Your author brand
There are two excellent reasons to make up an author brand board.
1. It makes your graphics look consistent.
2. It saves you time.
So we're going to set up a simple author brand board, it's like the inspiration board you use to decorate the house. Oh, what? You've only seen inspiration boards in magazines and you decorate with hand-me-downs and Craigslist freebies because you're a busy writer?
I got my inspiration for this brand board from a Canva group. Yes, such things exist. I'm trying to take my Canva skills up a notch, so I've been looking around. Here is the original brand board from Nicholette Styles. Her website has design inspiration for all kinds of businesses, so check it out.
Here's my version. I realize my brand board looks like your IRL Tinder date while Nicolette's looks like his online photos, but authors don't really need the full meal deal. Like what photo references do we need? We could use our book covers, but once you have more than four covers, it gets a little confusing. I didn't include "brand words" either, but you could.
Here's one I did for myself:
So we're going to set up a simple author brand board, it's like the inspiration board you use to decorate the house. Oh, what? You've only seen inspiration boards in magazines and you decorate with hand-me-downs and Craigslist freebies because you're a busy writer?
I got my inspiration for this brand board from a Canva group. Yes, such things exist. I'm trying to take my Canva skills up a notch, so I've been looking around. Here is the original brand board from Nicholette Styles. Her website has design inspiration for all kinds of businesses, so check it out.
Here's my version. I realize my brand board looks like your IRL Tinder date while Nicolette's looks like his online photos, but authors don't really need the full meal deal. Like what photo references do we need? We could use our book covers, but once you have more than four covers, it gets a little confusing. I didn't include "brand words" either, but you could.
Here's one I did for myself:
Logo
Insert your logo here. I cut off the head of the hockey player on my logo and I can't fix it, so pretend you didn't notice. If you don't have a logo, don't worry. I did this one for my website. If you use the same author font for all your book covers, that can be your logo.
Colours
All I've done here is to add the colours from my website and logo. In reality, my covers use many more colours, so I don't think having distinctive brand colours is as important for authors. If you're using Canva and you choose a custom colour, be sure to note the colour code number as I did with the purple circle.
Fonts
Fonts however, are important to authors. If possible use the same author font as you do on your books covers. (Also, use the same author font for all your covers!) Your covers are really your brand, and you want to reinforce them in all your author graphics.
So for my fonts, I chose one font for Melanie Ting, and tried to mimic the one my cover designer uses.
I use the same font each time I promote my website.
When I make teasers, these are some of the fonts I use frequently. Playlist Script is a nice font for emphasis or softening the text with cursive. Cursive fonts are hot for covers and graphics right now. The other kind of font that's popular is a heavy all caps one like League Spartan. Fonts definitely have trends, so while you want to keep your author fonts the same, do experiment with new and popular fonts to keep your graphics fresh. To identify trends in fonts, keep perusing other graphics or new book covers. It's a copycat world in graphics, and good looking covers are replicated faster than bunnies.
Ideas to steal:
Make your own author brand board.
Steal cool fonts.
If you would like to make your own simple author brand board one Canva, I've shared a link here. After you've completed your board, delete my example and you're set to go. If you'd like a cooler, fancier one, the Nicolette Styles group offers a free template too.
Next Monday our author graphics post is on fixing up your Twitter header. Isn't that exciting?
Insert your logo here. I cut off the head of the hockey player on my logo and I can't fix it, so pretend you didn't notice. If you don't have a logo, don't worry. I did this one for my website. If you use the same author font for all your book covers, that can be your logo.
Colours
All I've done here is to add the colours from my website and logo. In reality, my covers use many more colours, so I don't think having distinctive brand colours is as important for authors. If you're using Canva and you choose a custom colour, be sure to note the colour code number as I did with the purple circle.
Fonts
Fonts however, are important to authors. If possible use the same author font as you do on your books covers. (Also, use the same author font for all your covers!) Your covers are really your brand, and you want to reinforce them in all your author graphics.
So for my fonts, I chose one font for Melanie Ting, and tried to mimic the one my cover designer uses.
I use the same font each time I promote my website.
When I make teasers, these are some of the fonts I use frequently. Playlist Script is a nice font for emphasis or softening the text with cursive. Cursive fonts are hot for covers and graphics right now. The other kind of font that's popular is a heavy all caps one like League Spartan. Fonts definitely have trends, so while you want to keep your author fonts the same, do experiment with new and popular fonts to keep your graphics fresh. To identify trends in fonts, keep perusing other graphics or new book covers. It's a copycat world in graphics, and good looking covers are replicated faster than bunnies.
Ideas to steal:
Make your own author brand board.
Steal cool fonts.
If you would like to make your own simple author brand board one Canva, I've shared a link here. After you've completed your board, delete my example and you're set to go. If you'd like a cooler, fancier one, the Nicolette Styles group offers a free template too.
Next Monday our author graphics post is on fixing up your Twitter header. Isn't that exciting?
Comments
Post a Comment