Have you ever noticed that most of the big names of midcentury design also have a children’s book design or two under their belts? During that prolific period of design, many designers looked towards children’s books as a way to explore new creative avenues and showcase their mid century modern aesthetics in a fresh format. This era saw the fusion of playful yet sophisticated design elements that just so happened to resonate with both children and adults. Designers like Leo Lionni, Bruno Munari, and Paul Rand found children’s books to be a perfect medium for experimentation with color, typography, and illustration, allowing them to craft visually engaging narratives that broke away from traditional, text-heavy formats. These books not only entertained young readers but also introduced them to the principles of modern design, making high-quality design accessible and enjoyable for a younger audience, and is likely a big reason for the staying power of mid century modern design today!

Like a fingerprint, your brand’s voice is unique. When people hear, read, or see your marketing, they immediately know it belongs to your brand because your message has its own special quirks.

It could be lighthearted and humorous, as in the case of food company Oatly, or professionally polished, like the CRM juggernaut Salesforce. These companies are memorable because they speak to their audiences with an authoritative voice that is still unique to them.

But if your company doesn’t have a clear brand voice, you risk people not understanding what your business represents, which can lead to a host of issues.

Erratic or inconsistent tone

Part of brand personality involves having a uniform tone. Your business’s tone is conveyed through attitude and word choice. As an example, let’s see what happens when discussing staying late with a colleague to work on a project.

If they said to you, “You need to stay late today. We have too much work,” this would come across as more aggressive than, “Hey, could you stay a bit later today to help finish up this work? It would really help.”

You’ll probably have a more negative impression of your coworker in the first example versus the second, which could affect your relationship moving forward. Now, imagine if they kept switching between these two tones. You would probably feel pretty irritated.

The same goes for your audience. Switching tones can be jarring for readers, leaving them unsure about how to interpret your message.

The fix?
Decide on one tone for your brand voice and include it in your company’s style guide. This explanation doesn’t have to be long. Instead, it should briefly explain the brand’s written tone and how it needs to be expressed in various print and digital channels.

Lack of clarity

What’s the fun part for most businesses when they’re creating a new brand or updating their old one? Designing the visuals, of course! Picking out which colors should make up the palette and deciding what the logo should look like are usually the things people enjoy most during a rebrand.

However, the part that often gets sidelined is the stakeholders’ getting clear on the brand’s messaging. It’s not uncommon for smaller businesses, especially new ones, to make up things as they go without first sitting down and working out the details of the brand like:

– Why does this business exist beyond making money?
– What is it that the business really offers to its customers?
– What is it about the brand that sets you apart from competitors?

Without the answers to these questions, your messaging can fall flat because it cannot communicate what the business truly offers its customers.

The fix?
Spend time on your own working through the questions above. Go deep with it and beyond surface-level answers since the more clarity you have about the business’s values and mission, the easier it will be to share it with your audience. If you need help, you can engage in a brand discovery session, which scrutinizes and breaks down your existing brand to understand what makes it tick.

Inauthentic communication

Piggybacking off of the last point, if you aren’t clear on what your business stands for, it’s difficult to really capture your brand’s true vibe. This can lead to marketing and advertising that just doesn’t feel genuine, which occurs when:

– Trying to capitalize on a new trend that uses language or styles that don’t fit the brand
– The messaging in your marketing doesn’t match the actions of the company
– Using “tone deaf” messaging that doesn’t empathize with your audience

Your message should speak authentically to your audience, whether trying to sell them a product or apologizing for a company mishap. Since it does so much in a short period to convince people to make a decision, insincerity erodes whatever trust and goodwill your audience gives you.

The fix?
Take a step back and remember your brand’s original purpose. This mission guides how you present yourself to your audience visually and through your communications.

Ineffectiveness in storytelling

Good stories bring us together, entertain us, and, the best ones, inspire us to change. But it’s tougher to tell those stories when your voice isn’t fully realized.

When your brand has a clear voice, it helps your audience connect with your marketing message. However, when your brand voice is disjointed, people will disengage, making it difficult for them to see themselves in your story.

The fix?
Understand what motivates your audience. Your story has to align with what your buyers want and how they perceive themselves. Establishing your voice means that you can weave these essentials into the overall brand story.

Your one-of-a-kind brand voice

With a strong brand voice, your message consistently incorporates the business’s core mission. Whenever people come across your messages, whether online or offline, they recognize it’s from your brand. It shows what’s important to them and genuinely conveys your story.

