Picking a brand graphic style is one of the most creative and stimulating phases of the brand building process. This is where you’ll make some bold upfront decisions about the personality of your brand and the market you want to appeal to. Your brand will begin to glow with its own particular energy.
Creating an instant first impression of what your brand is all about means using certain conventions that viewers are familiar with. At the same time, you want to avoid the trap of sameness to ensure that your brand is distinct in its category.
Here are three goals to think about as you consider your options:
Pick a broad brand graphic style. Go with a category that feels most suited to your brand. This could include something that doesn’t just look cool, but also helps to establish the right context and industry.
Use aesthetic guard-rails to narrow down decisions. Be selective when it comes to choosing the graphics, colors, and fonts that will add up to your unique brand identity. Careful consideration at this stage will ultimately make your design process faster and easier. Slow down at the start to speed up at the end.
Striking the right balance between strategy and creativity
This task isn’t always easy, but we’re here to show you how to hit the right note with your brand graphic style and identity.
For example, we might associate a real estate brand with a corporate style:
But a savvy new agency with a playful aesthetic might seem more approachable. They’re more likely to be in touch with the younger generation, if that’s who they’re targeting.
On the flipside, you’ll need to consider your brand’s style. If it’s too bold and playful it could create an impression of being wild and reckless. Some people might hesitate in making their life’s largest financial investment with you.
Why it’s important to be consistent
Being consistent is not only about making your life easier, but also about developing consistency with your brand’s visual identity. If you’re switching up your graphics every two weeks, customers have to constantly rewire their associations with your style.
By keeping things consistent, people will become familiar with your brand on sight. Over time, they’ll feel like they know you. Consistency and reliability are traits that define trustworthy people — and the same is true for your brand.
This definitely doesn’t mean locking yourself into a very specific aesthetic. We’re setting up guidelines for your brand, not laws.
But these will be variations of a consistent theme. Try to avoid knee-jerking departures from the brand identity you’re building over time.
You should absolutely keep an eye out for new trends that you can incorporate into your designs. This will help you keep things fresh and relevant. At the same time, make sure they work within your world. Don’t get distracted by every shiny new thing on your Instagram feed.
Building a brand identity is a process. You need to commit to it and see it through to ultimately reap the benefits.
Defining a brand graphic style
Labels can be problematic, but they’re useful when considering big aesthetic categories for your brand’s style. You might ultimately describe your unique style as “Neo-Glitchwave-Industrial” or “Maximalist-Tropical-Psychedelia,” but we need to start with broad strokes at first.
Style is of course subjective, but there are some categories that are universally agreed upon. If nothing else, these categories help designers and clients communicate better with each other.
We typically refer to ten key design themes, or brand graphic styles, from which almost any variation or combination is possible:
Bold
Organic
Modern
Minimal
Playful
Street
Elegant
Corporate
Classic
Luxury
As we take take a closer look at each one, consider the following ideas:
The characteristics of each style
Typography usage
Industries they suit best
Availability
While there’s definitely logic involved in making these decisions, your eye will almost certainly gravitate towards the brand graphic style that feels right for your brand. Trust these instincts.
Bold
This style is completely unmissable in contemporary design and is easy on the eye. Let’s take a look at what makes this design style so unique.
Key characteristics
As the name implies, the foundation of this aesthetic includes big chunky shapes, graphics, and colors. Bold is also a kind of personality too. Think of it as an individual (or a brand) with confidence, charisma, and vision.
It’s key characteristics are:
High impact
High contrast
Clean
Geometric
Super-sized
Although this brand graphic style isn’t very complex, words and shapes can be super-sized to dominate the composition. Its aesthetic is striking, typically quite geometric, with very deliberate composition. You’ll also notice that impactful photographic imagery is often part of the package.
Typography style
Typography plays a big role here. It frequently steals the show altogether with text as design. Bold fonts tend to be from the Sans-Serif family and include styles that are:
Fat
Wide
Bold Condensed
Display fonts that sometimes have design detail (think inlaid textures or patterns)
As such, bold styling often revolves around unmissable messaging.
