Recently we started looking for an all in one online platform that could function a bit like a course, something where the information could be bite-sized, the process intuitive and the experience flawless. We didn’t find it. So we decided to build our own!

Our brief – Create a client experience portal where

• you can be educated about strategies that work
• you can work through a process to clarify your values, ideal clients, style and message
• we can give you access to the tools and resources you need in a personalised and easy to use dashboard
• we can review what you’ve learnt to build better websites and brands
• we can share files, feedback and information to streamline the actual design phase

I have never been so excited about a client process!

Here’s a sneak peek at the dashboard. In here we have links to information about support and the process, brand strategy and design, website strategy and content planning, and custom links to each client’s Dropbox, Slack channel and live review/feedback on designs. We also let you know how many trees your project helps us plant in our forests.

We have tried to keep the dashboard clean and uncluttered with clear paths to access the content you need. Everyone gets access to everything, we’ve found that our WordPress website design clients often need extra help with brand clarity and usually, our brand design clients go on to build a website with us as well. It’s all in there, you can focus on just the section you need or review and work through everything if it’s helpful for you.

What information is in the portal?

Housekeeping and support

• Communication & Support
• File Sharing
• Book your Strategy Call
• Rescheduling Our Design Experience
• Links to shared resources

Brand Clarity

• Why Brand Strategy
• All About YOU
• Your Niche
• Competition
• Ideal Clients
• Tone Words
• Messaging
• Vision & Mission

Visual Brand Prep

• What do you like?
• Website Inspiration & Research
• Image Curation
• Mood Board

Website Strategy & Planning

• Storybrand
• Website Goals
• Navigation & Structure
• Your Website Style
• Ideal Clients
• Images & Brand Assets
• Hosting & Domain Name
• Business Details

Website Content Guide

• SEO Basics
• Map out the Homepage
• Content Guide & Submitting Content

We’re really excited for our first clients to experience this level of support and guidance with their brand and website strategy and planning. I’ll be sure to update this post with their feedback. In the meantime, if you’re planning to revamp your brand or website and you would like free access to test the platform, just reach out to us at hello@meancreative.com.

Happy Planning Everyone!

The post Brand & website strategy and planning help – A peek inside our client portal appeared first on Mean Creative.

• Spring brand colours: Warm and Light
• Summer brand colours: Cool and Light
• Autumn brand colours: Warm and Dark
• Winter brand colours: Cool and Dark

Winter colour palettes usually rely on deep colours such as burgundy, but also cool tones found within frozen blues and muted deep greens. If you’ve decided that your branding will use a winter colour palette, it should contain shades that can be defined as cool, matte and bold.

This glorious season is a season of extremes and contrast. Brands who opt for a winter colour palette usually have very confident, self-assured and bold brand values.

This season is naturally perfect for businesses like coaching, high-end fashion and luxury travel.

When using a winter brand palette, make sure you are adding stark contrasts within your colour choices, in order to create the best clear visual effect. It is still possible to use light colours, however, stay away from pastel shades, instead opt for more icy hues.

We have added some examples below to give you some winter colour inspiration! Don’t forget, you can create your own beautiful colour palettes with Adobe Color, choose your colours or upload an image to pick out the colours you want.

Winter Brand Colour Palette Inspiration

Winter brand colours:

#252339, #352340, #10313E, #18525F, #54717D

Winter brand colours:

#1D2C2C, #313437, #3A4543, #6F7D7B, #9FA6A1

Winter brand colours:

#22242D, #2B3745, #41222A, #740C2F, #796276

Winter brand colours:

#1F1040, #312773, #4E455C, #666666, #8E8F88

Winter brand colours:

#0E0503, #96060A, #1C2E01, #474944, #858881

Winter brand colours:

#1D363A, #344F59, #485E6D, #A8B0BF, #D9D9E5

Winter brand colours:

#182b38, #4d3445, #807877, #adadb7, #4d5258

Winter brand colours:

#1d1b28, #456289, #a3c3d8, #d0e2eb, #80a4c0

Winter brand colours:

