Free creative resources to help you market your business

Marketing your business takes time and effort, and, if you’re trying to do it all yourself as a lot of start up and small businesses are, it can be daunting to know where to begin.

Consistency is your friend when thinking about marketing. Consistency in what you say and how you say it, consistency in showing up… it’s everywhere and is a really essential part of becoming visible in your market space, and maintaining that visibility.

In this blog we’re looking at some freely available resources that can help you achieve a consistent look and feel across all of your marketing, and we’re throwing some light on some industry speak that will help you on your branding journey.

Not just any colour, the right colour

First up, let’s look at colours – if you have your branding set up but don’t know your colour palette (we get that a lot from clients coming to us) then look no further than coolors.co

This fabulous website allows you to upload an image (your logo for example) and eyedropper the colours on it, giving you the exact colours codes (for free) for your business. You can also punch these codes into the generator to develop a palette of complementary colours for your business.

A little tip here, if your business exists outside of the digital domain in the physical world, it’s worth selecting your colours from a CMYK palette. These are colours created by blending different percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the colours used in full-colour printing processes. It’s not as wide a spectrum of colour as RGB colour that your screens display, but by choosing this way you stand a greater chance of maintaining consistency between on and offline mediums.

Pictures are worth a thousand words…

Next, there’s unsplash.com – we love this website for the free stock images that are on it. It’s not quite as user-friendly as some of the paid image sites but the images are generally of a high calibre, once you have your colour palette together, decide how you want your brand to look and curate the images you use to align with that. There is nothing worse than poorly chosen images clashing with otherwise beautiful layouts. Take the time to choose just the right one.

Pin sharp at any scale

Vector graphics are created using points, lines, curves and shapes, they differ from bitmap images like JPG’s and PNG files in that they can be scaled to any size with no loss of resolution. Your logo should ideally be a vector file for this reason). Freepik.com has a resource library of vectors that you can utilises to capture the tone of your business, be it through illustrations of iconography.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it

Fonts are possibly the coolest way to add character to your marketing – choosing a typeface that exudes your character helps to bring the subject matter and it’s tone to life and convey your personality. Rounded, bold, script or minimalist looking, Dafont.com covers it all. Not all fonts are free to use commercially, so check before you fall too deeply in love with them.

Say it with icons

When you have a lot to say, or you want to people to understand something immediately, a simple diagram visually giving an instruction of direction is often the quickest and easiest way to achieve it. They transcend the language barrier and are (more often than not) universally understood. If you need to summarise parts of your business succinctly, and do not have the budget or time to create your own, then icons8.com is just the website for you. With thousands of icons in hundreds of different styles, there’s sure to be something to represent your business services – remember though, like everything else, be consistent in the style of icons you choose!

and if this all seems like too much…

If you would rather discuss your branding project with a team that does this every day, please get in touch!

Is it time your branding had a refresh?

If the answer is yes, we’d love to hear from you! Call 01732 920 236

Let’s have a conversation to find out what you would like to achieve and how we can fulfil that requirement for you.

We’ll take the time to understand what you do and how you do it so we can offer creative solutions fit for the challenge.

Mivvy Creative is a boutique design agency.

We are a creative agency offering branding and design solutions for businesses. Through print, photography, video and digital mediums we seek to engage your clients and showcase your business’ personality. We look to build relationships and a deep understanding of our clients, their customers, employees and the products and services they offer and we take ownership of the challenges you may be experiencing.

We believe collaboration is key so work closely with you, integrating into your workflow and acting as an extension to your team.

Call us:

01732 920 236

Email us:

hello@mivvy.co.uk

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