🔍 How to Align Brand Values with Visuals

Hello! And thank you SO much for joining me for today's episode! 

We're diving deep into the powerful connection between your brand values and your brand visuals. We'll explore how to effectively reflect your core values through colour palettes, fonts, imagery, and design style, making it easier to attract the right audience and enhance engagement. 

Whether you're ready for a brand refresh or looking to add more impact to your visuals, this episode is packed with actionable tips and quick fixes to elevate your brand to fearless new heights.

x Morgan

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Transcript

Hi. Welcome back to the Fearless Designer Podcast. I am so thrilled that you're joining me today. I'm your host, Morgan. And I know that you're here because you care really deeply about how your brand shows up in the world. So I'm not going to put it off. I'm going to take a breath. It's been a really long summer break here.

The kids are finally back at school. But I have something really important that I want to share with you today, and it's all around how to make your brand values work hand in hand and relate perfectly with your brand visuals and how to keep it all consistent. So I know that we all want our brand to look and feel aligned with our messaging, and you really want your visuals to tell the right story, attract the right people, and just feel like an extension of you and your business. But often with some of the people that I'm talking to in my world, it just doesn't. And it doesn't feel right. And sometimes we look at our Instagram feed and think, ugh, this doesn't feel like me. Or maybe you've been posting consistently, but something feels off and you're not quite sure what it is. Well, chances are that it's probably not your content, it's your branding and specifically, specifically the way that your brand values are or aren't being visually represented.

So today, I'm gonna get in really deep on how to make sure your brand values are actually showing up in your social media visuals. Because when your brand looks as strong as your business truly is, you'll attract the right clients and the right audience. So I'm hoping by the end of this, we'll go through why your brand values are really important to your visuals. How to align your colours, fonts, images, and design style with your brand's core message. Easy ways to check if your brand visuals match and what you stand, and some super quick fixes for you. Because I know we're here for a very short amount of time, and I really want to give you the value that you deserve, to really push your brand forward. So let's go forward, let's kick off, and let's get this episode started. 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 lead with confidence, you're in the right place. Let's go.

All right, let's start with a little exercise. I know what you're thinking. You probably don't like them, as I don't either, especially when I was put on the spot at school. But this is gonna be easy. I want you to think of your favorite brand. Maybe it's a really big company, or maybe it's a personal brand or just a business that you follow, but it's someone who always seems to have their branding on point. And I want you to ask yourself, why do you like them? What feeling do you get when you see their content? And do you trust them immediately just from how their brand looks? I'm willing to bet that the reason you love them isn't just because of their products or services, but it's because they have a strong brand identity that reflects their values. Now, I want to talk about Nike or Nike.

I'm not sure how you want to say that. I know different countries say it in different ways, but their core values are all around performance empowerment and motivation. And guess what? All of their brand visuals scream those values. So the imagery is full of movement. It's really into highlighting the athletes that are actually wearing and using their garments and products in their everyday sporting life. Their colours are often bold, their fonts are often strong and dynamic, and their messaging is always about pushing limits. Now, if Nike or Nike suddenly switched to soft pastel colours, handwritten fonts, you know, knitted blankets, people having a cup of tea while wearing their snuggliest trackies, would that feel a little bit off? I would say that yes, it does, because their visuals would no longer reflect their core brand values. And that's the exact problem I know.

I've simplified it a little bit. This is what I see so many business owners facing. They have these amazing values, things like empowerment and creativity and confidence and professionalism, but their branding doesn't actually reflect that at all. If your brand values aren't clear in your visuals, your audience won't fully connect with your brand. They'll scroll past, they won't get it. They'll feel like something's missing, and they just won't connect on that deeper level, which we are looking for when we're growing an audience. So let's fix that. All right, so how do we actually make sure that our brand values are showing up visually? I'm gonna break it down for you.

Try and keep it really simple. And the first key area is colour palette. We all know that colours trigger emotions and perceptions instantly. Your colour palette is one of the fastest ways to communicate your brand values. Ask yourself, is my brand bold and high energy? What are the colours associated with that? Is my brand calming and trustworthy? Think about some colours that are associated with that. Is my brand all about luxury and exclusivity? Think about the colours associated with that. I can point out a number of examples. Tiffany and co, the beautiful blue, all of that.

You understand that colour is a psychology at work. So look at your brand colors right now and ask yourself the question, do they match the emotions that your audience want to feel when they're looking at your brand? The next is fonts and typography. What do your fonts say about you? If your visuals feel off, your typography could very well be the culprit. There are so many fonts to choose from. There are serif fonts. Think classic, traditional, trustworthy, like Vogue. Then there are sans serif fonts. Think clean, modern, approachable, like Google, like Airbnb.

Then there are the handwritten or script fonts. Personal, creative, artistic. Which is the right font for you? It is such a difficult question to answer. The next key area is imagery and photography style. What are the feelings that your photos are creating for your audience? Are they needing to be polished and high end? Are you looking for luxury? Are they bright and fun and full of energy? Are they in the moment? Are they candid? Are you a personal brand? Do people want to see what you're doing and what you're about with without that polish? Look at the photos that you're using. Make sure that they're supporting your brand values. Next, we have design style and layouts. What does that look like for your brand? What does your design style say about your values? For example, are you a brand that values simplicity and organization? Maybe your layout would be clean with lots of white space.

