Creating Visuals

Let’s discuss what an organisation’s visuals are and how to ensure they reflect an organisation’s identity.

An organisation’s visuals give its audience a sense of who it is before they ever read a word about it. Think about meeting someone for the first time. Just by looking at them, you are able to gather information about that person before you even begin to converse. Their appearance provides clues about their culture, ethnic background, and perhaps even personality, religion, or occupation.

Likewise, the logo your organisation uses, the colours that appear on its communication pieces, and the other styling choices it makes all send signals to your audience about your organisation.

1. Logos

Logos can either be just the name of the organisation in a specific font (logotype) or the name of the organisation accompanied by a picture or symbol (logomark). Here are some examples:

You may recognise this logo from the popular social media platform: Instagram. Before ever exploring what Instagram is, the multicoloured logomark alludes to its creative and vibrant personality, and it likely appeals to a younger audience.

The curved lines of the white square are playful and signal room for creative expression. The white square and white circles also look like a camera, giving a clue that this platform has something to do with photos. Looking at this logomark is intended to make the audience feel happy, upbeat, and playful.

Now let’s look at the logo for National Geographic.
National Geographic is an American organisation mostly known for its television shows and magazines that document real, breathtaking videos and photos of events, people, and nature around the world.

This logo is not playful or vibrant like that of Instagram. It is much more traditional in its logotype and the yellow rectangle is very rigid. It uses highly contrasted colours and appears far more serious. Because this brand is known for documenting true events, which are sometimes beautiful and sometimes sombre, it is supposed to look trustworthy, professional, and intriguing.

What inferences would you draw about this organisation based on its logo? Take a moment to write down any guesses about what the organisation does and about its personality traits.

CVS is a pharmacy, selling medicine and other wellness and hygiene items. Red is often associated with the medical industry. The heart symbolizes caring. It also looks like half of the plus sign (+) is turned on its side, which is often used as a symbol for hospitals or medical clinics. The font is not fancy or artistic, but rather simple and traditional to go along with its personality of being reliable.

2. Colour Scheme

Colours are often associated with feelings, objects in nature, or even industries. For example, the colour red may either invoke feelings of anger or love, can be associated with fire, or danger, and is often used by technology, food, automotive, and medical industries. Green is usually associated with nature and invokes feelings of peace and safety. It can be used to represent health and is often used by industries involving food, household goods, or finance. However, each culture varies in its colour associations, so it’s important to understand the culture of your organisation’s audience and research what they are likely to think and feel when they see a particular colour.

As an example, let’s look at Cadbury, a chocolate company originating in Great Britain in 1824.

Cadbury’s primary colours are gold and purple. Purple symbolises royalty and nods to this chocolate being a luxury. It is also a unique colour to use for chocolate (it would be more common to use brown!), which sets it apart. Gold symbolises timelessness, elegance, and sophistication. Cadbury wants to be known as the high-quality chocolate brand that’s always been around and always will be.

3. Font

Most organisations will incorporate more than one font into their visual identity. The font that they use for their logo may be used in other places as a design element (such as a heading or title), but typically another font is chosen for the main copy. Fonts can look elegant, handwritten, traditional, modern, playful, or powerful. Choosing a font is an important part of visually representing an organisation’s identity.

The first step to choosing a font is deciding between a “Serif” or “Sans Serif” font. Serif fonts have the “feet”, or little lines, attached to the letters, giving them a more traditional or formal feel. Sans Serif fonts do not and are generally viewed as more casual and modern.

If your organisation has credibility from having been around for a while or wants to be viewed as very classic or professional, perhaps a more traditional-looking “Serif” font would be the best fit. On the other hand, if your organisation is innovative, more playful in its personality, or wants to resonate with a younger audience, a “Sans Serif” font may be the better choice.

While the font of your organisation’s logo may be a bit more artistic looking, It’s important to choose a font for your main copy that still represents your organisation’s personality, but is also very legible on your communication pieces. For example, you don’t want to choose a font that is so thin or scripted that your audience will have a hard time reading it. You’ll want to ensure that the main font that will be used on your website, in email templates, in letters, etc. will be easy to read and not too distracting from the content.

4. Photography Style

Every organisation should have an agreed-upon photography style that it strives to use on any images shared in communication pieces. This consistency is helpful for an organisation’s audience to recognise it and for it to have a clean appearance. Too many differently styled images can be overwhelming to look at and make a communication piece feel cluttered and less professional.

Cluster A contains photos from various colours, tones, moods, compositions, and subject matters. However, cluster B looks more like a family of photos with similar colours, a consistent tone and mood, and well-aligned compositions. The subject matter seems to be groups of professionals and modern, professional spaces. Ensuring your organisation’s photos are well integrated can go a long way toward helping your organisation’s identity resonate with your audience, and thus furthering your reach.

5. Icons & Patterns

Icons and patterns are supporting visual elements that further bring an organisation’s personality to life. These are best to develop after all other visuals have been created to ensure they are congruent with the organisation’s logo and colour scheme. Icons are symbols used to guide an audience around various communication piece. Patterns are decorative elements that can be used to add more visual interest to communication pieces. Sometimes organisations use special patterns for campaigns they are doing or associated with certain services or products. For example, an organisation might create a unique pattern that it uses to bring visual interest to a Christmas fundraising campaign. It’s helpful to also have a set of standard icons and patterns that can be used across communication channels so your audience can more easily recognise your organisation.

This set of icons appears on Water Mission’s website (watermission.org). The icon is the picture above each of the words. These symbols help draw the audience’s attention and create familiarity with certain actions. For example, after seeing the hand holding a dollar sign above the word “Give” on Water Mission’s website, the same symbol might appear on a social media post and the audience would know that the post has to do with giving before even reading it.

Warby Parker is a company that sells glasses and contacts. They use a pattern made up of circles of varying sizes and shades of blue. The pattern appears in many of their stores, throughout their office, on their impact report, and even on the packaging of their contact lenses (called Scout). This pattern helps its audience recognize the company and emphasizes its playful and creative personality.

Hopefully, this gives you a sense of how an organisation’s visual elements reflect who it is and what it does.