Top 10 Tips for Creative And Authentic Designs
People who dare to make up their minds to build a unique design surrounding their company or project become successful at the end of the day.
Look, who doesn’t prefer a creative and authentic mindful person? Everyone, right? That’s the thing. I can hear what you said on your own.
Creativity is the word that replicates every imagination of your authenticity. And if you feel like you’re not creative enough, you’re growing with a wrong perception.
You must train your brain to think creatively and sequentially turn your imagination into reality.
Unique thoughts generate different types of silly yet vital ideas and one of those ideas becomes an authentic asset. That being said, this is how you accomplish your project, and that becomes creative and authentic.
And this project could be about design, Strategy, Inventing, research, Action, Building elements, or maybe something else that is countless.
So, here’s the first and most crucial point – the creative and authentic designs.
1 – Better Understanding Of Your Brand
There could be hundreds of brands or projects around your company, but do you know what it stands for?
Skip if you already know; otherwise, read on to discover and understand your brand.
This is necessary for creating a creative design, but at the same time, a catchy logo can help you brand your business.
This is the most essential thing in any industry.
Have you heard about Common Noun? It refers to the general name of something like a person, place or thing.
To define a brand, consider the general name of an object, such as a company or specific item and project.
Let’s take a real-life example: A business provides picture editing services, videography, 3D design, and graphic design. Now tell me, what is this company good at, or what does it stand for?
As said before, your business service must have a universal term, which means finding a popular word that describes your brand is better. A common term is “Post-Production”; sometimes, you might ask yourself what they give their clients. The answer would be “Service”.
Connect these two words, and you’ll get a specific specialisation for your enterprise. Therefore, I can say now that this is a Post-Production Service Company. Suppose you run a website posting many articles on how to, entertainment, technology and science.
Take a common term which describes the above words so clearly states that my niche is “Blogging”, and my business represents blog content.
After conducting research, concentrate on the design itself, visual product, photo improvement logo, etc., if needed; otherwise, it won't attract customers because it doesn’t reflect my company’s niche or goal.
Your design may look creative but not authentic at all times. Remember, lacking relevance within design can hurt brand awareness negatively, so before starting, I strongly advise understanding my business and brand first.
2 – Brainstorming
What do we mean by brainstorming?
Gathering a list of ideas from different members to solve a specific problem is called brainstorming.
Brainstorming is similar to team-working. It’s like team-working but with some added spice.
That means everyone has the right to speak up and share their thoughts. Moreover, each person may come up with different kinds of ideas.
Sticky notes are given out to all team members who write down their suggestions on paper; then, they’re appraised when the session ends.
You can also follow this technique for creating creative and authentic designs for branding; however, don't expect many various ideas to be generated quickly.
It's possible, but everyone's mind works and thinks differently. Once you sit down with your team and start brainstorming, prepare yourself to hear many unique ideas from them.
After the session, the best idea will be considered valid, so begin applying this method to create a creative and authentic design.
3 – Linking Characters or Objects
Linking characters or objects is essential for original and authentic design. But let’s start with this.
Imagine you’re working for a company that specialises in fitness. It’s up to you (or your team) to create a brand design.
Typically, people look at the logo to find the brand identity. Therefore, it is essential to determine a character or an object representing your business standing among competitors.
The three images above represent a fitness organisation. The first two images are character logo designs, and the last is an object logo design. You should get it, right?
First thing first — pick the character that represents your organisation best. For instance, if it’s about fitness, your character should look strong enough with an appropriate physique so people can understand what quality this brand offers.
Don’t forget: colour choice matters too! For example, both first two images have a red circle shape… And guess what? This is a brilliant way to spread your brand's physiological side!
Red stands for energy, power, excitement, passion and desire… now think about it 🙂 Cool, huh? Do this now – move on to the next one.
The 3rd image has four types of logos, which mean the same thing but in different ways…
But here’s where things get interesting – what do we need before starting physical exercises; what does everything love?
That’s why I want you guys (and girls!) out there creating some kind of object using those gym exercise tools so people can see what message they are trying to convey through their logos – trust me, this works every time!
4 – Brand Style
The classification of brand style is a multifaceted matter. But you know what? It’s easy to identify one.
The brand style is a framework that represents how an organisation presents itself to the audience through its logo, font and colour choices, and photography, among other elements.