Unlike street style, which has a big overlap with similar industries, bold keeps things:
Clean
Refined
Hard-edged
Texture, fading, and imperfection aren’t big features of this brand graphic style. These are better explored through flat or high contrast color expression. There’s also no sense of nostalgia, since bold is of the here and now.
Industries best suited for
Anyone can be bold, but these are the industries most likely to adopt a brave and striking aesthetic, reflective of their progressive attitude:
Urban lifestyle brands
Urban fashion brands
Art & design sectors
Music industry
Product retail industry
Tech industry
What to check out
When picking out graphics for your bold brand style, think abstract shapes and high contrast patterns.
You can create simple patterns by playfully stacking basic shapes in high contrast colors. Using shapes as clean, slick, stickers is a noteworthy trend within the bold domain.
Organic
Classical brand graphic styles typically revolve around:
Grids
Margins
Baselines
Geometry is the framework that holds everything together in a precisely measured way. Fluid, organic design rebels against this formalism with a more intuitive approach.
Key characteristics
Organic design often evokes a feeling of harmony and flow, which is more natural than mechanical. Key style characteristics include choices that are:
Fluid
Flowing
Harmonious
Natural
Handmade
If you’re seeking out a very expressive brand graphic style – more spontaneous than rational – then you’ve arrived at the right chapter in our story.
The organic brand style can draw on a very handmade aesthetic. It often calls to mind the texture and curvaceousness of the living world (think pebbles, leaves, and rivers). For brands moving in this direction, your color palette will inevitably reference nature. You should draw from the tones of:
Sand
Rock
Forests
Ocean
Typography style
Anything that resembles imperfection is a hallmark of this visual brand graphic style. It’s not a bad idea to pick an expressive organic font for headlines. You can even pair this with a simple and legible sans-serif for copy in your designs. Fonts in this dimension would typically be:
Loose
Flowing
Handwritten
Other types of fonts that make sense here could include:
Brush scripts
Handmade lettering
Textured fonts
The organic style can also be applied in a more vibrant “pop” mode. It should present as fluid and overlap shapes in flat or bright colors. In this more clean-cut approach, your fonts should be drawn from the same collections as a bold or modern aesthetic.
Industries best suited for
Industries that you’re most likely to see playing in the world of organic brand graphic style, include:
Beauty
Skincare
Lifestyle
Retail – crafted, product
Bloggers
Fashion
Art
Alternative health & wellness
Health Food
Wellness professionals: physio, nutritionist etc.
What to check out
There’s plenty of brand graphic style choices in this department. Stock up on a wide range of the following options to customize your brand’s organic identity:
Shapes
Illustrations
Decorative flair
Beyond our range of fluid shapes and patterns, you can choose from these handmade choices as complementary graphics:
Doodles
Lines
Sketches
Modern
Modern doesn’t necessarily mean contemporary or the opposite of old-fashioned. In the aesthetic sense of the word, this brand style references a specific time period between the 1940s and the 1960s. This is when a clean-cut, restrained, and functional brand graphic style rose to popularity.
Key characteristics
Today, modern design is constantly evolving. But some of its central characteristics remain rooted in the new ideas of this era. Some of these key style characteristics include:
Contemporary
Clean
Structured
Strong
Minimalist
More contemporary interpretations use a clean or crisp layout as the foundation of a design. They also layer the following brand graphic styles on top of this as a point of contrast:
Shapes
Vivid colors
Synthetic textures
Typography style
Modern brand graphic style uses blocking of color and strong imagery, with highly legible text. The typefaces can be structured Display Sans Serifs or Serifs, but they should always be legible and strategically placed. The white space is less than that seen on minimal aesthetics, thus steering them apart.
Colors tend to be neutral and mixed with contrasted tones like charcoal, black, or a stronger hue. You’ll normally see one color as the accent, mixed in with white or neutral tones.
