Creatives Like Us Podcast - Ep:29
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In this episode, Angela Lyons discusses the critical importance of brand consistency for businesses. She shares practical steps for auditing your brand's visual identity across various platforms and emphasises the need for a cohesive brand image. Angela also provides insights on creating a simple brand guideline document to ensure consistency and memorability in branding.
To gain more insight and work together live on your business, join Angela at the Freelancer Magazine Masterclass Workshop – running over two days on the 5th-6th March. Angela will be hosting the workshop creating a Memorable brand across all platforms on the 6th March.
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This podcast is hosted by Angela Lyons of Lyons Creative.
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Chapters
Introduction to Brand Consistency
The Importance of Consistent Branding
Practical Steps for Brand Auditing
Creating Your Brand Guidelines
Wrapping Up and Workshop Announcement
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Creatives Like Us. I'm your host, brand and marketing graphic designer, Angela Lyons. Today I have a solo episode.
I'm sharing something that might like a chore to work on, but honestly, it changed how I shop in my business and it can do the same for yours. We're talking about brand consistency. you can do this task in under an hour and it'll make you look more professional online and how you interact with your present clients and potential clients. First up, I call it the shopping aisle test. Think about how you shop at supermarket.
You go in, scan the shelves, looking for familiar brands, the ones you recognize instantly. Occasionally something catches your eye because it's beautifully designed or you pick it up to have a closer look. Now imagine that your client is trying to find you online and they first off see a headshot that's from like 2019 on your website or a completely different image on your Instagram or no photo at all on LinkedIn. They're not even sure if they look at the same business and your brand appears everywhere, your website, LinkedIn, Instagram, email signatures, presentation tech, sales materials, but the question most of us don't ask often enough, does this brand look the same everywhere?
And why it matters. You might be thinking, who cares? Can't I just plunk a few bits together? But here's the thing inconsistent branding doesn't just look unprofessional. can erode trust. customers start question whether they're dealing with the same company. the uncertainty can cost you credibility and ultimately conversations and sales and money in the bank.
Plus, when your brand looks good, then you're more than willing to promote it. And so does your team. They want to promote it and customers will buy into you too.
Okay then, let's get a bit practical here. You can audit your brands consisting under an hour and here are five steps that I think you can try for your business that I know that I've tried in my business and they work. So let's go for it. Step one, the screenshot test. Open up every platform where your brand appears and take screenshots. I mean, everything like LinkedIn, Instagram, your website, email signatures, presentation decks, proposals, even your business.
Google profile, put them all in one document visually, look at them side by side. And then the question you're asking, do they look and feel like they belong to the same brand or do they look like different companies? And then step two, the logo audit. I suppose some people would say the logo is the most recognizable element of your brand. So if you're inconsistent here, I suppose that could be damaging to your brand. And document what logos files you should be using and where.
and check if you've got the right logos for certain platforms. Basically, also, you know, when it goes dark on certain screen savers, have you got your dark logo there or have you got your white and light bright logos on different versions? So also check those. They will be really helpful for you and keep them on file somewhere. So and if you don't have high quality logos, maybe this is the time to actually have a look and check where you can save them and
Check for the different file formats. Put them in a file somewhere that you can grab them easily. Also, share them with your team or if you've got a VA They can become easily accessible to them. And then step three, I call it the color check. And colors trigger emotions and responses and aid recognition. So make a note of your colors and your brand colors. Write them down somewhere. I love using coolers and coolers is coolers.co for color palettes.
and that's online and it's free and it's great for accessibility checkers and contrast checkers. Again you can upgrade to the paid version of coolers but the free version is just as good so write down all the colors that you use and just check across all the platforms that use online that you're using the same color palettes that they're not inconsistent all over the place.
Step four is the typography audit and fonts communicate our personality. The fonts we're using that suit our company. And I was, when I first talked to my clients, if they're starting a brand straight off, I always asked them about words, describe their brands. For example, I would say come to come up with three to five adjectives
Give them some ideas. Is it an approachable brand? Is it a premium brand? Is it innovative? Is it reliable? Is it bold? And your typography should match that Again, you can use fine fonts on Google fonts, Adobe fonts, even Canva, but be careful the ones. Just check if you can use them further along down the line and if they have licenses. And step five, I'd say the image. Your images use this image style assessment. How are you showing up visually?
Are you overusing stock photography that doesn't suit your brand? Do you your own brand photos? Are they easily accessible for yourself and to pass on to other people? Also, are they updated? I know that I've been in the past using old photographs from, oh my gosh, how many years? 2019, really old photographs, but only up until, like I'd say about a few years ago, I'd been using that same photograph and I loved it and that's why I used it. But again, it didn't really look professional.
So I had to change them up. So maybe invest in brand photography. Or if you can't do that, there's easy ways to do it with your phone. If you've got a great camera on your phone, you can easily do some good photographs there. Invest in a selfie stick maybe and put timers on and take some brand photographs of yourself. Again, let's go back to storing these images because we can use them for all platforms. So think about where you're showing up on social media, your website. If you're using your photographs in maybe CVs or invoices, just have a look where you're showing up alone. I've got a top tip for you here. If you need to compress large images use
I use a website called Tiny PNG and it's great and it will compress the file size for you. Again, this is great for if you have to load these images online. So think about reducing the file size. And not only does it help people, especially if you've got a large file size and it's taken forever to load, create a file size that's friendly to the planet, shall we say. And also,
Friendly to the viewer that's watching it load on your website. That's not going to take forever to load because as we know, people are so time poor. They have a few seconds to even like be on your website. So yeah, use tiny PNG.
And also the file naming of your images. I know I've touched on, I've stayed on this bit point for a bit long actually, but I think it's really important. Don't just keep the file name of the images on your website. Like, I don't know, 06521 underscore DSD, whatever it is and dot JPEG actually rename the file. So for example, if I was going to name a file from my website, I'd call it Angela underscore lions underscore creative brands underscore creative consultants.
So it helps with my SEO too. That's all added benefits and bonuses to your search engine optimization, especially online.
In previous episodes I've also said that I just had plain black lines creative as my branding. But you know what even though I had that it showed up everywhere it showed up on my invoices it showed up on my website I know it's really dry and dire but ⁓
It was just plain black, Leto fonts, and it said, Lyons Creative, but it showed up everywhere. It's the same thing. And it was really, really, well, I'd say boring. But I do remember my LinkedIn banner. I just put a picture up there that I had that I took somewhere that was very bright colors. And it was like a nice fence lots of metal fence kind of with lots of rainbow colors. And it was great and it looked pretty, but that said nothing about me. And I had that as my LinkedIn banner.
So it didn't really represent my energy, what I was about and how I help my clients. So I did invest in professional photography. I invested in working with a copywriter. I invested my time with Penny Brazier. She's great. And she helped me get my tone of voice together. And I started my newsletter from that. And then I also created my own logo, which was, I feel now it's more playful and it also.
I think, well, I think it relates to more smaller businesses and also the corporate side of my business, because I also work with corporate clients. So it was a bit of a, a bit of a mix that I came together, came up with my logo. So I really, really liked that and it worked for my business. So yeah, once I'd done all those steps, I'd had to rebrand myself and I invested a bit more time in myself and my company. And that's what you can do too. So once you've created these five steps,
and created a simple guideline document. Again, it doesn't need to be 500 pages like you're working for Coca-Cola or Sky TV, just three to five pages enough to start with. I use Canva or Adobe Express to keep mine. And I store my file assets in one place. I have a Google Drive so I can quickly pick them up. And I also have a mini media pack that people can link out to if they need any elements from me.
And also a small PR pack. And also I've got a place on my website where people can find out a bit more about me. Again, it's more of a, I suppose, a PR page on my website if they needed to find out about me or see where I've spoken before. But you can put that in a document and store that document where somebody can easily access it or you can access it quickly and send it on to who you need to send it on to. For example, if you want it to be featured in a local newspaper, send them a PR pack to have all those assets in place and to look consistent. I say do those steps first and create your pack. And so I'm coming to my point, I'm nearly at the end. Thanks for sticking with me.
So wrapping it up, once you've done those five steps, you can create a simple brand guideline document. It doesn't need to be 500 pages like the likes of Coca-Cola or Sky TV. Can you imagine their brand guidelines must be astronomical? I've seen some of them for some companies. For you, and especially if you're a small business of one or small business with more than 50 employees, just keep it really simple. Maybe even say, I'll just say, three to five pages is enough just to start with. Use Canva or Adobe Express, keep your assets, logo files, your brand assets, organized in one folder. And remember, consistency makes you more memorable. And when your brand looks the same everywhere, people start recognizing you, trusting you, and ultimately want to start working with you. And if you want help with this, I'm running a workshop at the Freelancer Magazine Masterclass in March, 2026.
As of today, when I'm recording this podcast, it's February.
So you can join using the link in the show notes. And my workshop is called creating a memorable brand across all platforms.
Thank you so much for listening. If you love the show, I would love it if you would leave a little note in the comments, especially if you're on Spotify, it's really easy to do and it just bumps up my show just a little bit more. And I'd love it, love it, love it if you let me know how you got on with this episode and if you're going to try any of the steps or if you're joining freelance magazine masterclass, I'd love to know. until next time, keep creating and keep being Creatives Like Us.
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