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The Best Free or Cheap Tools for DIYing Your Visual Brand by Sierra Kellermeyer

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Just because you’ve decided to design your visual brand yourself, doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch. There are plenty of free or cheap tools created by designers that can save you time and energy and help make your DIYed visual brand look professional.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Graphics Software

Everyone has probably heard of Canva – right now it’s a fan favorite among DIYers. While it’s a good choice for those who want simple graphics and don’t want to spend much time learning new software, it is limited in its capabilities.

If you’re willing to put in some time learning some more robust software, I suggest looking at some of Adobe’s options. Adobe’s software is the industry standard in almost every digital visual media, which means tutorials and walkthroughs are available in any format you could want.

You can download any of their software for a 7-day free trial to try them out.

My top suggestions are:

Adobe Illustrator – good for creating logos, icons, and illustrations

Adobe Photoshop – a versatile tool that can handle pretty much any image format, but can’t create scalable vectors like Illustrator

If you do decide to continue using the programs after 7 days, you can get Photoshop for $10/mo through Adobe’s photography bundle, and/or get Adobe Illustrator for $20/mo.

I suggest using either of them over Canva because they handle outside resources like fonts, illustrations, and logos more easily.

Logos

Unless you have an eye for design, I don’t suggest designing your logo completely on your own. Instead, you can buy a template from Creative Market for under $30 and customize it to match your color palette and name. By working from a template, you ensure your logo looks professional without having to pay for custom design work.

(Also be sure to sign up to CreativeMarket’s mailing list to receive 6 free resources every Monday.)

Fonts

FontSquirrel is the best font resource I’ve found in my 13+ years of designing. All of their cataloged fonts are free (with the occasional low-priced option), and specifically free for commercial use, so they can be legally used for your business.

FontSquirrel has plenty of options, but if you want a font that’s a little more unique for headers or a special graphic, CreativeMarket has some great reasonably priced options.

Color Palettes

Thankfully you don’t have to pay to use certain colors, but if you need help coming up with a color palette that works together, check out ColourLovers. Users upload color palettes, complete with the hex code you can use in your website or design software, which makes it easy to browse palettes, find one you like, and implement it in your visual brand.

Photos

Finding commercially-free photos can be a challenge for business owners, but UnSplash and Pexels have libraries you can browse of photos submitted by photographers that can be used commercially for free. And if you need a photo of a specific object or scene, try looking on CreativeMarket before heading to the pricier stock photo websites.

Icons

Finding nice icons can really help bring your website or graphic together, which is why I love IconFinder. They have cheap and free options for icons of various topics. Just be sure to click “For Commercial Use” under the License Type filter.

That’s it! With just these few resources, you can design a professional visual brand without breaking the bank.

—

Sierra Kellermeyer who helps business owners who are tired of their marketing efforts pulling “okay” results. She helps them stand out online by designing a noteworthy visual brand that attracts their ideal clients effortlessly. She says, “My favorite part of brand design is the marriage of creativity and strategy. I’m not simply creating something beautiful, I’m creating something beautiful that works and has a purpose.”

There’s a lot of misconception about visual branding, with people thinking it’s just about looking good, but it’s more than that. “Your visual brand is a communication tool, and if you’re only trying to make something that looks nice, rather than telling your audience about your business, you’re missing out.”

Sierra will be sharing her visual branding tips in February, May, August, and November. In the meantime, you can find her online at:

https://www.skellermeyerdesigns.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skellermeyerdesigns2014/

What to Focus on When Designing Your Visual Brand by Sierra Kellermeyer

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Your business is new, or you know you need to update your visual brand, but based on your budget, you know you’re going to have to design it yourself.

That can be an intimidating prospect, but before you start creating something just based on what looks good to you, I have a few tips for what you should be focusing on when designing your visual brand.

Communication

What do you want your visual brand to tell your potential clients about your business?

Your visual brand is, in its most basic form, communication. Instead of communicating in words, you’re communicating through color and imagery. Those words and imagery have implied meanings based on culture and psychology. You want to utilize those implied meanings to tell your potential clients about your business.

For example, if you run a yoga studio, you probably want to focus on cool colors, because they make people feel calm and relaxed. But if you run an arcade, bright, vibrant colors that feel energetic are going to be a better choice.

As you’re making decisions for your visual brand, ask yourself, “What will this make my potential clients assume about my business?”

Professionalism

Designing your visual brand yourself to save money is great when you’re starting out or you have a tight budget, but that doesn’t mean you should accept unprofessional-looking designs.

Buying cheap templates from websites such as CreativeMarket.com is a great, budget-friendly way to ensure your visual brand looks professional.

A polished, but slightly cliche or unoriginal, visual brand will make a better impression on your potential clients than an original but sloppy one.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to have an original AND highly professional visual brand, but templates are great until you can afford to hire a designer.

Unity

As your visual brand comes together, keep looking at all of your graphics together. Do they look like they’re all related? Does your logo have nothing in common with your web banners? Do you leave out your core brand color on your business cards?

One of the jobs of your visual brand is to connect positive experiences with your business together.

For example, if you meet someone, and they seem interested in your services, and you hand them a business card, they should be able to remember that experience when they see your post on social media.

By tieing those two experiences together, with a business card and social media post that look connected,  you’re making it easier for people to remember your business. Instead of relying on one impression to convince your potential clients to work with you, you’re building a sequence of good impressions on your audience that are easily remembered because of your unified visual brand.

I hope you found these tips helpful, and you’re able to think bigger than just trying to make a visual brand that looks good, and make one that’s communicative, professional, and unified.

—

Sierra Kellermeyer who helps business owners who are tired of their marketing efforts pulling “okay” results. She helps them stand out online by designing a noteworthy visual brand that attracts their ideal clients effortlessly. She says, “My favorite part of brand design is the marriage of creativity and strategy. I’m not simply creating something beautiful, I’m creating something beautiful that works and has a purpose.”

There’s a lot of misconception about visual branding, with people thinking it’s just about looking good, but it’s more than that. “Your visual brand is a communication tool, and if you’re only trying to make something that looks nice, rather than telling your audience about your business, you’re missing out.”

Sierra will be sharing her visual branding tips in February, May, August, and November. In the meantime, you can find her online at:

https://www.skellermeyerdesigns.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skellermeyerdesigns2014/

Why Squarespace Is Great For Small Business Owners by Sierra Kellermeyer

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As a business owner in 2018, you know you need a website for your business. But there are an overwhelming amount of options out there for someone wanting to build their own website. It can be hard to figure out how to pick a platform.

If you’re trying to figure out how to get your business online, let me suggest Squarespace.

Let me tell you why.

IT’S COST-EFFECTIVE

If you’re a small business owner, you have to make smart financial decisions to keep your business running. This means balancing cost with functionality. Squarespace may not seem like the cheapest option at first glance, but it will save you money in unexpected ways.

Domain Hosting & Design In One Spot

You can purchase your domain name (www.exampleofadomainname.com) from Squarespace as well as design your website from the same login portal, which means you only have one monthly (or yearly, depending on how you choose to pay) bill for your website. You can also purchase your own email address using Google’s G-Suite through Squarespace for just $5/mo. So a basic website, with a custom domain and custom email address could cost you as little as $21/mo.

Customizable Templates

Custom-designed websites cost an arm and a leg, but you don’t have to muddle your way through a boring template in order to have a budget-conscious website. Squarespace templates are beautiful, with many options for customization, so you don’t have to choose between paying thousands of dollars for custom code or have a generic-looking website.

Mobile-Responsive Templates

In 2016, mobile users surpassed desktop users in overall internet use. (Source.) To create a mobile-responsive website usually involves a lot of extra coding, which means spending a lot more money on a web developer. However, ALL of Squarespace’s templates are already mobile-responsive, which means no extra costs for you! (Bonus! Mobile-responsive sites also rank higher on Google.)

IT’S EASY TO LEARN

Clean and Simple Backend

What I’ve found with website hosts cheaper than Squarespace is that while you may pay less out of pocket, their backend is so confusing that you waste hours of your life just figuring out how to change or update one thing on your website. In contrast, Squarespace’s layout is a toolbar with simple categories on the left-hand side of your screen with your website on the right. On top of that, any change to make to your website you can see in real time.

