Pinterest is a visual platform and your brand needs to stand out. Pinterest is also the perfect place to help you define your perfect brand style and pin templates.
Pinterest has millions of pretty images and it’s the perfect place to find all the inspiration you need to create a beautiful style board for your brand.
Whether you’re just starting out or your blog or biz has been around for a while, having a clear brand style makes things so much easier.
Not sure what a brand style board is?
- Your style board should include your brand colors, design style (photos), and the fonts you will use.
- Everything in your creative business will flow from this style and set the stage for your website colors and images, your social media marketing, and your blog posts.
- All of this needs to be consistent and in line with the feelings you want people to have when they interact with your brand.
So how can you find your brand style?
When you’re starting to define your brand you should first take a look at your own personal style. After all, your brand is an extension of you so don’t be afraid to show your personality.
1. First, let’s take a look at your personal style to get a direction for your brand’s style.
- What kind of clothes do you like? Do you dress preppy, casual, or professional? This will set the tone for your brand colors and website design.
- Who are you? Are you quirky, funny, or serious? This will set the stage for your brand’s voice on your blog, and your social media posts.
- What is your decorating style? Do you love rustic and vintage, maybe glam, or are you modern and minimalist? This will set the stage for your website and images.
2. Pinterest can help you get a solid direction for your brand’s style.
Pinterest is the perfect place to find brand style inspiration. When I was thinking about my brand style I decided to look for different images I liked in Pinterest.
First, I created a secret board on Pinterest titled, Style Inspiration.
Then I searched in Pinterest for colors that I liked, fonts and styles that caught my eye. The more specific you are in your search the better. You can search for a color you like or a design style. I’ve searched for pastel pink, and vintage glam, to find images and a style that I loved.
When you’re going through the images just pin all the ones that you are drawn towards.
I tried to pin at least 20 images.
Next, I went through and looked for a theme. I found that most of the images I pinned seemed to gravitate towards pastel colors and vintage images. A very feminine style.
Once you have about 15-20 images, go through them and delete the ones that don’t seem to fit with your theme.
Now you have a brand style board with the images you love. Next, I want you to think about the words/feelings that come to mind when you look through these images.
For example, my board is filled with soft pastel colors and vintage finds. The words that came to mind when I looked through my style board were:
- Feminine
- Fun
- Pastel
- Soft
- Vintage
- Sweet
- Happy
- Community
- Young
- Candy
- Sunshine
- Travel
- Beautiful
- Timeless
Don’t think too much while doing this exercise. Just do a brain dump of all the words that come to your mind. You can then go through this list and just delete the ones that don’t make sense or resonate with your brand’s style.
3. How to develop your brand voice.
If your brand could talk, what would it say and how would it say it? Is your brand professional or casual? Playful or serious?
Using the words you wrote down to describe your brand will give you a very clear direction for your brand voice.
4. Choosing your brand colors.
I recently found a great tutorial from Amanda Genther on “how to use Canva to create a brand style board” She teaches you how to easily pull the colors from your Pinterest images and pick 4 colors that work well together. Here’s a breakdown of how to do this in Canva.
- Pick 4-5 of your favorite images from your brand’s style board and download them to your computer.
- Next open Canva and pick a collage template that will accommodate at least 4 of your images and enough spots for 4-5 brand colors.
- If you are using google chrome, download a handy tool called eye dropper. It’s in the google app store. This will help you grab the hex code colors from your images.
- Put it all together and make sure you make a note of the hex color codes for the colors. See my image below.
Here is an example of my brand’s style board that I created in Canva.
Having a clear brand style has also helped me create an awesome template for my Pinterest images in Canva. This has saved me a ton of time. I just switch out my background image and text and I have an image ready to go.
Do you have any other great tips on how to define your brand’s style? I would love to hear your tips.
These are some great tips, Kyla! Some I’ve not read before, so it was interesting. I’m going to check out your links!
Thanks,
Florence