Industries best suited for
Industries that would typically lean towards a modern style include:
High end product/retail
Architecture/Interiors
Fashion
High-end Real Estate
Lifestyle brands
Hospitality (eg. Hotels)
Business (Finance, Legal)
What to check out
If a modern design is the brand graphic style for you, check out the curated selection of the Graphic Packs. Bear in mind that some subtle graphics — like high contrast patterns or delicate texture — could also add visual interest to an otherwise structured modern design.
Monochrome is a brilliant example of a unified brand identity in a modern style. We’ve created this layout collection for you to bypass all the tricky design decisions. It’s made so you can easily switch out your graphics, fonts, and images. Within minutes, you could have a cross-platform campaign ready to go. Start to imagine the perception of your brand with a more professional look and feel.
Minimal
Less is more is the minimalist mantra. It’s often said that the best design is invisible. This is especially true when working with this brand graphic style.
Key characteristics
This design doesn’t try to steal the show — it’s chiefly about showcasing the content. A minimal brand style graphic sets up a subtle, but highly efficient framework for this.
Its key style characteristics include:
Precision
Balance
Grids
Space
Restraint
The overriding look and feel is:
Clean
Crisp
Timeless
Most minimal brand graphic styles include a large amount of empty space in the composition. It attempts to focus the eye rather than allowing it to explore the page. This is a no-frills attitude that suggests confidence in your offering. It shows that you value quality over quantity and that your brand is focused, with clarity of vision.
Typography style
The heart of every minimalist design is a typeface that’s clean and easy to read. A contemporary take on minimalism would usually rely on simple Sans-Serif fonts or one of the on-trend Delicate Serifs. Classical Roman serifs would also feel right at home in a more elegant or luxurious brand graphic style.
Color palettes are very limited and subdued in this design expression. It falls in line with maintaining focus on the core message and transmits a feeling of visual tranquility. Hues tend to be natural or pastel, with subtle contrast created through darker and lighter tones of the same color.
Industries best suited for
The minimal aesthetic is for brands that want something simple, but memorable. The content is more of the hero than the design style here. Categories where you’re likely to see this style dominate include:
Fashion
Beauty & Skincare
Health and Wellness
Consulting
Graphic Design
Home Decor
Design
On a minimalist canvas, graphics ought to be used sparingly and with great consideration. Clutter is a big no-no, so you’re likely to only use one or two simple shapes, lines, or markings as an accent in a spacious design. Repeating patterns are generally a bit overwhelming in this style. If you’re looking for illustrations, think thin, hand-drawn sketches, and doodles.
What to check out
The Retail Modern Minimal layout collection is a great example of how a minimalist visual style can be used to develop a slick, coherent, and professional brand identity. You can easily customize this professional design with your own colors, fonts, and imagery, and create your own minimal masterpiece in minutes.
Playful
You’ll probably know your brand graphic style is destined to be playful at the very sight of the word. If you have a playful brand, this is likely already woven into the DNA of your product, your company, and your view of the world.
Key characteristics
Brands aimed at kids are obvious candidates here, but a playful aesthetic in design has universal appeal. It typically conjures up a sense of being:
Fun
Loose
Energetic
Child-like
Humorous
Spontaneous
Whether it’s cryptocurrency or frozen yoghurt, this brand graphic style is for those that want to be seen as friendly and approachable. It puts people at ease and can make dreaded adulting necessities (like insurance, finance, travel, real estate etc.) less daunting and even appealing.
Don’t be fooled into thinking playful is synonymous with silly. Some of the world’s biggest brands opt for this approach in their brand identity or multi-million dollar campaigns. Childlike expression has been a surging trend in both art and fashion for a while now. It often overrides structured designs and represents unbridled creative energy with:
Spontaneous patterns
Marks
Doodles
Typography style
This visual brand graphic style is synonymous with handwritten and rounded typefaces. It rejects machine-made typography in favor of a more handmade look and the feel is indicative of the underlying spirit that celebrates:
Humanity
Authenticity
Simplicity
It’s an emotive approach that focuses more on feeling rather than logic. Beyond communicating a message, it ought to be fun to look at and ignite a teeny spark of joy.
