5 Key Visual Elements of Branding a Blog

Disclosure: This is a guest post contributed to DelBlogger by Maurine Anderson

 

Building a brand is no simple task, and the same holds true when building a blog brand. Brand, after all, isn’t just your logo or your blog design—it’s what people think of your blog. It’s who you are, what you do, and how people perceive you in the online community. A brand is something that you do not have direct control over. Put this way, the idea of building a blog brand can be very intimidating.

 

Fortunately, branding can go a long way in helping you build your blog brand. The term “branding” refers to those activities that you undertake to influence how people perceive you as a blog or business. Branding for a business, for example, might involve creating a logo, establishing a color palette, coining taglines, naming products in a consistent way, engaging consistently with customers on social media, etc.

 

Branding involves a wide range of activities, as mentioned above, but a great many elements of branding are primarily visual. Things like your logo, typography, photography, and graphic design are visual in nature, and they go a long way in leaving a brand impression in readers’ minds. And the great thing about these visual elements of branding? They are relatively easy to control, making them great first items to consider as you create a branding strategy for your blog.

 

So whether you are creating a branding strategy for a new blog or want to strengthen the brand of your current blog (more on that here), here is a look at five key visual elements that contribute to the branding of a blog.

Photography style

 

Photography is perhaps the most important visual element of a blog. Therefore, it’s important as a blogger to develop a routine in creating high quality photos that speak to your style. Try to create consistency in your photography, lending all of your photos a particular style that will ultimately remind people of your blog. You might, for example, use consistent colors, post-production filters, and composition style in all of your photos. Finding your photography style can take months or even years of practice, so give yourself time with this one.

 

Color palette

 

Here is one that is relatively easy to decide on and stick to. A color palette can go a long way in setting the tone for your blog, so try to decide on a few key colors from the start that you will use regularly for your blog. If your color palette is lemon yellow with forest green and pastel pink as accents, for example, you might have a yellow logo, forest green colored links, and pastel pink social media buttons. You don’t have to limit yourself entirely to using these colors in all of the graphic design and typography on your blog, but you should plan on using them regularly in your work to create consistency. This article has some great tips on deciding on a color palette for your blog or business.

Typography

 

The fonts and font sizes you use can leave an impression with readers as well. Decide on one or two fonts that you plan to use in all of your blog work, and stick to using those fonts for consistency’s sake. You might, for example, make Helvetica your font of choice for all body text on your blog and then use Futura in your blog post titles and infographics.

Graphic design

 

If you ever design visual elements like infographics or Pinterest-friendly graphics for your blog, then you definitely need to consider your approach to graphic design as well. You might, for example, develop a template that you will use for all Pinterest-friendly graphics you design. Try to make your approach to graphic design consistent enough that when a reader sees something of yours on social media, they’ll recognize where it came from instantly.

 

Logo

 

Finally, your logo. Your logo should complement all of the above visual elements of your brand. Aim to create a logo that speaks to who you are as a blogger and that instantly tells readers a little bit about who you are. If you are artistic and like to blog about authentic lifestyle, for example, you might have a hand-lettered logo.

Let’s Chat:  Do you have any tips on branding a blog?

 

The information in this blog is provided “AS IS” with no warranties and confers no rights.  This blog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer, it is solely my opinion.

Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever (abusive, profane, rude, or anonymous comments) – so keep it polite, please.

6 thoughts on “5 Key Visual Elements of Branding a Blog

  1. Great pointers! This affirms that consistency is key. And it’s important to remember that even if you get tired of your blog’s look and feel, you’re a lot closer to it than most of your readers, so they’re likely not–so don’t go switching things up out of “boredom!”

  2. Some great tips – branding is so important and it takes a while to find your feet. I feel like I’m only just starting to get my head around it in the last year or so and still have some fine tuning to do.

  3. Hi Maurine,

    I spent a bunch of time on my blog/brand logo; had to embody me, and blogging from the tropics, since I am a big part of my brand. Simple, clean and green, my designer nailed it. Thanks for sharing the rocking tips 🙂

    Ryan

I want to know what you think, please leave a comment and share with your circle.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: