5 design choices that bolster your audience’s trust
I came across an article that excellently describes the relationship between designing a brand and gaining your audience’s trust. If you have time, it’s worth a read.
If not, save it for later and browse 5 takeaways in my own words:
1) A good brand designer will give you more than a logo. They will give you colors, typefaces, patterns, motifs, symbols, etc. These additional assets are called “codes.”
2) Does you brand have codes? A litmus test: Even if your logo were covered up, your audience should still be able to recognize your brand by its codes.
3) A brand’s codes should be consistent across every channel (website, social media, print materials, etc).
The author compares inconsistency to your best friend showing up at your doorstep speaking in a “different accent, wearing unusual clothing and behaving in a completely different way to normal”.
Psychologically, this is alarming! Immediately – you know you can’t trust this person.
The same can be true of an inconsistent brand.
4) A brand identity should do more than just look pretty. Take the author’s example of Cromwell’s logo. Cromwell is a legal firm in London.
Their mission statement?
“Nourishing relationships both externally and internally”
The brand designer took a plant, used to represent nourishment and growth, and a line/dot, used commonly on legal documents, and created a logo that captures exactly what Cromwell wanted to project to their audience.
Gif from Startups Magazine
Does your current logo do that? How could your church/school’s mission statement be baked together like this?
5) This goes further than colors and fonts. Your language should also be consistent if you are trying to retain trust.
Scroll your Facebook page. Can you tell when a caption was written by one member of your staff or another?
To avoid this dissonance, it can be helpful to have a “tone-of-voice” guide (click to see example on HubSpot) that various staff members can all reference as they work within your organization.
