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With so many tools on the market, it’s hard to know which ones you actually need to manage and grow your business. From working in branding for years, Court has tried tons of different branding tools. Now, she has a few favorites that she uses for our clients and our own brand. Investing in the right branding tools can elevate your business’s visual identity and messaging. And who doesn’t love a good list? Especially when the list is meant to help make your life more efficient and easy! Keep reading for Court’s top nine branding tools to elevate your business.
1. Creative Market
Creative Market is an online shop where you can buy fonts, illustrations, social media graphics, templates, patterns, icons, and more for your brand. It is so fun to browse and see all the fun options! Court uses this site a lot for custom client brands.
You’re probably thinking, “Can’t I just download a font for free?” Some sites allow you to download and use free fonts for your business (more on that in a second!) However, free fonts are often limited to certain weights, styles, or characters. We always recommend purchasing your brand fonts to have full access to the styles you want to use!
2. Canva
You’re probably already using this program (or if you aren’t, you’ve heard of it, and you’re using something similar.) Canva provides fonts, graphics, images, gifs, templates, presentations, and more for your brand. It’s a treasure trove of branding materials! Court was against using Canva for a long time because there’s a stereotype that branding experts have to use Adobe. But honestly, Canva has some amazing features that are just as good as Adobe (and it’s cheaper and easier to use!)
You need to pay for Pro if you want to set up your brand with all your colors, fonts, images, and logos. You can technically do this in the free version, but you’re only allowed so many colors, fonts, and uploads. The upgrade to Pro is worth it!
3. Google Fonts
This is one of the free font sites we mentioned earlier! Google Fonts is a free online font platform that anyone can use and download fonts for any project. We like that you can sort by what you want your audience to feel when reading your copy, the appearance, and Serif vs. Sans Serif. With so many to choose from, this filter feature really helps narrow it down to find what you’re looking for!
4. What The Font
Have you ever asked yourself, “WTF is this font? Because I love it, and I want it for my brand?!” What The Font on MyFonts helps by answering that WTF moment. All you have to do is take a screenshot of the font you love and upload it to What The Font, which curates a list of similar fonts. Or sometimes you’re lucky enough to score the actual font if it can identify it.
Once you find a few you like, it links to sites where you can purchase the font. Be sure to check these sites out before purchasing too quickly. Double-check the type of license you need, which will depend on how you plan to use the font.
5. Pexels and Unsplash
Pexels and Unsplash are two high-quality, royalty-free stock images for supplemental photography. Both platforms have free stock and stock photos that you have to pay for. Pexels even has free stock videos!
On both platforms, you can create folders to add photos and videos you want to save. For example, for our brand, we have a folder for fun cocktails and coffee drinks and another for digital screens (in case we want to create a fun mockup within a screen). We also have one for desktops or office spaces that match the vibe of our brand.
Keeping things organized like this is nice for when we need a different image (other than our own brand shoots). We can easily go into the specific folder and find an image that works.
6. Compress JPEG/PNG or Tiny JPG/PNG
After downloading beautiful photos for your website, use a program like Compress JPEG/PNG or Tiny JPG/PNG to compress images. Due to the sizes of some images, we want to make sure that they aren’t too large and weigh down your website and page speed (a friendly little SEO tip for ya!).
7. Fontjoy
This is a fun way to pair fonts that work well together. Fontjoy curates font pairings with a pleasing contrast and creates a cohesive look. You can look at headlines, subheadings, and body copy pairings to find complementary fonts.
8. Coolors
Coolors is a super fun color palette generator! Watch out, you could get sucked into this for hours! All you have to do is press the spacebar to generate new color palettes, which is slightly addicting (to designers, anyway.) If you find a few colors you like, you can save them and generate other colors that complement the ones you saved to create a fully custom color palette. But that’s not all it does.
You can visualize the colors in real designs for a better idea of how your colors would look once applied to different elements. From branding to website to typography, it shows you how the palettes you’re exploring can come to life in color. Quick View allows you to get a breakdown of the colors in multiple color formats, too.
9. ConvertAColor
Use ConvertAColor to quickly and easily convert colors between formats HEX, RGB, and CMYK. We have a color breakdown for our brand and do the same for our branding clients. Let’s say you only have a HEX color that you’re using in programs like Canva. If you ever go to print something and need your CMYK value for the printer, copy your HEX code and drop it into ConvertAColor, and you’ll get your CMYK value for that color. It comes in handy more often than you think!
These branding tools are a lifesaver for us. Court uses them on the regular for our brand and our branding clients. Choosing the best branding tools for your business depends on your specific goals and audience. Have fun exploring the tools! Just don’t get too sucked into playing 😉
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Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts, educators, and co-founders of boutique marketing agency Duo Collective, which specializes in SEO, social media strategy, and branding for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. To learn more about Duo Collective, or to inquire about working with our team, head over to www.duocollective.com.
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