#cd4945, #6b4341, #1a1c16, #d4c1d2, #453b36

Winter brand colours:

#dec3af, #efe3d9, #9e756a, #70323d, #585551

Winter brand colours:

#182b38, #4d3445, #807877, #adadb7, #4d5258

Winter brand colours:

#b6e1d2, #377c74, #7dc3b4, #0f1114, #6a7271

Winter brand colours:

#cc996e, #afa995, #e6e4df, #908a7b, #33322b

Winter brand colours:

#ac7cbc, #dae2eb, #99aec0, #1d1b28, #7d8cb4

The post 14 Winter Brand Colour Palettes for Inspiration appeared first on Mean Creative.

In design, we can use the Seasonal Brand Colour Palettes to express our brand vision and to connect with the audience. Let’s remember how colours are associated with the other seasons and how this can help you to envision your brand:

Spring Brand Colours – Warm and Light
Summer Brand Colours – Cool and Light
Autumn Brand Colours – Warm and Dark
Winter Brand Colours – Cool and Dark

An authentic Autumn will have reddish tones, rust red, mustard yellow tones, medium olive green, camel tones and mid-browns. Colours are more than just a visual aid because they convey feelings, emotions and experiences.

Take your time and explore the Autumn Brand Colour Palette with Seasonal Colour Theory coming to your rescue when trying to find the colour palette that best describes the season.

BE CREATIVE: AUTUMN COLOUR PALETTE

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #DABDAD, #D49A6A, #826B5D, #D85251, #8D0327

To give your brand a warm but soft look always try to keep the contrast levels to medium and make sure to avoid cool colours such as pastels. It will help you define your brand’s personality.

We have created some examples to help you get inspiration from this delicious season. Feel free to test and create your own colour palette and hex codes with Adobe or create new designs with Canva or other design tools that you love. Start being creative today and be inspired by Mean Creative’s Autumn Brand Colour Palette.

AUTUMN COLOUR PALETTES + HEX CODES

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #F2E1C3, #D8B573, #A66F2E, #A63922, #02385A

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #B8E6F3, #F2B443, #DE871D, #0C6279, #543034

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #92780A, #BF7F04, #BF5B05, #8C1C04, #3F0E00

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #F2D4AE, #C3CBBE, #A6432C, #731919, #7B5C6E

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #8B8C64, #BF9774, #B3723C, #894E30, #3F2E24

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #C9AB93, #A67C63, #A45A2B, #638465, #306367

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #E69779, #865350, #635741, #45472F, #482E2D

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #EB781B, #CC5221, #71250E, #6F6534, #365365

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #C08B61, #DF5E24, #C00425, #59010F, #3B3B39

Autumn Brand Colour Palette: #F2C186, #F29F05, #D97803, #723A19, #3F271D

If you need help with your business branding, we’d love to talk more! Please visit our branding page to find out more about our branding options and how to get in touch!

The post 7 AUTUMN COLOUR PALETTES + HEX CODES appeared first on Mean Creative.

Have you ever found that your logo doesn’t look great when you send it to print, or it appears pixelated when you see it on your website and social media? Chances are the file format used wasn’t suitable for the specific purposes. There are various file types for a logo that we’ll cover in this guide. Cutting out the jargon and getting straight to the point to teach you everything you need to know about your logo. Whether you need to send files to your designer or want to use them yourself. By the time you’ve read this, you’ll be ready to show off your logo the right way!

Let’s keep things simple

All you need to know is why file types matter, what they are and when to use them. We’ll explore all of the best logo format files you’ll need to keep your brand looking consistent throughout all platforms.

Why do you need different logo file formats?

Some files are best for maintaining maximum quality, while others are best for having low file size or rich colours. The reason we need various files is that you want the opportunity to share your logo across different platforms without compromising quality. Each file doesn’t necessarily have pros or cons because each has its own, very unique purpose. They do different things in different ways, which is why we need them all.

What are the different file types for logos?

Now, this is where it can be a bit techy. There are only a handful of logo file formats needed for clients (which we cover further in this post). Nevertheless, it’s important you have an understanding of key files, to familiarise yourself with the terms and abbreviations. After all, you’ll most likely be managing these files in the long term.