You may have come across the term front-end development. The front end refers to the appearance of a website or application. The idea behind Brand Style is straightforward.
Its brand style determines a company’s perspective structure. This is everything we do to build a business. What we use in building a company goes hand in hand with its brand style, just as we sometimes compare vibe with sound.
For example, Wikipedia is widely known as people’s go-to place when they want knowledge about something valuable. Now, if you look at their website, you will see that it has this classic vibe.
On the other hand, if you visit Hubspot’s official website, you’ll notice that it has more of a modern feel to it.
So far, so good; a company’s brand style includes its brand narrative, logo, colour scheme(s), typography(ies), imagery(ies), videos and voices used throughout all marketing materials such as websites or social media platforms like Instagram accounts etc.
However, if you’re ready for some fresh, natural vibes while developing anything, ensure these are followed so that your business stands out amongst others but remains professional-looking!
5 – Generating Typography
No matter what you create, if there is text, then Typography matters. It helps make your design look genuine.
So why does it matter? And what does Typography mean? Let’s break it down.
Your design might have text. What if people can’t read the words easily because of how they’re arranged on top of each other? This is where Typography comes into play. In total, there are six parts to typography:
- Font Family
- Font Types
- Font Style
- Font Size
- Font Colour
- White Spacing
Picking a font and picking the colour for your texts is essential. You want to keep the connection between the design background and brand style.
You can see the example above in the picture. Then, keep the size of the text well-balanced within your work. Your design may only have small amounts of text, so be careful not to power the main elements (Design Is Creative Thinking), which are all equally weighted.
6 – Replicating Customer’s Interest For The Next Step
Anybody interested in something will want to spread the word about a company that helps with fast and significant business growth.
This is why a corporation should identify what its potential customers care for. Take their excitement about your design into account as you think about your consumers and do everything possible to maintain their interest in your company’s service or product.
Let’s say you own an eCommerce business selling different products in your online store, and then maybe your team wants to create a campaign to promote the business.
After this, you have to know what products have been sold within the last month but not years back; it’s good practice to work with data concerning recent activities.
Then, choose those products and mix them properly. What background colour would the product image take? Colour represents a company’s image everywhere so that you can check it out. After selecting the right colour, more things must be added to the design.
What elements could those be? An event name, statistics, services or product substance, consequence icon(s), company logo, social logos(s), lighting, transparent elements, etc.- anything that will give it a creative touch and make it appear authentic. I’ll talk about this further down.
7 – Take Design Ideas From Your Audience
Time is saved by globalisation, and it also helps build connections worldwide. That’s why every social media platform has become a powerful means of showing our presence in this global village.
Therefore, I have put this section for research purposes and to learn from people around the globe.
In general, you can't know what your audience is thinking all the time, but you can if you follow certain well-known tricks:
Creating Polls
Create a poll where you will ask questions about your project to understand what the audience thinks about it.
For example, if you want to change your company's logo, it becomes more significant when your listeners express different views.
You know which logo colour or design suits you best, but still ask your followers. You cannot develop new ideas on the spot, so just make a pool where everyone can give their view and vote for them too.
This way brings more ideas, which opens your mind to various creative design forms.
And do not worry about feeling disappointed after finishing designing because what if they hate it? You designed it according to people's advice so they will like it.
Giveaway Systems
People love receiving rewards that motivate them to participate; therefore, create a contest whereby individuals will join and share their thoughts and then reward whoever comes up with a fantastic idea.
Also, does the winner's billboard use their picture to encourage them to giveaways? This is a quick way of generating free, creative and authentic design ideas through social media platforms.
But which social media platform would be great? OK, here are my recommended social media platforms:
- X
- Using a Website Blog Post
So, do not think twice about it. Just start doing this and use social media platforms now.
8 – Use Sketching Tools and Try to Draw Your Ideas
You have to shake up your thinking to start being creative.
However, the environment must be correct to begin this shaking-up process.
You don’t have to sketch, but it’s a great way of making what you imagine real. This is especially useful for graphic designers. You can use this traditional method to bring your imagination to life in any graphic design type.
Now, back to business; first, ensure you have all your sketching tools because not having them might halt your activities and kill your working spirit.
“Time-Breaking” is another critical point.
People see rules differently. But there’s one thing I’d like to address here. Please don’t spend long hours drawing non-stop; you need breaks between work sessions.
They help clear minds and trigger fresh, more ingenious ideas.