If you're a brand that values creativity, you might use bold colors and unexpected design elements. There are so many options when it comes to this. It can be very overwhelming and finally, brand voice and visual consistency. Your brand voice and how you sound needs to match how you look. If your captions are fun and playful, but your designs are ultra sleek and serious, instantly we have a disconnect right there. All right, let's do a quick audit together. Pull up your Instagram. Let's look at your last nine posts.

I want you to ask yourself these questions. Do my colours match my brand vibe? And secondly to that, can I tell what my brand colours are from looking at those nine posts? Do my fonts feel like me? Can I read those fonts? Can I understand what I'm trying to get across? Are my images aligned with my message? And most importantly, if a stranger saw my content, would they instantly know what I stand for? This is super important. If it feels off, let's tweak that right now. It is always perfect timing to tweak your colours, switch up your fonts, replace your imagery, create a brand style guide to give you that structure that you need to be able to form beautiful content consistently. Now, I know I've absolutely whipped through that for you, and I want to go back and just reiterate one of the most important parts of this podcast, and that is to sit down and define what your brand values are moving forward. Perfect time, start of the year, the new year. What are we looking towards to grow our business? Are we wanting to add creativity as a value? Are we wanting to add strength, fun? Like, sit down and brainstorm what your current brand values are and then start deciding whether your current visual branding so your logos, fonts, colours, images are reflecting that. And then start strategically making sure that those changes are made or that content is created, having a photo shoot done, or maybe working with a designer to give your brand a little refresh to make sure that we are cohesively connecting our brand values with our visual brand.

A super quick example for you is I was working with a client late last year and she is so bold and bubbly and bright and friendly in your face and unapologetically herself, which is absolutely amazing. And she had been designed this really beautiful brand that reflected that. But when it came to social media, which is a massive driver of leads to her business, it just wasn't connecting. It was like she was feeling self conscious about putting herself out there, fully expressed into her Instagram feed and into her reels and to her stories. Now this business owner has a number of VAs is creating content for them, working hard, very open to change, very open to focusing on branding as a really massive part of building her business. But when it came down to it, she found it really hard to connect her brand values with her brand visuals. So what we did is we sat down and we really leaned into the parts of her visual branding as, you know, fonts and colors that were working for her that she loved, that she enjoyed the most. And we reflected them back and connected them into her brand values and went for it and went for it consistently.

Instantly, she was getting DMs and messages saying, your branding is looking amazing. You are killing it. You are doing such a great job, I can see you everywhere. And that was because we made such a strong connection between her and her brand's visual branding. Now, don't get me wrong, she could have continued to put out content the way she was consistently and still have achieved growth, but honing in on her brand values, understanding and feeling really confident about how they were being related back to her brand visuals. So fonts, her colours or images just gave her so much more confidence. She didn't have to think about that. She knew how it was going to look.

It was all about getting it out there, making sure the messaging was on point, making sure the call to action was on point and just rinse and repeating. And then she could delegate this to her VAs to be able to do because she knew what was going on. So one thing I really highly recommend doing is taking that time to sit down and actually write down your brand values and think, am I still relating to these? Am I still enjoying these? Are these who I am and what my business is all about? And finally, I thought it might be really handy to highlight a brand value and give you some examples of how I would represent that brand value visually on an Instagram feed, on social media, online, on a website, so on and so forth. So one of a very common brand value at the moment is authenticity. And it's amazing. If that is one of yours, great choice. It is not one of mine. But I want to give you some examples of how you could actually visually represent authenticity as a brand value in your visual brand moving forward.

So an easy way would be to really reinforce behind the scenes and candid moments, you know, unfiltered snapshot photos. This is me doing what I'm doing, working with my clients out and about, real, in the moment, unedited, keeping it real. Another way that we could represent authenticity could be in graphics and in layout designs, and that could be using textured backgrounds like paper, paper, ripped paper, posting quotes that are written in your own handwriting or looking like that. They've been written on notepaper. It could be documentary style photos, polaroids, snapshots like that. Another great way to reinforce authenticity is to show lots of client stories and testimonials showing the real impact you're making, how your relationship with those in that impact unfolded before and afters, transformations, testimonials in the client's words. It's a really great way to show authenticity as well. And another one is video check ins, talking about how you're feeling, what you're doing, really breaking down barriers and showing people from your speaking and your thoughts about your brand values.

Because if you are picking them and they relate to you, you should be speaking them as well. Oh, and finally maybe typography, I could give you some examples of that. It's really easy to kind of box authenticity into handwritten fonts, casual fonts, using your own handwriting. But make sure if we're doing that, we're keeping it legible and easy to read because unfortunately with the quickness of the scroll at the moment, people aren't taking the time to sit there and read long, hard to read blocks of text. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I really hope you found some value out of connecting your brand values with your brand visuals because I know the power that connecting these two, even if it's just in your own mind have with the confidence and the connection, consistency and the clarity that it brings. Thank you again. Please leave a review or a rating.

I would be most grateful for that and I look forward to catching up with you next time. 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 love today's episode, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you never miss a dose of fearless branding 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 DMs 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.