Logo Format – JPG

Being one of the most used logo formats, JPG or JPEG files are perfect for maintaining true tone colours while being a relatively, small file size. Which is why jpeg logo files are commonly used on social media posts or profile images.

Logo Format – PNG

You’ll recognise a PNG as it has the option to be transparent. Making it perfect to place on your website or on social media graphics and having the freedom to choose any background colour or add over images. They also have the added advantage of maintaining image quality when resized. PNG files are generally larger, ideal for logos but not great for photographs.

Logo Format – AI

This is the main file type for Adobe Illustrator, where your logo is designed, referred to as a vector logo file format. Having the original logo in Illustrator is essential to make edits in the future.

Logo Format – EPS

Similarly to an AI file, an EPS file is best suited for editing and scaling a logo without losing quality. These two files are the ideal formats when handing over designs to a professional designer.

Logo Format – SVG

Finally, we have the all-rounder. An SVG is perfect for designers. This file type allows for editing, resizing and transparency. They are typically used for small icons but are great when used on websites as they maintain high quality no matter what the size and you can add code to change the colours.

Logo Format – PDF

PDF’s are great files to share your logo as they can be easily viewed by others on the internet. Meaning, you and others you share the logo with won’t need any advanced software to view your logo. PDF’s also maintain a higher standard of quality of logos than other file formats such as JPG’s.

What Logo File Formats are Best for You?

I know, there are a lot of different types of file formats. But, the thing is, you only need to use 2 or 3 and still be able to have your logo looking consistently perfect. You don’t often have much use for a native illustrator design file, and designers don’t really need JPGs for anything.

Logo File Formats for Clients

JPG and PNG are the 2 most common file formats you’ll need.

Logo File Formats for Designers

Your designer/developer, on the other hand, will additionally need an SVG file and the original AI file. Having the AI file gives your designer the ability to export your logo into the various formats covered previously.

What file formats to use for printing your logo or use online?

A logo is designed to be shared across multiple platforms, whether that’s on your professional website or a branded pen. But, each file format must be used for the specific purpose the logo will be used for.

Web/Digital

JPG, PNG and SVG are the best file formats for logos on the web. The right format will provide rich colours, transparent backgrounds and scalability to ensure they are perfect for any screen size. It’s important that all files are saved using the RGB colour format to provide the best colours on the web.

Print

The best file format for printing a logo will be AI, PDF or EPS. They have the highest resolutions meaning your logo will be printed to the highest standard. CMYK is the colour mode used for print logos.

Our favourite tool for exporting logos from Illustrator

When we design a logo for you, you’ll receive the full package with all the various file types needed to display your logo beautifully. We’ve been using Logo Package Express for Adobe Illustrator for the last few years and honestly, it’s saved us countless hours while providing a much more structured package of files for our clients.

We just can’t stop recommending this plugin so, designers, here’s our link in case you want to spend more time designing and less time exporting logo versions for clients – Logo Package Express.

For each visual brand identity we create the folder structure will look something like this:

Logo Files Cheat Sheet – Download the PDF here

As promised, a handy cheat sheet for your logo file formats. Giving you everything you need to know about your logo file formats, understanding when and where to use them for the best quality. Enjoy!

Mean Creative may receive commissions on purchases made through our links to retailers. Affiliate details »

The post Understanding your logo file formats [+ FREE cheat sheet] appeared first on Mean Creative.

Designing a website or brand starts with you. Yes, your brand needs to resonate with your ideal clients but YOU need to love it in order to shout loud about your business. I think we’ve all suffered from website shame at some point! If you have that sinking feeling every time someone asks for your website address or you hesitate to reply to a job posting on social media then I’m talking to you.

Frankly, anyone can suffer from website shame, even designers! Many people dive in and just start creating something, a logo, a website, social media graphics, whatever…but without a visual direction to keep everything together, things can often fall apart at the seams.

This is why I always recommend a mood board for my clients and why you should build one even if you’re working on the website yourself.

