How to Create a Brand Board for Your Business

Kirsten 0:00

Hey there listeners Welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. Today's topic is something I am super passionate about. And it has to do with branding. I love creating visual brand items not only for my TPT store, but for other TPT sellers. And one of the top mistakes I notice when working with TPT sellers is that they don't have specific brand colors or fonts. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about what a brand board is, and how it can help you stay consistent. The best part is super easy to implement.

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact inside and outside of the classroom. I am Kiersten a full time classroom teacher and part time business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small to in each week, as I give you my best advice on classroom teaching and starting and growing a teacher business. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Alright guys, we're going to go ahead and get started and talk about what is in a brand board. We're going to also talk about why a brand board is important if you are a business owner, and five elements of a brand board that you can add today. This is something you can easily implement in your business today or sometime this week.

First of all, let's talk about what a brand board is. Basically, it's a short and easy to read document that includes all of the visual elements that are in a brand. And remember, if you have a TPT store, and you have a business, you have a brand, that's a given. Brand boards are essentially an outline of your brand and includes all of the visual elements, it's important to have a brand board, because it's a way to help you stay consistent. Visually, it's easy to copy and paste certain colors and fonts so that you stay on track with the fonts you use, and the colors you use. And you're not veering off into other fonts and all of that. But it's also important because it's a great guide to refer back to and share with anybody that is doing services for your business could be for your designer, a VA or anybody else who is working on graphics or items for your TPT store.

Let's talk about five elements of a brand board. The first part of your brand board would be a primary logo. This would be your main circular logo that you would utilize in your TPT store. Some people may have a couple of these sometimes you might have a logo with your photo in it. Sometimes you might have a logo that is just the name of your store, and it has some decorations and all of that but your primary logo for TPT sellers would be your circular logo that you have uploaded onto TPT the next part of your brand board would be any alternative logos that you might use. Alternative logos could not only be watermarks, why watermarks or transparent versions of your logo. But they could also be that fav icon, that tiny little circular picture that you see on certain websites in the tabs when you're opening up a tab onto a website, anything that has your brand in it that you use for websites, but it is not your circular logo, add it to that section. The next part of your brand board would be a color palette. It's basically listing all the colors that are in your brand. And you can add hex codes to make sure you're using the exact shades across the board. A hex code, it's a mixture of six numbers or letters, it's a combination of numbers and letters starts with a pound sign or hashtag. And then there are six letters or numbers that follow it. And it's just basically that code that you use to get a specific shade. There's a number of ways to find your hex codes, I recommend using coolers C O L O R s.co. If you go to that website, you can upload your logo that you might already have, and pick out colors, you can really upload any photo. But if you have a logo already, and you're not sure what your colors are, what the specific hex codes are, go and upload it and pick out those main colors. I recommend for color palettes not using more than three to five colors in a brand. And just stay consistent as much as possible. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't add any more colors. But make sure to utilize the same ones consistently to make sure you keep it on brand. I have a blog post about choosing the right colors for your brand if you go to my blog, and I'll make sure to link that but it was how to pick the right brand colors for your TPT business. So again, I will link that in the show notes. But that's a great way to find out what might help you best when picking your brand colors.

Next in your brand board would be your typography. There's a hierarchy that you follow with the type of fonts that you use. And with that, it's important to make sure the fonts you use are consistent on websites on social media posts. Keeping it all consistent and on on brand helps you become more recognizable. So there's different ways you can do this. You can do this with a mixture of typefaces, which are an entire family of fonts of different weights. A typeface that I use and you'll see it on my website is Poppins. It's one of my favorite Google fonts. And it's a nice rounded font. It looks very similar to Century Gothic. And I utilize Poppins on my resources for TPT. I have used it in my product listings, I've used it on my website and all of that kind of stuff, my lead magnets, and I use different weights. So I can have a heading that is a bold Poppins font. And then my body font or the actual paragraph text is a lighter Poppins weight, the hierarchy of those fonts pair really well together. So depending on the brand that you have, try to find a heading font, a sub heading font, and then a body font or Paragraph Font. This could be two or three fonts that you utilize all the time. For heading fonts, make sure that heading font is nice and bold subheading fonts, I always like to add something really nice some type of cool script font, and then your body font would be a smaller version of, let's say, a smaller and easy to read font. This is something where you would be adding in paragraphs of your blog post or in the actual writing of your resource.

The last part of a brand board would be your mood board. These are just a series of inspirational pictures that describe your brand in general. And this could be just for reference not just for you but anybody who is designing things for your store. It's just kind of giving the person who's looking at the brand board. Some what the mood of your brand is if it's light and fun and creative or if it's earthy toned down all of those pictures you're adding to your mood board or inspiring a feeling or a vibe. So that's what I like to call brand vibes. That's what you want on your mood board. All right. So those are the five elements of a brand board, your primary logo, alternate logos, color palette with the hex codes, typography, thinking of your header, subheading, and body fonts, and mood board.

Alright, so here is my creative action tip for you. I want you sometime this week to take the time to put your brand colors, fonts and logos in one place so that you can stay consistent this week. You can also use a template, if you have Canva, you can actually do that right in the platform. If you have a Canva pro account, this is something you can do. When you go to home in Canva. You go on the left side and you'll see under Tools brand kit. If you click on brand kit, you can upload any brand logos you have, find the hex codes of your brand colors, and also add any brand fonts you can add headings, subheadings, and body fonts. So if you'd like to create in Canva, this is an easy way to have everything in one place for you to refer to. The only downside to that brand, kitten Canva is that it doesn't have all of the elements that I described to you earlier in this episode. But the good news is that I do have a free brand board template that you can utilize that has all five elements of a brand board described, all you have to do is click in the show notes and it is going to be right there for you. Now all of the things I just described, everything that is included in a brand board, this is only part of a visual brand. There's so much more that goes into a visual brand, There's more than meets the eye into your business.

If you are wanting to think holistically about your brand, thinking about your values, your personality, what type of mood you want to evoke, in feelings you want to evoke from your brand. I offer a workshop that self paced that you can follow along in bite sized pieces. And that is called the branding your teacher business workshop. You can go to the southern teach.com forward slash workshop to access this really great tool if you're looking for more ways to brand your business. I'm gonna link that in the show notes so you can look at that and get access to it today. All right, well, that's the end of this episode. I will talk to you again soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.