But more importantly, it can’t be replicated.

One of the best ways to ensure this voice remains unified across all your channels is to spend the time upfront creating brand guidelines that accurately state how your messaging should be written and designed on print and digital media.

By standardizing your brand, you can give your internal and external team the tools to keep it consistent as the business evolves.

How much do people trust brands? Unfortunately, not a lot. Consumer skepticism across all markets is high, with over 50% of consumers raising an eyebrow when they hear sustainability claims from businesses. Many of these same buyers find the company’s intentions, especially concerning cause-related marketing, to be less than sincere and, sadly, self-serving.

In a world where people don’t trust brands, businesses must prove that they authentically and accurately illustrate the issues they care about.

To do this, brands have to express this through their messaging, actions, and visuals to regain the trust they’ve lost. Since we specialize in the latter, let’s explore how to show brand authenticity visually so your business can talk the talk and actually walk the walk.

What is at the core of brand authenticity

At its core, brand authenticity overlays what a company says through its messaging and marketing with the reality or truth about its products, values, and mission. If everything goes well, the company’s actions align with what they show the world.

Three visual attributes you can find in authentic brands include:

• Consistency throughout its visual elements
• Realistic portrayal of the brand’s audience(s)
• Cohesive pairing of messaging and imagery

Buyer distrust creeps in when there’s a disconnect between one or all of the bullets above. It affects how people think of the brand, which impacts whether they decide to part with their money with your business or another.

The above attributes work together with your business’s actions and products. They help convey that your company is worthy of their trust, and here’s how each one works towards delivering that message.

Consistent visual elements solidify your brand

We’ve discussed logo symbolism, how color influences purchases, why typefaces matter in the past, and how every part of your brand plays a role in building—or tearing down—people’s perception of it.

In the Journal of Marketing Communications, researchers found the more exposure people have to a logo, the more positively they feel about it, especially when it’s intricate in design.

Maintaining consistency throughout your brand elements means people can pick it out of a lineup because it’s recognizable amongst a sea of competitors. It makes your brand stick in buyers’ minds and begins to lay the groundwork for them to trust it.

Realistic imagery represents your audience

Showing an image of your target audience in an ad doesn’t immediately mean that you’re authentically representing them. True representation signifies that you’re speaking to a person’s self-image or the mirror in which they view themselves.

It’s tempting to rely on stock photography as a cost-effective way to produce marketing materials. Heck, we even use them for our clients.

But using real photos of the people who buy your products, as in the case of period underwear company Thinx, humanizes them. Showing diverse people with “normal” body types wearing a product often spoken about in hushed tones makes it more accessible and relatable.

Imagery that creates an authentic connection uses real people in unpretentious settings doing real things, leading to higher engagement and a positive association with the brand.

Brand imagery and messaging bring everything together

The visuals shown, along with the marketing and sales messaging put out by a company, have to do a lot of heavy lifting to ensure that they align with the brand’s core values, products, and mission.

People use what they see to guide their perceptions about how well a business’s actions match theirs.

Your business is promoting a product and telling a story. For this story to resonate, people have to have an emotional connection with it.

Practical tips for businesses to gauge their authenticity

Does it feel like you’re building the plane as it flies? Many companies’ brand identities are in flux, thus creating conditions that lead to people not taking them seriously. Vague mission statements, unclear principles, and an undefined visual identity don’t give people the greatest confidence in a business’s ability to deliver an authentic experience.

To begin working through whether or not your brand is sending the right signals to its customers, start by:

• 1. Stating what your company embodies
• 2. Conducting an audit to assess the current brand’s internal and external positioning
• 3. Produce brand guidelines encompassing your values and mission, how your company intends to act, and how it should appear in your advertising and marketing
• 4. Periodically, assess and reevaluate your visual brand to see if it still matches your company’s actions

As you strategize and create your future marketing plans, they’ll be more concrete because you won’t have to guess at how the brand should look or sound. You’ll have a style guide that serves as the final word on the company’s identity. If you need help, a design partner, like our agency, can work with you to figure out your brand’s identity and how to present it to the world.

Turning doubt into belief

In today’s world, with so much messaging full of empty promises, businesses need to prove that they live up to the values they talk about.

When you take a genuine position on your company’s values, you can develop a brand that communicates authentically with its audience, which can begin to turn their skepticism into belief.