Excellent Tutorials

If the rest of the benefits hadn’t sold me on Squarespace, their tutorials would have. Their instructions are clear, thorough, and incredibly easy to follow. They even has specific tutorials for each template, so if you’re running into trouble with your website, you don’t have to follow generic instructions – you can find some directly related to your template and problem.

IT HAS EXCELLENT SUPPORT

I could have added this as a point under #2, but this is such a big deal in the website industry I thought I’d call special attention to it.

Every time I’ve made contact with the Squarespace support team, they’ve been courteous and efficient, and my issue has been resolved within 48 hours of my email. I find this especially important as a business owner, because having my website go down at all can cost me significant time and money. I never worry about that happening with Squarespace support just an email away.

No other website hosting platform has impressed me nearly as much as SquareSpace has, and they continue to add new templates and features. If you’re looking for a website solution for your business that won’t waste your time or money, I cannot recommend SquareSpace more.

Sierra Kellermeyer who helps business owners who are tired of their marketing efforts pulling “okay” results. She helps them stand out online by designing a noteworthy visual brand that attracts their ideal clients effortlessly. She says, “My favorite part of brand design is the marriage of creativity and strategy. I’m not simply creating something beautiful, I’m creating something beautiful that works and has a purpose.”

There’s a lot of misconception about visual branding, with people thinking it’s just about looking good, but it’s more than that. “Your visual brand is a communication tool, and if you’re only trying to make something that looks nice, rather than telling your audience about your business, you’re missing out.”

Sierra will be sharing her visual branding tips in February, May, August, and November. In the meantime, you can find her online at:

https://www.skellermeyerdesigns.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skellermeyerdesigns2014/

5 Tips for DIY-ing Your Visual Brand by Sierra Kellermeyer

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As small business owners, we often have to wear many hats – CEO, copywriter, social media manager, designer, etc. If you’re wearing your designer hat at the moment and trying to figure out how to create a logo and a cohesive visual brand, I have five simple tips to help make that process easier.

#1: Decide on Your Message

Do you know what the difference between design and decoration is? The message. Design communicates something, while decoration is purely about creating aesthetic pleasure.

Design is more powerful than decoration, so think about the message you want to convey.

I suggest focusing on these three pillars of your business:

  • Who you are
  • Who you serve
  • How you serve them

#2: Keep It Simple

In your message and your images, the old K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) acronym is still great advice.

You want to keep the message your visual brand communicates simple, so that it comes across clearly. I advise my clients to reduce their visual brand message to five words; their brand personality.

For example, a web designer may have an innovative, modern, sharp, skillful, problem-solving brand personality.

By reducing your visual brand’s message down to five value words, you can focus your design to communicate just those qualities, giving you a strong and focused message.

But simplicity doesn’t just help you in your message. Selecting a limited color palette, and just one or two fonts will not only help your visual brand stay consistent and reliable, but will also help you spend less time designing.

#3: Don’t Design Your Own Logo

This may be an odd bit of advice for a DIY-focused post, but logos are one of the most challenging design projects you can take on. A lot of trained graphic designers even avoid designing logos.

So what’s the best course of action for a small business owner with a small budget?

Buy a template.

I suggest buying a logo design template from either Creative Market or Etsy. (Don’t forget to find one that matches your brand personality.) This guarantees your logo will look professional, and will save you a lot of time studying logo design.

Now, a logo made from a template or purchased through Creative Market or Etsy isn’t a long-term solution if you plan on growing your business. The main reason being, you can’t trademark something made with a template. Eventually you’ll want to invest in a logo custom designed for your business, but when you’re just starting out, a template logo can really help boost your professionalism until your budget gets a little bigger.

#4: Read Up on Color Psychology

Color psychology is about how people and cultures react to different colors. For example, blue has a calming effect, while yellow is energizing and cheerful.

Because of the strong emotional connection between color and emotion, your color palette is a great place to showcase that brand personality you chose earlier.