There aren’t too many hard rules in the color department here, but it goes without saying that bright and vivid hues would be the order of the day. There’s also more license to pick out a wider color palette than with other brand graphic styles. In fact, it’s often the experimentation of unusual color combinations that adds the playfulness to this design.
Industries best suited for
Again, don’t think too literally here. A playful visual style is broadly applicable. Some of the most obvious industries that might consider this colorful and energetic approach would be:
Babies & kids
Food & drinks
Restaurants
Clothing apparel
Arts, DIY and crafts
Designers
What to check out
If you’re looking for graphics to build up your playful brand identity, your biggest problem is probably going to be one of choice. A playful brand graphic style really opens itself up to using graphics as decorative elements that add energy and curiosity to your design.
Thousands of choices to choose from, but our Collage option is a playful example with diverse graphics. Illustrations often make sense here and can range from:
Cute
Simplified
Realistic
Sketchy
Abstract
Try to narrow it down to one style that suits your specific flavor and remember to stay consistent with your selection.
Street
The culture of rebellion has many guises that range from punk to hip-hop to vaporwave. These examples form the foundation of the street aesthetic and have a broad style that caters to a huge range of brands in the music, fashion, and lifestyle domains.
Key characteristics
This brand graphic style is highly susceptible to trend cycles and often hard to pin down because of its constant evolution.
However, the following key characteristics offer a more general overview:
Raw
Real
Rough
Gritty
Grunge
Of course, there are some overarching characteristics that tend to orbit around what the street style is rebelling against. Pixel-perfect precision and classical graphic design ideals have little place in the street style playbook. Designers who work in this visual brand graphic style often strive to distort, fade, warp, or deconstruct their imagery.
Wilder variations of street style might even go so far as to be considered anti-design and the goal can be considered a beautiful chaos. It has compositions that intrigue viewers because of its unconventional complexity.
Color palettes are defined by a willingness to experiment and stand out with striking or unexpected combinations. This is where you’re most likely to see neon or synthetic hues, often swirling with energy.
Typography style
You’ll want to pick out a couple of unique Display fonts to hero your collection. Typography in this domain doesn’t whisper — it shouts. Some adjectives to look out for here, include:
Bold
Chunky
Warped
Textured
You could even consider something as dramatic as an 18th century blackletter font.
Industries best suited for
Unsurprisingly, this brand graphic style is popular with the vanguards of street culture. This could include:
Artists
Musicians
Magazines
Bars
It’s also a great option for any brand with a rock ‘n roll edge, including but not limited to:
Urban/streetwear fashion brands
Culture/lifestyle blogs
Footwear brands
Music industry
Bars & clubs
Automotive/motor industry
What to check out
In terms of curating your graphics collection, a street brand identity would begin by delving into a wide array of analogue textures.
Try considering things like:
Film frames
Dust and grain
Light leaks
Plastic wrapping
Glued poster
Wrinkled paper
Gritty gradients
Digital glitches
You can also playfully layer your design with:
Stickers and barcodes
Textured illustrations
Fluid shapes
Retro graphics
All of these options are appropriate in this domain and can help degrade your design into something beautiful and eye-catching.
Elegant
They say elegance is something you either have or you don’t have. But they also say that perception is reality. It’s super easy to wrap your brand in an elegant brand graphic style for the world to see.
Key characteristics
Borrowing traits from other categories, elegant design finds middle ground between classicism and modernity. It’s timeless, but very much in tune with the here and now. You can also consider it to be luxurious, but try to avoid any excess.
Although it is similar to minimalism, you don’t have to be afraid of adding some flair. Other adjectives to describe its key characteristics include:
Graceful
Stylish
Refined
Delicate
Premium
Quality
Sophistication
Restraint is important in this brand graphic style. Well balanced compositions reflect a brand or an individual in control. It also signifies a clear vision and attention to detail.