So, let’s get to it. Follow my step by step guide on creating a brand or website mood board below.

Step 1 – Understand the types of design you love

To design a website that you love, you need to understand the types of design that you like. Will your brand be bold or softer and more feminine? Maybe your brand should be clean and highly professional, maybe it will be friendly or modern and chic. If you’re not sure then a good place to start is with words – check out our recent blog on choosing tone words to help you define your brand and website style. Once you have 5 or 6 adjectives to describe your brand and how your dream clients should feel when they come across it then you can start with translating that to something visual.

Start by asking yourself a few questions:

• What patterns are you drawn to? Do you love the softness of watercolour or do you find it wishy-washy? Do you love geometric patterns or do you find them too corporate?
• What colours are you drawn to? Are they summery soft and cool tones or warm bold autumn tones?
• What are your font preferences? Do you like traditional serif fonts, decorative, quirkey or modern clean fonts? (a combination is great for creating contrast)

Step 2 – Research for your brand mood board

Now that you’ve had a think about what you like and are drawn to, head on over to Google and search for some brands. Make a list of at least 5 websites for brands you connect with. Ask yourself:

• What do you love about them?
• What do you not like about them?
• What do they have in common?
• What stands out to you about the design (font combinations, colours and images)?
• How do they make you feel?
• Does this align with how you want your clients to feel about your brand?

Did you pick some brand tone words in step one? Look back at what you picked, would you change anything?

Step 3 – Finding images for your website mood board

Now we’re going to get clear on our visual brand by identifying images, styles, colours and fonts you love.

Pinterest is an amazing resource for this but it can be a bit overwhelming and it’s easy to get distracted. To stop you spending all day clicking around on Pinterest remember to stay focused on the task. Have your brand tone words in front of you and remember to think about your ideal client – it’s not the time to be pinning cookie recipes and cool things you can make!

1. Create a Pinterest account or log in

2. Click on ‘My Profile’

3. Click on ‘Boards’ and create a new secret board by clicking the red plus icon in the top left

4. Name your board with your tone words – this helps keep them at the top of your mind

5. Make sure to click Yes to make the board secret

6. Write a short description of what you do, who for and how it benefits them

7. You’re ready to start pinning!!!!

Here we’re going to pin everything and anything that resonates with your style and your tone words.

The aim is to get a big selection of images and graphics that we can whittle down afterwards. Once you’ve pinned all these images and can view them all together it’ll be more obvious which ones are true to your brand and which ones aren’t.

Let’s begin!

Start searching using combinations of your brand tone words and words that will bring you great visuals, things like ‘design’, ‘branding’, ‘décor’ and ‘style’. So you might search for ‘approachable branding’ or ‘sophisticated branding’, ‘bold brands’. You may also want to identify places or activities that match your tone words, ‘outdoorsy style’, ‘wilderness adventure’, ‘modern office spaces’.

Pin anything that resonates with you. This should include images, logos, graphics including fonts, patterns or icons.

If you find pins that are just perfect you can click on them and you’ll find related pins further down the page. This can be a great way to find more images that really resonate.

Step 4 – Refining your Mood Board Image Selection

Once you have at least 30 pins you’re ready to take a look at the board and begin stripping out anything that doesn’t work.

Make sure each image on your board relates to one of your tone words, remove any that don’t match or don’t feel right.

Are there any tone words not represented by your images? Go back and do a little more pinning to get this covered. If you can’t find images on Pinterest for any of your words then you can look elsewhere to find some.

Here are some stock image sites you can use to find more:

• pixabay.com
• unsplash.com
• adobestock.com
• pexels.com

You can download these images and upload them as pins on your board.

Once you’ve completed these steps you should have around 20 images on your board and each of your tone words should be represented.

Step 5 – Create your mood board

Now you’re armed with everything you need to create a mood board for your website or brand. Your mood board will include colours, fonts and images that represent how people should feel when they encounter you. You may also include textures or patterns.

