Don’t have a budget for branding? Many people don’t – but it doesn’t mean you can’t stand out.
Hiring a professional for the job is always the best option, but it’s not feasible for everyone. Whether you’re a post-doc who wants to make an impression, a small business just starting out, or running a research project on a very limited budget, you can have your own recognisable brand. And the best bit? It won’t cost you anything but your time.
1. Choose two fonts
Choose one serif font and one sans serif font. To be safe, use web-friendly fonts so your brand will always look consistent. If you use a specialist font that has to be bought or downloaded and the viewer doesn’t have it on their device, it will be replaced with an alternative.
W3Schools has a list of the safest fonts, but it is very limited. For a much wider range of free, open-access fonts, head to Google’s extensive font library.
Serif fonts
Georgia
Garamond
Times New Roman
Sans serif fonts
Verdana
Tahoma
Trebuchet
2. Choose a colour
Think about this carefully – it has to represent you and your industry. If your sector is heavy plant machinery, pastels won’t give the right impression. Also think about colour connotation and symbolism: the Interactive Design Foundation has a great explainer with examples in Western cultures.
You’ll need the colour code – free websites like htmlcolorcodes and colorate give you some starting points to choose from, complete with codes.
3. Choose one or more contrasting or complementary colours
Again, there are lots of tools to help you do this. When you know your colour code, you can add it to sites like htmlcolorcodes and colorate and they’ll give you a range of complementing and contrasting colours. Or, if you need some inspiration, colorhunt.co has a range of ready made palettes and coolors.co has a fun interactive palette generator.
Main colour
Contrasting colour
Complementary colour
4. Play around with font and colour
Write your name and play around with your main brand colour in the fonts you like. Try different effects like all upper case, all lower case, italics and bold. And when you’ve found your favourite – congratulations, you have a logo!
Juliet Shaw
juliet shaw
JULIET SHAW
Your Project
Your Project
Your Project
Jones & Co
Jones & Co
Jones & co
If you want to keep things as simple as possible, stick to just two colours and choose a contrasting, rather than complementary, brand colour. That way, you can switch it around for different backgrounds – for example, on a document footer or website header.
Juliet Shaw
juliet shaw
JULIET SHAW
Your Project
Your Project
Your Project
Jones & Co
Jones & Co
Jones & co
5. Develop a system
Use one font for headings, the other for paragraph text.
Choose a font size or decoration (bold, italics, etc) for your headings, another for sub-headings, another for paragraph text, another for pull-out quotes. Take inspiration from publications you read or brands you like.
Use your brand colours to add finishing touches such as a simple header or footer on a document or website or to highlight links.
Here’s an example of a font system on a Word doc:
And here’s how it could look on a website (this is just a very basic illustration of the font system and simple use of colour – it’s not intended to be a web page design!).
6. Use images consistently
Think about what you’re illustrating with your work. Is it mainly events? For pre-event publicity, you could create a poster using your own brand colours in Word (or any other software you use) and save them as images.
There are several ways to do this depending on your device and the software you have, but taking a screenshot and cropping it probably the easiest universal option. For post-event news, use your own photographs (there’s a guide on how to get the best shots below).
Are you illustrating your own research? You could use the method above to create branded covers and save them as images, or use stock imagery that illustrates your speciality.
If you want images on your blog posts, use stock images but keep them consistent. Stick to abstract images, or people, or landscapes, or the machinery and equipment that illustrates your sector. The aim is to achieve a cohesive look that supports your brand.
If you decide to illustrate your work with stock images, use a royalty free site like Unsplash. Be sure to credit the original artist if that’s in the terms of the free download.
Never take images from anywhere that isn’t an official site offering royalty free downloads. As well as being theft of someone else’s work, you could find yourself with a very hefty fine.
7. Avoid over-use of online templates
Free sites can be really useful for designing posters or social media posts, but try not to rely on them too much. And, if you do use them, make sure they’re appropriate for your brand. Many free tools, like Canva, allow you to adapt the images to your own brand colours and fonts.
However, bear in mind that choosing appropriate templates is about so much more than colour and font. If you’re running a charity for veterans and want to publicise a fundraising bake sale, a social media photo of pastel-coloured cupcakes is unlikely to work with your brand.
8. Remember the rules for photography
Some things are worth spending money on, and professional photography is one. But if your budget doesn’t allow and you want to share your own photographs, stick to some simple guidelines:
- Any modern smartphone will take a decent enough photo, but remember…
- …upload or email it at the highest size possible. If it’s for print, this is essential. If it’s for web or email, upload the full-size original and then reduce the size later. On a Mac, you can do this with Preview – go to the Tools menu and choose Adjust Size. On a PC, you can use Paint and select the Home and Resize options. Remember: you can reduce the size of a full-size image, but you can’t increase the size of a condensed image without losing quality.
- For group shots, use landscape. For people photos, use portrait. (The clues are in the names!)
- Make sure the background is as clear and plain as possible. No messy desks, tangled cables or people on a cigarette break. Crop your image to remove visual distractions if necessary, taking care not to chop off the tops of heads or half a person on the edge of a group.
9. Create brand guidelines
If there’s more than one of you, make sure everyone knows your brand and how to use it. As a minimum, create a guide that includes:
- Your colours
- Your fonts
- The application system
- The type of images you use
- Where to find them
- How to use them
It only takes one person to go rogue to undo all your good work.
10. Know your limits
Don’t try and design anything if you’re not a designer. Leave it to the experts. You might admire your own handiwork, but it will be obvious to others that it’s not a professional job. Rather than having a simple, effective brand, you’ll have an obviously amateur logo that doesn’t pay any attention to the rules of design and branding. All this will do is detract from the professional image you’re trying to portray.
The goal is to create a simple system that you can use easily with the resources you have. And as your resources grow, so can your brand. Work with what you have, and know when it’s time to call in the professionals.
