A common misconception is that a company’s logo is its brand. For example, many people would assume that “The Swoosh” is Nike’s brand - but that’s not the case. When it comes to modern companies and how they market themselves, their “brand” is defined as the intangible feeling or concept that is evoked when people observe or interact with the company, in any capacity, via any medium. The same definition applies to products, people, services, and so on...

Because companies, products, and services are solving problems for their customers, they can deprioritize their brand to some degree if they choose to. There are plenty of successful companies with lackluster brands. If you’re shopping for a vacuum cleaner, you will have options across a wide price range. At any price point, there will be options with good and bad brands...

A brand’s visual identity is often mistaken for the brand itself, in the same way that logos are. The visual identity of a brand is how a brand presents itself aesthetically. When they’re crafted well, visual identities should be optical representations of the underlying brand, its core values, and its voice. If a brand is misaligned with its own visual identity, it can be off putting and confusing for consumers...

Crafting your brand voice can be one of the more difficult aspects of creating your brand because it’s the least visual component. Your brand voice amounts to what you say and how you say it. This applies to literal speech in things like interviews, downtime on the mic between songs during your shows, as well as text-based communication like emails, website copy, and social media post captions...

In this module you’ll be creating your visual identity, starting with your logo. First, there are some important things to know about logos. A logo is rarely static, even the most simple logo systems have some variants within them. Most of the time a logo system will include a mark and a logotype. These two elements will be used on their own or combined in different arrangements called lockups. Let’s look at Nike for example...

Now that you have your logo system in black and white, it’s time to incorporate color. First we need to learn about the emotional and psychological implications of different colors. Color psychology is real but we’re only just starting to understand it. A/B Tests of websites where only the color of a Call to Action button is changed have resulted in desired-behavior increases as high as triple digit percentages...

Your typography system will accompany your logo lockups and will be used for things like headlines and body copy on your website, flyers, album art, etc. Before we begin, let’s define fonts and typefaces for clarity sake. Fonts are a subset of typefaces. Neue Helvetica, for example, is a typeface while 14pt Neue Helvetica Medium is a font. Size and weight changes constitute a new font, 10pt Times New Roman is a different font than 12pt Times New Roman but they both belong to the same typeface...

Icons are a helpful way to inform users and keep them engaged. Saas products rely on icons and illustrations often to visualize their value proposition. Functionality aside, iconography can add a rich additional layer to a brand’s visual identity...

Before you start putting your brand and visual identity to use, it’s important to establish some brand guidelines. Whether you keep them in a notepad on your phone, or create a well-designed PDF, you will want to be able to reference and update these guidelines down the road...

Your website plays an important role in your sales funnels, so it needs to be inline with your brand. Even with no-code solutions like SquareSpace and Shopfiy, there are opportunities to apply your visual identity to your website. Most website building tools allow you to customize your colors, fonts and images...

Whenever you’re designing something for print, source your vendors first, especially for things like CD jewel cases, vinyl and sleeves, cassettes, etc. Different vendors use slightly different templates for your artwork. They will usually be the same approximate size but having to set up a new artwork file using a different vendor’s template can result in hours of extra work. This also applies for things like screen printing, while screen sizes are more standardized, some shops will offer larger screen options than others...

Remember that your brand and visual identity will grow and evolve over time. Companies don’t rebrand very often, probably about once a decade on average. Since you’re an artist, you might change your vision statement, brand, and visual identity as often as once a year; or, you may wait even longer than the average company. If and when you do this, make sure that it’s intentional, strategic, and consistent across all of your various outlets...

In this lesson, Casey builds a logo system for a demo brand created for the purpose of this training. Being highly visual in nature, this lesson cannot feasibly be presented in text form. However, we have included closed captions for those who are hard of hearing so that you may use the video version of the lesson. Additionally, due to its lengthy runtime, we have included chapters for this lesson so that you may skip around to whichever section is relevant to you in the moment...

In this lesson, Casey builds a typography system for a demo brand created for the purpose of this training. Being highly visual in nature, this lesson cannot feasibly be presented in text form. However, we have included closed captions for those who are hard of hearing so that you may use the video version of the lesson...

In this lesson, Casey applies elements of our demo brand to various types of brand collateral. Being highly visual in nature, this lesson cannot feasibly be presented in text form. However, we have included closed captions for those who are hard of hearing so that you may use the video version of the lesson...