Business & Branding
Branding Beyond the Logo
September 8, 20266 min read32 Productions · Douglas, GA
Branding gets treated as a logo decision, and the logo is the smallest part of it. What makes a business look established is consistency across everything somebody sees.
What a brand actually consists of
- The logo, in multiple formats and versions for different backgrounds
- A defined color palette with actual values, not approximations
- Typefaces for headings and body, chosen and stuck to
- A photography style — how your images look and feel
- Voice, meaning how you write and talk
- Applied consistently across everything
Most small businesses have a logo and nothing else defined, which is why their website, their truck, their business card and their Facebook page all look like they belong to different companies.
Logo files you should actually have
A vector version, which scales to any size without degrading. Versions for light and dark backgrounds. A horizontal and a stacked version. A simplified mark for small placements like a profile picture or a favicon.
If all you have is a JPG somebody sent you, you do not have a usable logo — you have a picture of one. That becomes obvious the first time somebody needs it for signage.
Color needs real values
Roughly blue is not a brand color. Specific values, recorded, so the website, the printer, the sign shop and the shirt vendor all produce the same color.
Print and screen use different color systems, which is why a brand definition should include both.
Typefaces
Two is generally enough — one for headings, one for body. The discipline is using them everywhere rather than defaulting to whatever is available in the moment.
The fastest way a small business looks bigger than it is: pick a palette and two typefaces, then use them without exception for a year. Consistency reads as established more than any individual design choice does.
Photography is part of the brand
This gets missed constantly. A brand with a consistent photographic look — similar treatment, similar palette, similar approach — holds together in a way one with mixed-source images does not.
A website mixing professional photos, phone snapshots and stock images from three different libraries looks exactly like that, no matter how good the logo is.
Where to spend first
For a business with nothing: a proper logo package with usable files, a defined palette and typefaces, and a photo library. That combination covers nearly everything you will need to produce for the next several years.
Elaborate brand guidelines documents are useful for larger organizations with many people producing material. A small business needs the assets and the discipline more than it needs the document.
Rebranding
If you rebrand, do it completely. A half-finished rebrand — new logo on the website, old logo on the trucks and the signage — is worse than either version alone, because it reads as disorganized.
32 Productions does graphic design, logo work and brand photography for businesses across South Georgia. Call (912) 592-3376.
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