The aesthetic is the look and feel of your brand. The creative process to establish a brand and an aesthetic can be a source of a lot of stress. The appearance you give off is how consumers will judge your business. You’ll want to have your brand convey who you are, what your business is, all while attracting the ideal client.
Get inspired
If you have a pretty good idea of your brand voice and who your ideal client might be, then this should help with finding the vibe you’re wanting to show off to clients. Are you wanting to go for something high-end? Professional? Casual? Ask yourself these questions. To get yourself inspired, find ways to jump-start your creativity. Go online such as Pinterest or social media to find images that put your aesthetic out there. Just don’t steal or copy anybody’s content, while it can be fine to take the inspiration you don’t want to copy some of the brands it will make yours look bad.
Start with a persona
After finding plenty of content and even brands online that match with what direction you’re wanting to go, you should then begin to narrow it down. Have a marketing persona will help with reaching the ideal client you have. Ask yourself questions about what this ideal person likes. What excites them? What services or products do they like? Getting a better understanding of the person you’re targeting is going to help you with developing your brand aesthetic.
Mood board
Once you have a better understanding of what your ideal client and aesthetics you like, you can create a mood board. Putting a mood board together will help pull in other aesthetics that can create your very own. The mood board can include imagery, fonts, colors, ads, user content, and so much more. Having all of your inspo broken down into a big collage will help you streamline your vision. Canva is a great option for making a mood board.
Consistency is Key
An aesthetic has to have some consistency, not just the type of imagery used but the colors, layout, style, or even filters. Your branding needs to tie in together. This will include how you market your business online such as social media, to physical items to establish your brand such as silver foil sticker printing for example. You’ll want to maintain consistency across your social, website, and physical branded products. This consistency is what is going to make your clients remember you.
Make it Work Everywhere
As mentioned above, you’ll want to have consistency with the aesthetic of your brand. But you’ll also want to make this work for your new business. Will your aesthetic look good on a physical product? With digital media being prevalent now more than ever, it can be a bit easier to establish an aesthetic there. It’s not just your business name, a fancy logo, or a motto that you’ll find in printed ads. Digital media consist of your website, online advertising, content creation, and social media. So you’ll want to be sure you’re picking a style that goes together beautifully but can also be printed or brought to life physically too.
Your brand aesthetic should be cohesive, authentic to you, and work well to bring it to like outside the digital world. It’s fine to experiment until you achieve what you’re after but you’ll also want to keep in mind what your audience likes and wants to see.
