What Are The Best Tools For Building Visual Brand Identity?

When launching a business or brand, usually there is some form of decision at some point as to how it will look. Now, this can very much be “it is going to look however I feel like looking that day.” Some people fully style each time they present themselves online. Some people don’t.

Not being branded can be part of a brand’s brand.

But for the most part, there will be visuals such as color schemes and a logo and potentially other graphics and visuals which become tied to you.

If you’re been reading this blog, you’re probably familiar with this article on general information about generative AI use. So you know I’m going to encourage you to work out ways to create brand assets that don’t use AI. But there is a lot more to it than that.

The whole point of this blog is to help you be successful.

And there are very few, if any, people who will avoid your company because you didn’t use AI.

But there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who will unfollow you, block you, and totally write you off when they see you using AI. And that’s a fast way to cut out a large part of your potential reach.

“If your event flier is AI, I’m not going" has become a big trend on Social Media. You can search it and see all the posts and threads across the internet about it. Of course there are people (bots?) being snarky back tat them, but if anything that just pushes those people to want even less AI.

Multiple commencement speeches this past graduation season were met with full audience boos when commencement speakers talked about AI.

People are using pencil and paper drawings saying they would rather see a business do that than post something made with AI.

There are threads with thousands of comments about how if a business is using AI for something as inexpensive as a simple graphic, the viewers wonder what else you are cutting corners on, and the quality of your product and service gets called into question.

Cutting corners seems to be helpful at first until the full impact rolls out and it turns out to be way more damaging than the supposed amount it saved.

Especially given the cheap resources available such as Canva (you don’t have to use the AI features). There is a free version for very simple basic options. And the monthly cost is $18/month if paid monthly. *This is not a paid affiliation.

This is a great post on Instagram which breaks it down really well as well. If you’re not on Instagram the post says:

“When I see you used AI art on your flyer / logo / substack post, etc. it repels me with the ferocity of a thousand suns and changes how I see you and your work moving forward. 100% of the time, I’d rather look at art drawn by an absolute novice with their eyes closed, in crayon on a wet napkin, than gross shiny soulless dead-eyed AI generated ‘art’.
If you have no budget, take 8 minutes and doodle it yourself! Find a pen you like! Have fun with it! If you hate drawing, ask an artsy friend or your teenage niece to draw it. They’ll likely be excited and honored to be asked and included.
If you have even the most modest budget, hire me or one of a bajillion amazing, alive, breathing human artists around here who’d happily scribble up something 1000x more wonderful.
PS: if you use AI to illustrate your writing, I’m assuming you also use it to write, and I will not be reading.
Love, a human artist”

The comment section is pretty brutal, and sums up a very large portion of people who could be potential supporters/clients/customers that you’re losing.

So, what should you do?

Again, Canva is a great option. Most computers also have a program called MS Paint on them which can be used for super basic graphics. There always is a pencil and paper and your cell phone camera.

You can lean into the fact that you’re specifically not using AI, that you had a student do it for you so it is novice, or make a joke and say your cat made it - you can lean into an imperfect graphic or logo if that fits the rest of what you’re doing.

You can reach out to colleges and ask if there are graphic design students who might want to help with a logo or graphics for you and they can use it for their portfolio in exchange for a discounted price. This is a great Facebook group with tons of artists (over 265,000 of them). There are newer artists and sometimes people who will just give a discount to support small businesses which are making an effort to hire a human. You can just make a post in the group with what you need and what your budget is, and you can include things like they can keep a copy to use for their portfolio or you will tag them when you post what they designed to shout them out. For new artists starting out that can be really valuable!

And if you have a budget, don’t be cheap. You shouldn’t be raking in more than enough money to live beyond comfortably while you won’t pay an artist their rate to do a professional job for you.

That said, most people reading this blog are smaller businesses or brands. Things are super expensive, and running a business is not cheap. But if you can’t spare even the lowest amount of money or even a few hours of your own time at all, ever, you might need to review your business overall because that sounds like an unhealthy business that needs to be worked out…

Remember, there will always be people who gush over how cute your latest ChatGPT trend is on Facebook, but how many clients or customers are you losing at the same time?

Social media makes wonderful little bubbles where we see specific sides. Check out that Facebook group above, do some digging, look at what the market research is saying about consumers and their response to businesses and brands turning everything over to AI.

This doesn’t mean that every form of AI is horrible and there is no good use for it ever. But when it comes to building your brand visuals, the likelihood of it not doing you any favors is extremely high.

You can find your brand voice and not alienate potential customers and clients along the way!