Small Business Owner: Create A Professional Presence On The Go

As a small business owner, the impression you leave with your existing and potential customers can make or break your business. While a good first impression is a necessity for every business owner, it’s especially true for business owners with personal brands. If you’re a speaker, author, coach, personal trainer, caterer, or personal chef, you know the importance of representing your business in its best light at all times.

When you are your brand, everything you do has the potential to send a message to your target market. You have the power and ability to choose the tone of the message you send. Graphic design and graphic communication help you set that tone. They help you build a brand using colors, images, shapes, and words to speak to your ideal consumers. Consider these graphic design elements while creating your small business owner brand.

Color Choice & Theory
Color plays a huge role in graphic design. It has the power to set the tone, establish a mood, and evoke an emotional response and reaction. Your color palette tells your audience whether your business is serious or playful, exciting or soothing.

Think about the difference in the role color plays in marketing and branding for a personal chef versus the owner of a small auto dealership. Even the difference in shades and tones of specific colors matters to marketing and branding. For example, picture the electric blue of an auto dealership versus the soothing lighter shades of blue of a wellness spa.

Choosing Fonts & Typeface
Two of the most prevalent design errors when using font and typeface are using too many fonts or choosing the wrong font. The other big error a small business owner can make is not understanding the difference between font and typeface. The font is the weight and style of a specific typeface, like italic or bold. The typeface is the specific design of the font you choose, like Papyrus or Helvetica.

Choose no more than three fonts for each piece of printed marketing materials you use. Try to choose two fonts from the same family. Fonts matter because like color choices, font and typeface help you set a tone. Think of how Comic Sans might fit a comedy club versus how out of place it would be if used for a law firm.

Creating Balance & Symmetry
Balance impacts almost every area of graphic design. It applies to words and fonts, images and shapes, and overall design. Balance doesn’t mean your design needs to be evenly spaced, square, or boring. It does mean your finished design needs to use scale, contrast, and layering to make your design flow well and appeal to the viewer’s eye.

It means using color and white space strategically and using your logo and other brand elements to create an eye-appealing design that includes a call to action that prompts action and leads to sales.

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Leaving a lasting impression is as important as making a good first impression. As a small business owner, you take your presence with you wherever you go. Use one or more of the ideas above to create marketing materials that increase awareness of your brand and bring your target market to your retail or virtual door.