DIY branding: building a brand identity yourself

DIY branding means building your own brand identity, the words, colours, type, logo and look people recognise you by, without hiring an agency. It is entirely doable if you work in the right order: decide who you are for before you choose a single colour, settle the look before you draw a logo, and make only the assets you will use this month. The nine steps below follow that order. Set aside a few focused sessions, not a few months.

Before you design: three questions

Skip this and you will redesign everything in six weeks. Answer each question in one sentence, then copy them into the top of your brand sheet.

BRAND SHEET

Who it's for:      ______________________________
How they should feel:  ______________________________
What makes us different:  ______________________________

Palette:  ground ______  main ______  support ______  accent ______
Fonts:    heading ______  body ______
Logo:     full ______  small ______  light ______  dark ______
Signature look:  ______________________________

Always:   ______________________________
Never:    ______________________________

If you get stuck on the feeling, brand personality and brand archetypes offer useful prompts.

DIY branding in nine steps

1. 1

   Write the three sentences

   Who it's for, how they should feel, what makes you different. Short and specific beats clever.

2. 2

   Gather references

   Save twenty images you like, then remove anything from direct competitors. A brand moodboard shows how to read the patterns.

3. 3

   Choose a ground colour

   Dark or light sets the mood for everything. Pick it before any accent.

4. 4

   Build the palette around it

   Add a main colour, a supporting tone and one accent. Four or five colours in total.

5. 5

   Pick your type

   One heading face and one body face, or one family in two weights. Test them at phone size.

6. 6

   Choose a signature look

   The one element you will be known for. For most small brands, this is the background behind every design.

7. 7

   Design the logo last

   Now it has a palette and a font to belong to. A clean wordmark is a strong first version.

8. 8

   Make the assets you need now

   Profile picture, a banner, three post layouts and a story layout. Nothing else yet.

9. 9

   Write two rules, then stop

   One thing you always do and one thing you never do. Then leave it alone for three months.

Choosing colour and type yourself

The most reliable way to choose colours without training is to start from one colour you love and build outward with lighter and darker versions of it, then add a single accent from somewhere else on the wheel. This keeps the palette coherent and leaves one colour to draw the eye.

For type, test candidates on a real headline at the size it will appear on a phone, not in a font menu. A face that looks charming at large sizes can be hard to read in a 1080×1350 post viewed on a small screen. Font pairing has combinations that are hard to get wrong.

Test everything on a real post

Every decision should be judged on an actual design, at actual size, with actual words. Make one post with your palette, type and background, put it on your phone, and look at it next to the posts that usually sit near yours in the feed.

• Can you read every word in two seconds at arm's length?
• Does it look different from the three nearest competitors?
• Would it still look like you with the logo covered?
• Does it survive as a story, a banner and a profile picture?

Common DIY branding mistakes

The other quiet mistake is a signature look that is not actually yours: the same popular gradient or template that countless other accounts use. Template fatigue explains why audiences tune those out.

Tools for building a brand yourself

Any decent design tool will do for most of this. Gradiently helps with the parts DIY brands usually find hardest. Its Marks give you an original background that no other brand can export once you claim it, rendered properly at every size, with words kept readable automatically. The brand kit holds your logos, palettes, fonts and voice, and can read your website to fill in the basics. If you'd rather describe what you need, the Designer writes the words and lays out designs in your Mark, then makes the other sizes.

Whatever you use, keep the brand sheet open while you work. Most DIY brands do not fail because of a weak first look; they fail because the look slowly changes, one exception at a time, until nothing repeats.