For ease, I suggest choosing one main color, one accent color, and one to two neutral colors to be used with black and white as your color palette. That combination gives you plenty of flexibility, without being overwhelming.

#5: Create Branding Guidelines

Creating a document, or even just a folder on your computer, that contains your logo, color palette, font selection, and photos will help you keep your visual brand consistent.

It’s especially helpful to collect a bunch of stock photos at once, so you can focus on choosing a handful that work well together and reflect your brand personality, instead of choosing a random photo when the need arises.

Following these five tips will not only give you a consistent and communicative visual brand, but it will make the work of designing your visual brand much easier.

Sierra Kellermeyer who helps business owners who are tired of their marketing efforts pulling “okay” results. She helps them stand out online by designing a noteworthy visual brand that attracts their ideal clients effortlessly. She says, “My favorite part of brand design is the marriage of creativity and strategy. I’m not simply creating something beautiful, I’m creating something beautiful that works and has a purpose.”

There’s a lot of misconception about visual branding, with people thinking it’s just about looking good, but it’s more than that. “Your visual brand is a communication tool, and if you’re only trying to make something that looks nice, rather than telling your audience about your business, you’re missing out.”

Sierra will be sharing her visual branding tips in February, May, August, and November. In the meantime, you can find her online at:

https://www.skellermeyerdesigns.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skellermeyerdesigns2014/

Three Ways to Improve Your Online Presence, One Blog

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Running a business requires more than one skill set. It’s not enough to create the products your selling or provide a certain service – you also need to have a good understanding of finances, accounting, marketing, customer service, etc.

Or you need to know someone else who understands those things.

As a copywriter, I love to share tips about how businesses and organizations can improve their online presence, but there’s more to it than just writing. That’s why I’m partnering with two other professionals who have the knowledge and experience it takes to strengthen a brand. I’m excited to announce my partnership with graphic designer Sierra Kellermeyer of S. Kellermeyer Designs and social media strategist Leslie Krukowski of Black Dog Business Group.

Sierra Kellermeyer who helps business owners who are tired of their marketing efforts pulling “okay” results. She helps them stand out online by designing a noteworthy visual brand that attracts their ideal clients effortlessly. She says, “My favorite part of brand design is the marriage of creativity and strategy. I’m not simply creating something beautiful, I’m creating something beautiful that works and has a purpose.”

There’s a lot of misconception about visual branding, with people thinking it’s just about looking good, but it’s more than that. “Your visual brand is a communication tool, and if you’re only trying to make something that looks nice, rather than telling your audience about your business, you’re missing out.”

Sierra will be sharing her visual branding tips in February, May, August, and November. In the meantime, you can find her online at:

https://www.skellermeyerdesigns.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skellermeyerdesigns2014/

Leslie Krukowski is the principal, CEO, and main consultant of Black Dog Business Group. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English and sub-concentrations in both marketing and business management. After spending several years in management, marketing, and social media marketing positions, she received a Master’s Degree in Administration.

Leslie understands the power of social media (having attracted out-of-state clients through her effective use of posts and hashtags), and she wants to help other business owners learn how to harness it too. By staying up-to-date with algorithms, trends, and social media best practices, she has helped businesses grow their audiences and improve sales.

Leslie will be sharing her social media tips in March, June, September, and December. You can find her online at:

https://www.blackdogbusinessgroup.com/
https://www.facebook.com/blackdogbusinessgroup/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/25019406/
https://www.instagram.com/blackdogbusinessgroup/

I’ll still be sharing my content tips as well, but I’m thrilled to be able to offer so much more on this blog, and I hope you’ll join us to learn more about how you can strengthen your online presence!

Do you have any questions for the experts? If so, please leave a comment below!

Did you find this information helpful? Sign up now to receive more business writing and entrepreneurial tips right in your inbox! And don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook!

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Editor. Teacher. Novelist.
A passionate lover of fiction, Karin doesn't just write novels, she helps others write their best stories! A certified substantive editor with the Christian Editor Connection, her goal is to help authors to put her out of business by equipping them with the tools they need to become better writers.

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