Your digital brand is everywhere – from the website to social media platforms, and with multiple consumers interacting with the different platforms, a consistent digital brand identity is vital. Consumer perception is the key as consumers recognise, recall, pick out, and understand brand values and intentions based on, not only cultures and beliefs, but also on unconscious stimuli.
The digital brand identity can be described as the personality of the brand and it is a combination of visual elements and deeper values that are express through the tone of voice in captions and other digital written content.
Goals of a Consistent Brand Identity
The first step to create a consistent visual identity for a digital brand is to understand what the goal is. Most likely, the goal of a well-designed brand identity is to create a memorial first impression that underline and reflect the values and purpose of the brand. Furthermore, it is crucial that the design is unique and pleasing for the eyes. But most importantly, the brand behind the content has to be easy to recognise across all digital platforms. No matter if the consumers find the brand on Instagram or LinkedIn, they have to be able to recall the brand based on the designed identity. On the overall level, all brand elements including the brand personality have to be present across all digital platforms.
Consistent Colour Palette
Let us start with the colour palette. Most brands already have associated set of colours to express visual elements with. For Coca Cola, the iconic red colour will most often create an image of summer and holiday in many consumers’ minds. Colours can signal different things so choose wisely if you want to create a new colour palette for your digital brand. Do your research in the theory of colours, colour harmonies, that suggests six ways to choose a colour palette in design:
- Complementary colors
- Split complementary colors
- Analogous colors
- Triadic harmonies
- Tetradic harmonies
- Monochromatic harmonies
Create your colour palette with the help of Adobe Colour Wheel, and be sure to use the same colour palette across all the digital platform to create the preferred brand identity consistency.
Consistent Typography
It is not only colour palette that is important to use when creating visual consistency within the digital brand identity. The typography is essential to express the visual brand identity as well. There are a lot of different typographies in this world and it can seem impossible to choose the right one. Take a look at Typewolf or FontShop to get inspiration and pick the right typography for your digital brand.
Visual Language
For some consumers it is a lot easier to process information quickly with the use of visual language instead of written. Visual language includes icons, videos, presentations, photographies, motion graphics, etc. Basically, everything that is visual and not written. Be sure to adapt the visual language to the chosen digital platform and make use of the right colour palette and typography to create consistency. The vertical video format on your website does not fit on Instagram. Hootsuite has made a guide for the best video formats on social media platforms.
User-Generated Content
The best way to engage and interact with consumers on digital platforms is to include them and let them be a part of building the brand personality. This can be done by using user-generated content as a part of the digital branding strategy. User-generated content is photographies, reviews, videos, etc., that is created by the consumers. With the permission from consumers, brands can upload the content on their own digital platforms to create authenticity, credibility, and engagement. However, it is crucial to only use content that can be perceived as a being a part of the brand personality to create consistency. Read more about user-generated branding here.
What is Next?
It can be difficult to create visual consistency in accordance with the brand identity across all platforms without just copying and pasting the content. If you need help or have any questions, leave a comment or contact me.