Try not to include anything that doesn’t need to be on the page. Every letter, image, and color should be absolutely gorgeous and well thought-out.
Your color palette should be similar to minimalism, but your hues could be a little richer or deeper. There’s no need to stick to the nearly invisible and delicate tones of the minimalist approach.
Subtle textures wouldn’t be out of place either. You don’t want to go with anything too dramatic, but you could allude to quality materials like:
Handmade paper
Marble
Gold leaf
Crystal
Anything monochrome (black and white) also works best in an elegant mode.
Typography style
An elegant font collection would almost certainly revolve around Serif fonts. This probably won’t include the classical Roman variety, but something with an expressive twist. You can consider going with Delicate Serifs or Didones, since they both are wildly on-trend right now. A slender script font could also be a useful addition.
Industries best suited for
Industries that might be best suited for an elegant brand graphic style, include:
Finance
Real Estate
Consultancy
Legal
Construction
What to check out
In an elegant visual identity, think of your graphics as jewelry complementing a little black dress. Too much is tacky, but the perfect piece in the right position simply changes everything.
Gold compliments this style best and works well on backgrounds that are:
Black
White
Pastel
Subtle floral patterns or illustrations invoke the natural world, while leafy shadows can breathe soft realism into your scene.
The “All That Glitters” layout collection is a stunning example of an elegant brand graphic style. It’s conveniently wrapped up and ready to go across multiple platforms. You can personalize this professional design in minutes by simply replacing any fonts, graphics and images with your own. No kidding, it’s that easy.
Corporate
Corporate is synonymous with professionalism. We tend to use the word when we’re referencing:
Big businesses
Companies
Firms
It’s best used for institutions where trust, rationality and expertise are paramount.
Key characteristics
With this brand graphic style, you’ll want to go with a clear and direct design approach — without much visual flamboyance. Think of these adjectives when envisioning your brand style:
Professional
Formal
Cassical
Structured
Trustworthy
This kind of brand identity isn’t only for banks and law firms though. Corporate styling is equally useful for the little guy who wants to create a professional first impression.
Although you may not be on the cover of Forbes magazine just yet, remember that your identity is all about how you want to be perceived. So why not dress the part?
Typography style
A corporate brand graphic style tends to lean on tradition, alluding to the idea of continuity. It’s unsurprising then that variations on classical Serif typefaces dating back to the Roman era, remain the most popular in this style.
As restrained as it is, subtlety is key when it comes to colors, patterns, and graphics. It’s often the tiniest little textural or color nuance that pops subtly from a neutral design. To use corporate technology, you can think of it as the design that separates middle-management from the top executives. It also communicates a sense of attention to detail that adds to the perception of professionalism.
Industries best suited for
Industries that you’re most likely to see adopt a corporate brand graphic style include:
Finance
Real estate
Consultancy
Legal
Construction
News blogging/broadcast
What to check out
If you think your brand is the kind that looks good in a three-piece business suit with a fresh shave, then GoDaddy Studio has a wide range of graphics to complement your corporate aesthetic.
To start, try out “The New Black” layout collection for your corporate brand identity. It’s one of the top corporate example packs we have in our library. Besides that, you can also explore the hundreds of other options we have in-app.
Classic
If trends are like waves on the shore, coming in and going out, then classic design is the ocean. Essential graphic design principles have remained steadfast for centuries, simply because they work so well.
Key characteristics
This brand graphic style captivates viewers, effortlessly. It is as though our brains are hardwired to decode it automatically.
You can think of this style as:
Timeless
Functional
Crafted
Traditional
Refined
This design does have a gold standard and its persistence over time is the proof. Modern or elegant designs don’t stray very far from it, whereas the street aesthetic is defined by its reaction to it.
Classic design should be executed with a:
Clear purpose
Learned discipline
Masterful craft
While some might think classic is a safe option, we’d argue that going timeless is a bold move that asserts prestige in your category. Your brand isn’t just a passing fad. It’s here to stay and your impeccable visual identity makes that apparent.
