How to create a brand identity in a weekend

How to create a brand identity in a weekend comes down to order: make the decisions in the right sequence and give each one a fixed amount of time. Saturday is for thinking: a positioning sentence, your audience, three personality words and a visual direction. Sunday is for making: colours, type, a signature background, templates for what you post most and a one-page guide. By Sunday evening you have an identity you can use on Monday, which beats a perfect one that is still in progress next spring.

If you want to know what a brand identity contains before you build one, read what is brand identity first. Otherwise, here is the plan.

Saturday morning: positioning, audience and personality

Start with words, not visuals. A positioning sentence is the single test every later choice has to pass. Fill in this template, then cut it until it sounds like something you would say out loud.

For [who you serve]
who [what they need or struggle with],
[your brand] is the [what you are]
that [what makes you different],
because [why anyone should believe it].

Example:
For people in the neighbourhood
who want good bread without the drive,
Corner Loaf is the local bakery
that bakes overnight, in small batches,
because everything is sold the morning it's made.

1. 1

   Name one audience

   Write down who you most want to reach, as specifically as you can. A brand for everyone ends up looking like no one.

2. 2

   Look at five competitors

   Screenshot their feeds and websites side by side. Note the colours, fonts and backgrounds they all share: those are the defaults to avoid.

3. 3

   Choose three personality words

   Pick three adjectives your audience should feel, such as warm, unhurried, honest. They will decide temperature, type and tone. Brand personality has a longer method.

Saturday afternoon: a moodboard and one direction

Collect 20 to 30 images that feel like your three words: photos, textures, packaging, interiors, type, colour. Don't limit yourself to your own industry; a bakery can learn from bookbinding. Then group them into two or three possible directions and choose one. Choosing is the point of the afternoon. How to make a brand moodboard walks through it.

For the bakery, direction B wins: every other bakery nearby uses cream and brown, and "baked overnight" is the story. Your competitor screenshots from the morning make this kind of decision easy.

Sunday morning: colour, type and a signature background

Pull two to four colours from your chosen direction and give each a job and a share: a dominant ground, a secondary colour for type and panels, and one accent. The 60-30-10 rule is a good starting ratio, and how to choose brand colours covers testing them.

For type, choose one typeface for headlines and, if you need it, one for body text. Check both on a phone at real sizes. How to choose brand fonts has the details. Then make the choice that most small brands skip: a signature background. It fills most of every design, so it's where recognition is won.

Sunday afternoon: templates and a brand kit

An identity nobody uses is not an identity. Make templates for the three things you publish most, in the formats you actually use. For most small brands that is an announcement, a quote or tip, and an offer or event, in portrait post and story sizes.

1. 1

   Build three templates

   Announcement, quote or tip, and offer or event. Keep the ground, type sizes and logo position identical across them.

2. 2

   Write a one-page guide

   Positioning sentence, three words, colours with hex codes and shares, fonts with sizes, the background and a short list of do and don't. See brand style guide.

3. 3

   Collect the kit

   One folder with logo files, fonts, colour codes, background files and templates. What goes in a brand kit has a checklist.

4. 4

   Publish something

   Post one thing on Sunday night with the new identity. Using it is what makes it real.

What to leave for later

• A custom logo: a clean wordmark in your headline font is enough to start
• Illustration and icon sets: add them when you need them, not before
• Motion rules: decide them when you first make video
• A long brand book: a one-page guide that gets used beats a long one that doesn't
• Merchandise and signage: test the identity online for a few weeks first

If you'd rather not build the signature background from scratch, the Gradiently Market holds thousands of Marks you can design with for free, and the Studio's brand kit keeps your logos, colours and fonts beside every template.