Have you ever felt like you just wanted to refresh your look, routine or space? You know like getting a slightly different hair cut or mix up the way you do your eye makeup. Getting up that little bit early to fit in some reading or exercise in or maybe you have an urge to swap out your old slightly tea stained bedding for a new one or repaint your room. Either way a refresh in life can be a really nice thing, and I think we feel most inspired to do this specially at the start of the year.
Is your brand may be showing signs of wear and tear?
It doesn’t need to be a full on re-brand or anything. But more so a few little tweaks and pinches here and there to make you look fresh faced! Today I’ll take you through just a few simple ways you can refresh your brand. Helping you breath some new life into your online identity.
Subtle Logo Change
Let first look at your logo, now if you had it professional crafted I would encourage you to think twice before making any changes. However, if your logo was something you mocked up or was a pre-made logo then it’s safer for you to make a few minor tweaks. Many large company adopt the method of subtle changes over time. This mean your audience don’t really notice your logo changing. A few ways to make your logo feel more current is maybe simplify it a little more. If you have a loot of extras and graphic element see what it looks like with less. Plus if your logo is using lots of colours you might want to reduce this down to one or two.
Add Alternative Logo Variations
If you haven’t already to refresh your brand visual elements, you could consider including other alternative logo’s. It’s always good practice to have Alternative logo to compliment you primary logo. The variation logos are usually simplified and usually use a different layout to make it more flexible for you to use. Specially when you need a smaller logo for a small screen like mobile. Or even smaller like a favicon icon – a favicon is that little icon or symbol on the top you web tab page very small.
Subtle Typeface Refresh
The second refresh and subtable change you can make is with your typeface. Take a look over at all typefaces you use brands commonly have at least 2 main typefaces. One for headings and a second for paragraphs. Maybe it’s time to think about if your typefaces are really working. Is it easily legible on all types of screens? If your using a serifs typeface, see if you can find one that is still very similar feel but maybe looks a little more new? If you’ve sourced all your typeface from free websites maybe think about if you want to swap them out for something a little more special. Like investing in a few paid fonts for you brand.
Colour Palette Tweaks
Moving onto polishing up your colour palette or even add a new colour to it. Just like with all trends things come and go and although brands shouldn’t be built on trends you still will want to keep looking fresh with your own identity. This is why I would consider not really changing your colours as such but consider maybe looking if you can update a few colours within if you think slightly different tone works. Or even consider introducing a new colour to your collection? If you’ve been using 2 colours for everything it might be time to add more supporting colours into your brand. The only colours I would be wary about changing is you hero colours you may have 1 or 2 of these, they are your main colours and unless you really want to I wouldn’t mess around with these too much.
Quick Website Refresh
Another way to refresh your brand is looking over your website. Maybe give your website this year a little lift, I know we all get busy through the year. But your website is like the outside of a physical shop, so don’t let it all grubby and frail looking! Keep it looking update! Some things you could think about doing on your site is replace pictures with newer ones. Or keep all the same content and just slightly re-arrange your layout. Maybe do a little check to how easy it is for your people to find everything they want and make some practical update to your navigation. Other thing you could consider including is adding some new icons, update your copy, and about page etc.
Social Media Tempalte
Last thing you could update is your social media templates etc. If you usually post on Instagram carosuel etc you could recreate some new layout design. Your new layout should still feel like you so when it hit peoples feeds they can still tell its you. But may spike your followers interest. Plus your home-feed can have a slightly different feel to last years. Showing you stay active and up to date. Plus even consider to updating your profile and bio picture etc. If you do this i would consider change all your social media channels to the same profile picture.
There you have it five ways you can make your brand feel a little refreshed this year! Now it’s your turn to go away have little look over your brand and see how you can make it a bit look to date and keep it feeling exciting and appealing to your people. If you still haven’t create any goals or plans check out all my previous episodes on how to create a system to plan and choose the right goals.