A Minimalist's Guide to Branding
I pin pretty brands to my secret Pinterest boards just like you do. Branding is fun and creative, and can make things feel really “official”. But it can also be a startup’s Achilles heel because while it’s true that all of the finer details of a brand are important to get right, branding is ultimately an art that's super subjective. This means that there really are no “right” or “wrong” answers.
In true minimalist fashion, my take on brand design tends to lean towards getting something out there that works rather than getting mired in details that no one will ever notice. As a former brand designer, I have definitely seen lots of clients with great products and services miss their moment by spending too much time and money obsessing over whether they should go with the bold or regular version of a font.
From a business perspective, the more time & resources you sink into your new brand, the less cost-effective it becomes and I can almost 100% guarantee that the finer details you’re obsessing over will be lost on customers. This is because branding is more than a design - it’s an experience. More importantly, a minimalist brand design can be powerful, adaptive, and even bold if you want it to be. Keep reading for more, plus my shortlist of the brand essentials you absolutely need.
Simple Is Powerful
Have you ever noticed that some of the most expensive products have some of the most minimal branding? Complicated design actually ends up looking pretty cheap, and cluttered labels or packaging can make it look like you don’t know what you’re doing or who you want to appeal to. Picking one or two fonts or one signature brand color shows confidence and is often all consumers need to be able to connect with a brand. Too many elements, doodles, illustrations, and colors are just noise that stands to distract people from your message. It’s also important to remember that legible matters more than cute so if your fonts are so ornate or swirly that people literally aren’t sure what you’re saying this is also a problem.
Minimal is Adaptive
Sure having a 42-page brand identity handbook seems cool but let’s be honest - most new businesses and startups don’t have enough info to be able to know what will resonate with customers or what will perform well in their space. Not only does this make committing to a complicated brand design upfront not very smart from a business standpoint, it means that when feedback and analytics do start rolling in, the design system can’t pivot or keep up with all the changes. I always think it’s better to launch and iterate. Just make some initial decisions and move forward. You don’t have to live with them forever; things like logos, fonts, colors, even names - all totally changeable down the road. Being able to adapt quickly to market shifts, customer preferences or industry trends is a competitive advantage!
Refined Doesn’t Mean Boring
Minimal doesn’t have to be generic. Simple can be bold, colorful, or even edgy. Check out this post from Canva that has some great examples of minimal brands that are impactful and engaging. Some tricks to making a minimal design stand out are to play with scale (making things much larger or smaller than expected) or to use color in an expected way. This could be anything from going all-in with one bold signature color or using a refined palette that’s completely different from anyone else in your industry. Lastly, as I’ve mentioned before, consistency matters more than anything. You may be “bored” with a minimalist brand that doesn’t have a lot of elements to “play” with but that’s because you see it every day. Customers are bombarded with thousands of messages and brands every minute and need the simplicity and clarity of a consistent, simple-to-identity brand.
What You Need
In this post on how to set up your first online shop, I included a quick list of what brand details I think you need at a minimum from a web design perspective. Here’s that same list, expanded with a few extra details and examples.
Logos
A primary text-based logo in just one or two colors
A simplified square logo to be used as a favicon and social media profile pics. (This is often a monogram or icon.)
Colors
A simple color palette which consists of 3-4 colors:
One dark color, preferably something neutral that will be used for copy and to use a background for white/light text
One light color, used mostly for backgrounds
One bold accent color used to attract attention for things like buttons, links, and other CTAs
One softer accent color (optional), to be used sparingly for secondary CTAs and liven up the design
Fonts
There are lots of resources out there about picking great fonts. I really like some of the posts that GoLiveHQ has like this one or this one. Something that I really recommend when it comes to fonts that makes life wayyyyyyy easier is to make a list of all the software/programs that you’re going to be using and pick fonts that are available on all those apps.
For example, Proxima Nova is a popular Squarespace font but it’s not available on Canva. This means if you use Canva to make your social media graphics that you’ll have to pick something close to but not exactly the same as Proxima Nova. A lot of programs do let you add custom fonts but many don’t and even if this is a possibility it’s often an extra tech step that most people would rather skip.
Beyond making sure that the fonts you want to use are available on all the programs that are essential for your business, I recommend keeping fonts simple. Select one headline font, one complementary body font and if you really must, just one accent font that is used super sparingly.
Headline Font
Body Font
Optional “Accent” Font
That’s it!
The key is to set some initial brand elements up so you have things to work with… but then build yourself in some flexibility to adapt and change your brand as your business grows and evolves!