Any color can be incorporated into this brand graphic style, but harmony and balance should prevail over expressionism. Pick out a limited palette of natural hues that complement each other, along with the photographs in your designs. You can use our Color Picker tool to select specific colors in your image. Grounded tones are particularly on trend right now and work beautifully in a classic brand graphic style.
Typography style
Timeless fonts tick only two boxes: precision, and legibility. You’ll more than likely be drawn towards the broader serif font family, but there are countless nuances that give each typeface its own personality.
Didones and delicate serifs are on the rise and are both quintessentially timeless.
Industries best suited for
Timeless brand styling is considered agnostic and can be used for almost any brand with a design-forward persona. You’re likely to encounter it in industries such as:
Beauty
Skincare
Health
Fashion
Lifestyle
Interior decor/design
Architecture
Retail
Wellness
There’s nothing more timeless than nature. For this reason, it’s likely that botanical and organic patterns or illustrations work so effortlessly in this brand graphic style. Flowers have been used as decorative elements throughout history — from Samurai armor to Dutch still-life painting – and persist as iconic graphics to this day. But you’ll need to narrow it down way more than that when selecting your brand’s graphics. This is especially true, since GoDaddy Studio has hundreds of diverse options.
What to check out in GoDaddy Studio
The easiest way to wade into the ocean of timeless design styles is to begin with one of our layout collections in GoDaddy Studio. We offer a full kit of professionally designed templates on multiple platforms, ready to edit-and-go in minutes.
Look out for “Cover Story” as a great example of a classic template. You can customize it with your brand’s fonts, colors, graphics and images.
Luxury
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Design can be an invisible backdrop to your product or your service, but it can also strongly reinforce a desired association.
In the case of luxury brand graphic styles, you can associate any of the following words with its design:
Sophisticated
Opulent
Expensive
Detailed
Premium
A brand identity flecked with gold or carved in marble will make it instantly apparent that your offering is only for a select few. In short, it’s easy enough to make your brand look super-duper high end.
Bear in mind that a luxury brand graphic style doesn’t need to feel exclusive to the point of being alienating. It can also project a sense of:
Warmth
Comfort
Sanctuary
Think of it as curling up under very expensive linen on a very luxurious and comfortable mattress. You also don’t want to confuse luxury with excess. This can end up coming off as garish, so you’ll have to be careful here.
Building upon a classical, even minimalist framework, ornate motifs don’t scream for attention. But when you notice them, the intricacy and consideration is unmistakable. A luxury design color palette is often based on physical substance.
More specifically, it draws from the appearance and texture of the world’s rarest materials:
Gold
Silver
Sapphire
Emerald
Pearl
Onyx
Marble
Red wine
Velvet
Typography style
Very classical typefaces work well in a luxury visual style, since there’s an inherent association with antiquity and tradition. Fonts that are most often associated with the luxury design, include:
Ornate scripts
Calligraphy
Cursive fonts
Keep in mind that these fonts ought to feel very delicate and precise, rather than spontaneously handwritten.
Industries best suited for
Almost every sector will have premium players. A luxury brand graphic style could help bolster their reputation for sophistication. We’ve seen brilliant examples of luxury branding in all of these industries:
Fashion
Home decor
Event planning
Restaurants
Bars
Real estate
Legal
Architecture
Beauty
Hospitality
What to check out in GoDaddy Studio
Your graphic kit for a luxury brand would invariably look towards incorporating luxurious textures like:
Gold
Pearl
Marble
These textures could even be blended into your text. Ornate motifs from the very luxurious Art Nouveau era also make for sophisticated flourishes and frames. Patterns can also be useful here and often include details that are:
Intricate
Delicate
Repeating
You can think of it as something that resembles imported wallpaper in a 5-star hotel. Keep this mind as you create your luxury brand with GoDaddy Studio. You can start today and bring it to life with our endless supply of beautiful graphics.
The post Make your brand pop — How to pick your brand graphic style appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.