Here are a couple of website mood board examples:

These boards are created using grids in Canva, there are loads of grids to choose from so you can pick one or combine a couple to get a layout that you like. You may also create a collage of elements without a grid – there are no rules here!

Pick 5-6 images and patterns that really sum up the feel of your website and save them so you can import them into Canva. Once they’re uploaded you’ll be able to add them to your grid or layout. If you have a logo already then include that too.

You can also add shapes to place your colours on the board. Using the Canva colour picker will give you the option to pick colours from your images but if that’s a bit too limited you’ll get more control by using a tool like color.adobe.com.

Once you have your website mood board ready you can start creating a website with a cohesive feel that you (and your ideal clients) love! Thanks for reading and we hope this post will help you create better websites that engage your perfect people! Interested in working together? Find out about our Website Design Experiences and One Day Website packages and then just get in touch to chat with us about your project

The post 5 Steps to Create a Website Mood Board appeared first on Mean Creative.

The right font choice must always reflect the specific needs of the project. These needs are not only aesthetic but can be technical and functional. Some fonts work best in titles, while others read well in blocks of text. You’ll need to beware of those that are beautiful but can’t be read easily. It’s common to get seduced by stunning type that leaves your audience squinting at the screen and abandoning your website!

Some font families include a range of different styles like italics or small caps and weights (think thin, regular or bold), these fonts offer more options to fine-tune your design.

Using a combination of fonts gives you an opportunity to make your important messages stand out, make your content easy to consume and hit the right notes for stunning design.

A font refers not only to the style of type but also to the particular size and weight of the text. With so many options it can be hard to choose fonts and use them in a way that is cohesive and relevant. As with most aspects of design, there are a certain set of rules to follow when approaching any media that represents your brand.

Below we have listed our 8 font tips that ensure your branding and website design looks more professional and contributes to the message you want to send.

1. Choose a maximum of two or three fonts for your brand

Limiting your font choices to just two or three will help make your brand instantly recognisable. Using more than three fonts in any design can lead to a cluttered, messy and unattractive design. With too many fonts it can be difficult to pick out the most important pieces of information so your message can get lost and be confusing.

A brand that uses fonts well is Disney, their fonts are now familiar to all audiences, improving brand recognition and strengthening their brand.

2. Use brand fonts consistently

Now you have chosen your two or three fonts, make sure you stick to them! Keep a note of your chosen fonts so you can use them for everything you do. Your website, social media graphics, freebies and anything printed should match your brand fonts. Think of your fonts as a part of your brand identity, your style is what makes your brand unique and memorable. Remember, all brands must also be consistent and uphold quality standards that match the customer’s expectations. Simply keeping a note of your fonts so you can use them consistently will improve your brand recognition.

3. Use hierarchy to highlight important information

Combine fonts in a way that separates different elements like headlines, sub-headlines, body copy, and captions.

Splitting up your text into visual sections is a contributing factor in how the eye reads the page or design. Using larger fonts sizes, bold or coloured text helps the most important information stand out. Usually, your headings will need to be the most prominent but in a design for social media or print there could be other elements such as dates or venues that should be highlighted.

4. Use fonts that complement each other but are not too similar

It is vital to choose fonts that work well together since in most forms of media they will be placed in correlation to each other. A good way to check if your fonts are complimentary would be to create a sample piece of text with a heading and main body text to test out different choices.

Making good font choices relates to your style and creates a stronger brand that clients will be loyal to. If you’re using free fonts from Google you have the option to pair fonts together, just pick the fonts you like and use the share icon to view them side by side.

5. Focus on readability

Readability is key when choosing fonts, you can see from the example below that choosing a font for aesthetic reasons over legibility is a bad idea. Your customers are less likely to spend time reading significant information if the font is overcomplicated and confusing.

Be careful of using fancy decorative fonts, as sometimes the more simple fonts convey a better message to your customers.

6. Use appropriate font sizes

Be wary of the font size. Choosing a size too big can take up too much space and too small can be hard to read. The key factor is to be universal and create an easy reading experience for all audiences, remember to consider hierarchy and stick to a slow decrease in sizes from Heading1 to main body text.

