From Oinopo Studio’s desk:

Hiya, I'm Kim - brand strategist and visual identity designer with a passion for accessibility!

I run a newsletter called The Petri Dish, where every week I write about experiments you can do to build your brand as a neurodivergent (or soup-brained as I like to call it!) business owner. It's usually accompanied by a story or recently guest writers from other areas of expertise to provide more perspectives than just my own.

You can join The Petri Dish here, and learn more about me and what I do on my recently published website. Hope to see you there!

I'd like to thank Stacey for this opportunity to give you some dope nuggets of wisdom when it comes to choosing brand colours & fonts.

I have no doubt you have a network of words in your soup-brain associated with your brand, that represent the vibe and aesthetic you want to communicate with your audience.

How do you translate those words into visuals? Let’s explore it!

I will be hosting the workshop Your Brand On Mood Boards with Kristen Morris from Redesignia where we will be helping you doing exactly this LIVE - tap in to join the waitlist & get the details when they drop!

Like with all creative work, it starts with collecting inspiration that will give you an idea of what direction to take it.

There are so so so many ways to approach this. The simplest route I suggest is to start with Pinterest, and search “[your keyword] branding”

The key here is to be specific. If one of your brand words is “inspiring”, think about what that means to YOU. Every person running a business where inspiring is one of their brand words will have a different association to it.

This way, you’ll find some related keywords to your core definitions.

Inspiring to me means showing others that people just like them CAN follow their hearts and do whatever the hell they want.

It means to have a positive influence on others, to fuel their own drive because they see my own, despite my challenges.

If you need a bit of help picking keywords - here’s a list of 500+ brand identifying keywords from The Color Palette Studio.

Whatever you search will probably yield a wide variety of graphics, but you’ll probably notice reoccurring colours, fonts & aesthetics. At this point I save the ones I’m drawn to in a board.

Adding “branding” to any search on Pinterest will always give you tangible results for design, and that’s what you’re after!

To infuse more of yourself in your brand, a hack I love is to turn to the daily environments you’re in. What clothing makes you feel amazing wearing? How’s your home decorated? How do you wish it was decorated? What fonts are on the items you own? Do you take lots of notes by hand or type everything on your laptop?

So, how do you figure out what type of specific font to use, or what colours to go with?

Fonts and colours are the two things that are being used the most because they will literally be EVERYWHERE in your branding. Your socials, emails, website, marketing… It’s what makes you recognisable at a first glance.

There’s a whole science to choosing fonts, and I’m not gonna bore you with them today (join us for the workshop if you want to learn more about it!).

But depending on the type, it does carry different subconscious meanings. To keep it simple, look at what’s most common when you search for your brand words on Pinterest. They’re usually accurate.

That being said - you can break “rules” if you want to. The only thing to keep in mind is:

• No more than 2 brand fonts: Headings & body copy. One accent font is also fine.

• Choose fonts that are legible (beware of script fonts)

In terms of colours:

• 5-6 colours MAX

• 1 very light, your new “white”

• 1 very dark, your new “black

• 1 accent that stands out from the rest

• 2-3 main colours that fit well together

• Run them through a colour contrast checker

• This tool can help you get started with a palette

When you have the fonts & colours set, use them (and only them) everywhere!