Basic Branding on a Limited Budget

Maybe you don't have a budget right now to hire someone for design & branding, but that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do in the meantime. There are some simple (free!) ways to improve what you're currently doing to make any social media content, print materials, presentations, etc. look consistent.

First Steps

Before you start looking for a font and colors to use, think through who you are as a business. Why do you do what you do? What makes you different than businesses offering similar services? What do your competitors' logos look like? What colors do they use? You don't want to use the exact same colors, but if everyone is using a more conservative set of colors, you may want to do the same unless you have a specific reason that it makes sense for your business to have a very different look. If your potential customers are used to businesses in your industry using dark, conservative colors, it may even be confusing for them to understand what it is that you do if you choose to use pastel or neon colors instead.

Fonts

The first thing you can do to have a more consistent look is to have one or two primary fonts that you use. If you already have a website, what fonts are used there? Many websites use Google Fonts, which are also available to download for free. Do you like your website font? Is it easy to read? If so, consider downloading it from Google Fonts and use those same fonts in your documents and presentations. (If your website font is hard to read, look into changing that.)

Colors

As you thought through other similar businesses in your industry and what their branding looks like, do you have any idea what types of colors might be good for you to use in your business? If you have a general idea of what you want, you can check out Adobe Color to select a color palette to work with (ex. you want "night sky" colors—you can search for that and see what types of colors it suggests). If you want to just browse some color palette ideas (especially if you don't really have an initial idea of where to start), coolors.co can be a great website to check out. Websites like this are helpful to make sure the set of colors you choose do work together, then you can note the CMYK, RGB, and Hex codes for those colors and start to use them on your website, in documents, and in presentations.

Do you need to use these new branding options to make social media posts or simple designed documents? Canva is a great option. Read more about my favorite web tools for social media and video (Canva is still my top recommendation, but if your organization happens to have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you can use Adobe Creative Cloud Express—formerly Adobe Spark—for no additional charge.)