7. Don’t use script fonts for blocks of text

Avoid using script fonts when covering a lot of information, these can be difficult to read and won’t look great. You need to be as clear and coherent as possible to gain maximum interest from your ideal audience. Instead, try using a simple clear font such as: ‘ABeeZee’ which will add readability and legibility to blocks of texts.

8. Use font styles to emphasise

Using bold, italics or colours to draw attention to small sections of text like headings but not the entire content.

Choose noteworthy keywords or phrases within your text to highlight in order to add emphasis. Try only to embolden few and far between words as overuse can have a negative effect, keep it short for maximum effect.

Where to find FREE fonts for logos, websites and graphics

You can find free fonts in every style! There’s a lot of reasons you may choose a free font, perhaps you’re just starting out and want to keep things cheap or don’t have the technical knowledge to add premium fonts to your website, maybe you’re using the free version of Canva and can’t upload premium fonts to keep your brand consistent. Free fonts are often familiar too and your audience likes familiar!

For any font make sure that you check the usage licence. Sometimes fonts can be free for personal use or just use on desktops but not websites. Before you create all your graphics with a font, make sure you can legally use it for commercial purposes and embed it on your website.

Font Bundles

Font bundles is a great place to search for original fonts from independent designers. They have some free fonts listed on their website and you can take advantage of the Free Font of the Week by signing up to their mailing list.

Google Fonts

Google Fonts is a library of 960 free licensed fonts, you can type the sentence you wish to use as an example and click on different font formats to see what it will look like for your graphics or webpage.

Creative booster

This is another link to a wide range of fonts available; if you check out the ‘freebies’ section you can find a great selection of free fonts for commercial use.

Where to find premium fonts for logos, websites and graphics

Font Bundles (again)

Find exclusive deals for fonts from independent designers. Premium fonts have an advantage over free fonts because fewer brands will be using them, giving off a more unique impression.

Creative Market

If you really want your fonts to stand out, check out Creative Market and find premium fonts. Most of the fonts found here are from independent designers and there’s a lot of choice. You’ll also find mockup templates, themes, photos and graphics.

My Fonts

Lastly, try My Fonts, an easy to use website with many options. You can choose between ‘relatable tags’ to define your font choice from categories. My fonts let you choose licences for desktop, websites, apps, ads and more and their licencing is clear.

Finally, Remember your message

Always remember the message you are trying to convey. What are you trying to say with your brand? Who is your ideal customer? What type of business are you running?

If your brand is a luxury wedding planning business you’ll be using different fonts to a brand aimed at fun kids activities. Think of a few words you’d like to use to describe the emotion of your brand, these could be elegance, trust, exclusivity or fun, loud, colourful. Have these tone words in mind when choosing anything for your brand.

Keep it relevant and remember to have fun!

The post How to use the right fonts for your brand – 8 Tips from a Designer appeared first on Mean Creative.

If in Spring Brand Colours Blog we have talked about bright and vibrant colours then Summer brings a soft and calming feel to the colour wheel.

Seasonal colour theory refers to finding the colour palette that best describes the season. It links tones from the colour palette to your brand vision and it helps you get closer to your audience.

The best colours for Summer Brand Colour Palette are the cool, soft tones such as soft blues or creams, accented by pastels such as peach. You may find it useful to learn how colours are associated with the other seasons and it looks like this:

Spring Brand Colours – Warm and Light
Summer Brand Colours – Cool and Light
Autumn Brand Colours – Warm and Dark
Winter Brand Colours – Cool and Dark

BE INSPIRED: SUMMER BRAND COLOUR PALETTE

Summer colour palettes show that a brand is approachable, innovative, trustful and ready for an adventure with its audience. Warm colour tones are all about comfort, memories and that soothing feeling.

We have added some examples below to help you get inspired by summer colours. You’re welcome to test and create your own colour palette and hex codes with Adobe or create new designs with Canva or other design tools that you love – be creative!

