Brand and Design Your Blog

THE EBA BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO
BRANDING
YOUR BLOG
COPYRIGHT © 2019 ELITE BLOG ACADEMY ® |1| DO NOT COPY OR SHARE ANY MATERIALS
THE EBA BEGINNERS GUIDE TO
BRANDING
YOUR BLOG
B randing is important for so many reasons, but many tend to struggle on where
to even begin, and for good reason! Branding can seem like an enormous
project to take on!
So what exactly IS a brand anyway? Your branding covers everything from your
social media accounts, your website, logo, graphics, how you interact with
customers to how team members interact with each other. Your brand tells your
audience exactly WHO you are as an entrepreneur and a company, which is why
we’re going to go over some important steps to consider when branding your blog,
yourself, or even your business.
Here we have listed some steps that we believe will get you on the right track! So,
whether you’re already familiar with the branding/design world, or completely new
to it, these steps should help you get started with creating the branding for your
blog & business that you’ve always dreamed of.
If we haven’t stressed enough how important branding is for your business, here are
three reasons why your brand and design really DO matter:
Brand Recognition: When you think of Cheerios, do you automatically visualize a

honey bee or when you think of Kleenex, does tissue paper come to mind? That is
brand recognition. Being able to recall the product and your feelings associated
with it based on name or logo alone. Ultimately, you want people to recognize
content that is yours even when they are not on your website. You want them to
see your branding, and have it trigger something, like a memory of reading one
of your amazing articles last month. This will propel people to come back and visit
your website, time and again.
Let Audience Members Know What to Expect: Having clear branding allows your
audience to discover what your company is about and the content that they can
expect from you. In EBA we often remind students that they only have a moment
to make an impression on their readers and branding is a VERY important piece of
the first impression puzzle.
Create a Standard for Your Growing Business: In addition to the impression you’re
leaving on potential readers and future customers, branding helps your business
stay consistent and efficient. As an entrepreneur, when you start adding members
to your team, a clear brand guide, containing colors, fonts, etc. (which we will
teach you how to do in this eBook), will allow you to stay consistent across the
board.
Here we have laid out some steps that will get you on the right track! So, whether
you’re already familiar with the branding/design world, or completely new to it,
these steps should help you start creating a brand and design for your blog &
business that you’ll love!
HERE ARE 7 STEPS TO CREATE THE BRAND OF YOUR DREAMS:
STEP 1: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

This first step is CRUCIAL in moving forward with your brand. Knowing your audience
is the stepping stone in deciding what you want the overall look and feel of your
brand to be. Take time to investigate your audience’s needs and what makes
them tick. The more you know about your audience, the better you will be at
keeping them engaged with your designs/branding.
In fact, this step is SO important that identifying your avatar, or your target
audience is one of the very first assignments (and a student favorite) within our Elite
Blog Academy course.
Knowing your own blogging niche and experience is not quite enough, to set
yourself apart, you really need to understand who your audience is, what they like,
what their life is like, what obstacles they are facing in their day to day life, etc.
There are a few ways you can do this:
Take some time and get a good picture of one person you are writing to and
create a persona for them.
Take note of questions and feedback you are getting on your social posts, blog
posts, and even your emails.
Conduct a reader survey. Find out who is reading your blog and ask what they are
interested in and what they need help with!
TIP: If you’re not 100% sure what resonates with your audience, we would suggest
creating a few styles of graphics to test out what is grabbing their attention. Once
you pinpoint that style, stick with it and keep your branding consistent!
STEP 2: CHOOSE A DESIGN PROGRAM TO USE
We know that choosing AND using a design program is one of those areas of
blogging that seems super daunting to bloggers, but the good news is it does not
have to be!
While we suggest learning Adobe Design programs such as InDesign, Illustrator,

and Photoshop, we understand these are expensive and can be hard to learn. We
suggest these Adobe programs because they give you the most freedom to do
anything you need to make unlike many of the online resources that claim to be
“graphic design tools”.
There are fairly easy AND free programs to use in the beginning so that you can
create the necessary graphics needed to get your blog up and running. Down the
road, you may decide that this is not in your wheelhouse and can hire these tasks
out to a contractor or start building your very own team.
NOTE: If you aren’t comfortable learning the Adobe Design programs here are a
few suggestions and articles with free online graphic design resources:
www.canva.com
www.picmonkey.com
www.vectr.com
www.cnewcomer.com/canva-alternatives
When comparing the different resources, Canva

seems to be the better option. It gives you plenty of
choices of graphics, printouts, and so much more.
First you’ll want to sign up and choose either the

Small Business option or the Personal Option.
From there you will be able to pick what you would

like to create, and then narrow it down even further.
For this example, I’ve picked that I want to create a Social Graphic.
Then I’ve chosen to create a social media image.
From there you can get started and creating your social media image, the canva
dashboard has plenty of different options and it works as almost a drag and drop
kind of program. Super simple for those just starting out and want something a little
more budget friendly.
STEP 3: PICK A COLOR SCHEME
Colors play a very vital role when designing graphics.
PRIMARY COLORS: red, yellow, and blue.
SECONDARY COLORS: green, purple, orange—which are formed by

combining the primary colors.
TERTIARY COLORS: when you mix a primary color with a secondary color,
such as yellow-orange or blue-green.
COOL COLORS: blue, purple, and green
WARM COLORS: red, yellow and orange.
It’s very important to consider your audience when deciding what colors to use
in your color scheme. We suggest looking into the art of Color Theory as a start to
get yourself acquainted with the psychology of colors and what effects colors can
have on an audience. You may be surprised how much colors have an effect on
people and how much it can influence the decisions of your viewers.
TIP: Be sure to keep in mind your audience from Step 1 when picking a color
scheme.
As a rule of thumb, you typically don’t want more than 4-5 different colors because
it can get overwhelming. Instead, choose one or two signature colors, an accent
color, and a neutral color.
Helpful hint: Limit your color scheme to a simple 2-3 colors and use tints/shades of
those colors (either darker or lighter versions of the colors) to keep the branding
together. This way you can still have a variety of colors to use without it being too
overwhelming.
If you’ve ever played around with color on any computer program, you’ve
probably seen a module that listed RGB or CMYK colors with some numbers next to
the letters.
EVER WONDERED WHAT THOSE LETTERS MEAN?
CMYK is used when dealing with printing which stands for Cyan, Magenta,
Yellow, Key (Black)
RGB is used for the web which stands for Red, Green, Blue
This is a good article that goes more in-depth on when to use CMYK or RGB and
what the differences are: https://envato.com/blog/rgb-vs-cmyk-guide-color-
systems-designers/
Once you are ready to establish a color scheme you’ll want to be sure the colors
you chose match well with the message you are trying to convey and for your
audience.
Here are some helpful sites to play around and see what colors work best together
and creating color schemes:
https://coolors.co/
https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/
STEP 4: CHOOSE YOUR FONTS
A general rule of thumb is to never put more than 2 typefaces together in one
design. It’s also important to know the different styles of typefaces and how they
pair together. There are 3 main types of typefaces that are good to know:
1 SERIF
The small features on the ends of strokes in some fonts are known as Serifs.
Common Serif Typefaces: Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino & Garamond
2 SANS SERIF
Sans Serif typefaces are the opposite of Serif typefaces, they do not have
any extending features on the edges of the letter.
Common Sans Serif Typeface: Arial, Helvetica, Century Gothic and Tahoma
3 SCRIPT
Script typefaces based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by
handwriting.
Some Script Typefaces we use include: Remachine and Pacifico
Here are some helpful resources for font pairing and about typography:
http://blog.visme.co/pairing-fonts/
http://www.indesignskills.com/tutorials/font-pairing/
https://www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/
EXAMPLES OF FONT PAIRINGS:
STEP 5: FIND (GOOD QUALITY) PHOTOGRAPHY
If hiring a photographer to take your photos for your blog is not something you can
afford or feel is necessary at the moment, we would suggest paying for a stock
photo site membership. Make sure you’ve vetted out the site before you make a
commitment to pay for it. Not all stock photo sites are created equally! You don’t
want to buy a membership and find out the quality of images are not good, that
they don’t have a great variety or that the style of photographs won’t work for your
blog’s style.
Suggested paid stock photo sites:
123rf.com
StockFresh.com
Shutterstock.com
NOTE: If paying for stock photos is not completely in your budget yet either, there
are many great quality free stock photo sites. These sites will not give you as much
variety and freedom as you would have hiring a photographer or buying the stock
photo site membership, but they can offer some nice quality images until you are
able to invest in better imagery.
STEP 6: STUDY FILE TYPES

Knowing the differences between file types and what they are used for is important
when it comes to graphics. You wouldn’t want to print something in a file type that
is made for online-use only because then the quality of the print out would not be
good. Here are the 3 basic file types you would need to know for your blog:
JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group

Common/Best Uses: website images / social media / photo sharing
PNG – Portable Network Graphics

When you see an image “free-floating” on a background, it’s likely to
be a PNG. This is because PNG’s are the best file type when it comes to
transparency. PNG files are formatted in such a way that the “transparent
areas of the PNG will blend & adjust naturally to whatever is behind the
image when the background of the page isn’t a solid white or black color.”
Common/Best Uses: website images on a background / product display
images / logos
PDF – Portable Document Format
When it comes to the world of business, the PDF is perhaps the most
prevalent of all file types. Its combination of versatility and compatibility
make it a workhorse of information sharing.
Common/Best Uses: Workbooks / printables / any printed material
COMPRESSION AND RESOLUTION
Another important thing to keep in mind when it comes to file saving is how to
compress images. Compressing images is important because some platforms put
a limit on the file size you can upload and also low-quality images can come out
blurry if their resolution isn’t high enough quality! Before we get into Compression
it’s important to know the term Resolution.
The basic definition of resolution is a measure used to describe the sharpness and
clarity of an image or picture and is often used as a metric for judging the quality
of monitors, printers, digital images, and various other hardware and software
technologies. The general rule of thumb to remember is for Internet use you want
your image resolution to be 72 or above and for printing you want it to be 300 or
above. You want a higher resolution for printing because if you don’t have a higher
resolution, the images and text will not be crisp and can look blurry!
So now that you know a little about resolution we can talk about compression.
Compression is just what it sounds like, you take a large file and compress it down
to a smaller size. This is important to do for uploading to social media or blogs
because a large file can slow down the speed of the page it’s on and can cause
many headaches if you’re not aware of the file size!
STEP 7: CREATE A BRAND GUIDE

Brand guides have all the brand standards in one place for you to keep all
your branding consistent. They normally include the logo, colors in your brand,
typefaces you use, and anything else you include in your branding. It’s good to
keep it as a reference for yourself to stay consistent and if your business ever grows
to include a team having a brand guide will help get all your employees on the
same page with your brand.
Keep in mind that establishing a cohesive brand doesn’t just happen overnight. It
takes a lot of trial and error and testing to be able to get to a point that you are
truly satisfied with. Take each step one at a time and really focus on the end goal
of what you are trying to accomplish and say with your brand.

Brand and Design Your Blog

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THE EBA BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO

Brand Recognition: When you think of Cheerios, do you automatically visualize a

HERE ARE 7 STEPS TO CREATE THE BRAND OF YOUR DREAMS:

STEP 1: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

While we suggest learning Adobe Design programs such as InDesign, Illustrator,

When comparing the different resources, Canva

First you’ll want to sign up and choose either the

From there you will be able to pick what you would

Then I’ve chosen to create a social media image.

PRIMARY COLORS: red, yellow, and blue.

SECONDARY COLORS: green, purple, orange—which are formed by

COOL COLORS: blue, purple, and green

WARM COLORS: red, yellow and orange.

EVER WONDERED WHAT THOSE LETTERS MEAN?

EXAMPLES OF FONT PAIRINGS:

Suggested paid stock photo sites:

STEP 6: STUDY FILE TYPES

JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group

PNG – Portable Network Graphics

COMPRESSION AND RESOLUTION

STEP 7: CREATE A BRAND GUIDE

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