So, now that you’re set take a piece of paper and start sketching whatever comes to mind.
Don’t stick to one thing only; change each time with a new point and angle of view as you start drawing another one.
For designers, Pinterest is their best friend. So make sure every time you want to do something, search it on Pinterest first.
It is an influential visual search engine that organises your words into categories and then displays similar ideas for visitors. Therefore, instead of sleeping, keep searching for new things and creating with drawing tools!
Before turning them into creative designs, the most popular creative designers always do things in real life. Therefore, preprocessing always comes first when doing any professional assignment.
9 – Weird Thoughts To Iconic Design Thinking
It may be hard to believe, but thinking up strange ideas has been responsible for most of the world’s great inventions. For example, it used to seem like nobody could ever fly in the air, not even in their wildest dreams.
But look at what technology does these days — now it’s easier than ever to make our imagination come to life. So, don’t think about what ends; think about what starts.
Create something that might be called ridiculous by people but creative and authentic. That’s the thing. It is useless when you generate anything that does not weigh others.
When you do something bizarre but liked by people, that indicates your design will gain more popularity. Therefore, ensure you communicate the right message with your audience through your design.
Okay, let me give you an example of this. Look at these pictures below here.
Some designers attended a Logo Design contest. All of them did good jobs, but the first one won.
So basically, they were supposed to create a logo that describes “Flying Pig Garden Supply”. If you look at each logo concept, figure out they did something unrealistic, which is weird but makes sense. That’s my point here.
Think about what made this funny while designing a too-authentic logo simultaneously. Only then can you implement your thoughts successfully.
But what if they didn’t instruct them by giving the logo's tagline Flying Pig? You would find much more creativity in their logos.
You can guess that what I said earlier was right. First, find out your niche and understand your company's tagline.
Once you can generate multiple relevant taglines, your mind will generate many more ideas that were not even thought about earlier.
First, comment below on your reaction after looking at the PIC-2. Doesn’t it feel weird? Isn’t it giving you a fun vibe? Yeah, it does.
You won’t forget this logo for sure after seeing this type of logo.
The brand themselves made their brand name funny by generating a unique brand logo, and people will love sharing the logo across social media platforms like U.G.C or User Generated Content, which helps businesses increase online.
Before starting your company, you can develop a brand name that can be considered an exciting and interesting business name.
So it’s not like you have to combine two things to create one thing. You have to make several concepts to make one. And the same thing you can do with your brand name selection also. Unite your team and start exploring ideas now.
10 – Be A Neutralist & Scrutineer
Once you’ve finished your design project, it’s essential to be objective and evaluate it yourself. So, here’s how to assess your design and pick the final version.
- Be a neutralist.
- Judge based on your design concept, creativity, story, relevance, business aspects and authenticity.
- Ask questions by putting yourself in other [Targeted Audience] shoes.
- Use the C.R.A.P. method. (Contrast; Repetition; Alignment and Proximity)
- Pay attention to all of the schemes.
- Find emphasis & lackings.
- Technical factors
I should talk less about this follow-up in this blog post because it is already long.
But we will develop another series of this article covering almost everything related to creative design, so hopefully, you keep in touch with us.
Ok, let's get back to the point.
We are versatile individuals; therefore, whenever we finish a design, we must be neutralists and consider adaptability.
Not that it does not cause any misunderstanding when we continue doing this, but rather, it makes us make more accurate judgements.
Secondly, make decisions based on your design aspects. What factors have you used? What can you do to improve them?
A good 30% of the misunderstandings and twists are solved by comparing good and bad design elements by putting yourself into other people's shoes.
On the other hand, Following the C.R.A.P technique is a clever way to scrutinise a design. Check the contrast between your design elements. Check the alignments of your designs.
If everything is okay, then check whether there is a repeat of your elements. This is what makes your design so disorganised.
Keep an eye on those issues. Pay close attention to all schemes used in typographies, colour Images, Messages, etc., and other designs besides yours.
On the other hand, finding emphasis deficiencies in technical factors is always necessary.
Check whether your design has a strong message or if any pieces need to be included. What about technical factors?
Technical expertise should help you develop a well-structured assessment which detects tangible areas for improvement in your activities or those of others.
Physical printing systems should be considered. It is worth considering since you may need physical copies of your design.
Does that seem complicated? No. Once you understand it, you can do these tasks faster.
Thank you very much for reading this article.
