired, fired up and ready to go make some bold moves with your brand. If you loved today's episode, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you never miss a dose of fearless branded goodness. And if you're feeling extra generous, drop us a review.

It just helps more fearless legends like you find this podcast. If you've got any ideas or questions for future eps, please slide into my DM's or send me an email. I would love to hear from you. And until next time, keep being bold. Keep being fearless. And remember, your brand is your superpower. So go out there and dare to be different. Bye.