SUMMER BRAND COLOUR PALETTES + HEX CODES

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #ECEAD1, #C0DCE0, #CAD2C5, #E2C4AA, #FB5B05

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #C39C92, #BEAFAC, #BDBDBD, #AAAC9F, #BB6859

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #FFCCBB, #F78D7D, #CB9897, #9BB9C3, #947481

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #E7CDD6, #E6A7BA, #EFBD9C, #E29585, #B7D0CD

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #F5EDD8, #FFE497, #F1B8BF, #D5CBF0, #AEC6A6

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #D8F0F2, #E1CFC3, #B6E2CB, #36C7D8, #D54405

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #F8DED1, #D0BEB4, #C49A82, #94797E, #82716A

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #F1E5E5, #F48F85, #C2DDFA, #71D1D0, #E7EFF1

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #EEEDEB, #DDBAB8, #C9AEA7, #BD8E96, #794841

Summer Brand Colour Palette: #FBF4EC, #F7DBCD, #C99695, #A38A8D, #8D624F

If you need help with your business branding, we’d love to talk more! Please visit our branding page to find out more about our branding options and how to get in touch!

The post 8 SUMMER BRAND COLOUR PALETTES + HEX CODES appeared first on Mean Creative.

Most of us think in words and that’s why I love to use just a few to really get to grips with the style or tone of a brand.

So what are brand tone words?

Tone words are words that sum up the way your brand feels or how your ideal clients should feel when they encounter your brand. They can help you to step into your brand boldly, show up and create anything visual for your business with much more focus. Everything about your brand from your copy to the images you use is going to set the tone and should align with these words.

Look at the following examples and see how the tone changes if we just switch out one or two words

1. fresh, feminine, inspirational, playful, sophisticated

2. fresh, masculine, inspirational, playful, sophisticated

3. bold, feminine, inspirational, playful, vibrant

We’ll start by choosing some words that define the tone of your brand, your attitude and your style. These words are going to perfectly illustrate the feelings your ideal client will have when they encounter your brand for the first time.

Think about what you love, what your purpose is in your business and who your ideal clients are.

Are you ready to pick 5 or 6 words that sum up the tone of your brand? Use my list or pick your own!

Next up on the blog:

How to use tone words to create a brand or website mood board – Stay Tuned!

Thanks for reading and we hope this post will help you create better websites that engage your perfect people! Interested in working together? Find out about our Website Design Experiences and One Day Website packages and then just get in touch to chat with us about your project

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Brand guidelines are absolutely imperative to your business, and can help you immensely when working with third parties, or even onboarding new colleagues! Your brand guidelines are a clear cut, put-on-paper declaration of what your business does, the tone and approach you take with your target audience, and the colours and typography you use to convey your messages.

Your brand guidelines can work as a dynamic document, in case anything should change within your business.

Brand guidelines can be as comprehensive as you feel necessary and can include details about how your brand should not be used, and how your logo can be used on marketing material where no colour options are available. Brand guidelines of established companies can go on for pages and pages, sometimes being delivered to partners as books! This helps to ensure that there is no room for error in how your brand is represented, in any format and any situation.

Your brand guidelines can also take the shape of a basic guide – a summary page of colours, fonts, straplines, frequently used icons and tone of voice. A quick guide can be a really handy reference to keep your branding consistent! Both types of documents are incredibly useful – it’s definitely worth investing the time in both. One strategy might be to start on your basic guide and then build on this to add more details and scenarios.

The aim of brand guidelines is to consolidate the essence of your brand and business, to ensure consistency in your messages, regardless of who is working on your brand.

WHY ARE BRAND GUIDELINES IMPORTANT?

Below, you’ll find 4 key reasons that creating Brand Guidelines can benefit your business:

1. Established brand guidelines show you’ve worked hard on your brand, woot!

If you’ve got brand guidelines then you’ve thought hard about your message, your mission, your values and your ideal clients. All these things contribute to a killer brand that makes you stand out.

Putting together a consolidated document of your business profile and the elements that make up your brand identity, shows that you’ve put a big commitment into your business and brand. You should feel a great sense of pride in devoting so much energy to your brand! This hard work will pay off when it comes to creating new assets that need to include your branding, as it will be super easy for you to find all your colours, fonts and styles!

2. Brand consistency builds a strong brand identity with your audience

Your brand guidelines will help you to be consistent across your online and offline presence, as well as all your marketing. This means your brand will be easily recognisable to your target audience, and that they are more likely to remember your business by regularly seeing the consistency, and associating it with your brand. The more familiar your audience becomes with you, the more likely they are to use you and refer you to others.

3. Get 100% behind your brand, and show up with confidence

Have you ever felt reluctant to post on your social media or share a link to your website? That feeling is a clear sign that you don’t love your brand and it’s holding you back! Going through the process of building your brand guidelines will give you brand clarity, help you to love your brand, make changes if necessary, and give you more confidence to show up for your ideal clients. Once you have a brand guidelines reference on paper, it will be so much easier for you to refer back to this to check fonts, colours, and whether something you’ve written fits into your tone of voice. Committing to your brand means you can shout about it with conviction!

4. Provide structure to any third parties you’re working with

Having brand guidelines means your assets and brand personality are easily shareable, and easily understood by anyone working with your business. For example, if your goal is to spruce up your website and you’ve outsourced this project, your website designer will benefit from a clear, concise document showing your brand colours, fonts, styles, and anything else associated with your brand.

The post Why You Need Brand Guidelines appeared first on Mean Creative.

The prospect of defining a niche market for your business, and choosing a specialism to focus on, can be an extremely daunting and challenging task. This is namely because we have the mindset that if we specialise, we will be restricting our client base and will miss out on potential clients and income. As an entrepreneur, you may struggle to understand the benefits of niche marketing but in truth, the benefits range from increasing sales to ensuring you build a business that you love.

As we discuss in this article, defining your niche is extremely important, and can help you to narrow your focus on clients and the type of work that you do. Your niche is a combination of the 2 factors, broken down as:

NICHE = Target Market (with a clear idea of your Ideal Client) + Specialised Services

But how do you narrow down your specialised services without compromising your business? First of all, it’s important to understand that you’re going to love running your business more if you are passionate and excited about the work you’re doing. When thinking about specialising you need to carefully consider what you love doing the most, how that can give your customers what they need and what you can charge for it. Once you know these things, specialising your services should be a no-brainer!

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5 Advantages of Niche Marketing

1. Do more of what you love

By specialising your services, you get to focus on the tasks that you enjoy doing the most. Your time is managed more efficiently, and your job satisfaction is likely to go up, too!

2. Be considered an expert

If you specialise your products or services, you can quickly build up a reputation as an expert. You can become trusted to deliver exceptional results in one or two key areas, rather than being a “generalist”. Expert knowledge is highly favoured – if you can identify a need amongst clients, you can tap into some big potential.

3. Increase referrals

Along with your “expert” status, come increased referrals. By specialising you ensure that it’s YOU that springs to mind when someone has a need for your services as opposed to the myriad of other providers in your sector. A major way to increase your client base is to have your super-pleased current clients sharing your information with their friends and business associates. There’s no greater compliment than having your contact details passed onto others.

Make sure to include positive client testimonials on your website!

4. Attract more relevant clients

When you specialise your services, you can talk about this on your website. Having clarity around what you offer lets you get really clear on how you help clients. You get to tell people exactly how you’re going to improve their lives or help them in their business. Not only does this help you with your search engine rankings (getting found on Google), but also by being clear on what you offer, you can stop wasting time with clients who don’t need your services.

5. Help your business become scalable

On top of everything else, you can control the scalability of your business. If you want to keep things small and specialised, you absolutely can. And as soon as you’re ready to add in complementary services or products, this is also easier to do as well.

Ready to Reap the Benefits of a Niche Marketing Strategy?

As you can see, you have nothing to fear by choosing to specialise your products and services! There are many advantages of niche marketing, meaning that you should strongly consider doing this, to help you, your business, and your overall goals!

To find out more about how to tailor your brand strategy and specialise your offering, reach out to us at hello@meancreative.com to discuss ways we can help.

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