No matter what field of business you are in, your prospects make split decisions about who you are as a company based off of the first impression you give them. Whether you realize it or not, it happens all the time. I went to visit a friend at Northwestern recently, and every restaurant I chose to eat at was based off of a first impression I had while walking past. The colors of the sign, the style of the logo, you name it!

Customers aren’t necessarily looking for anything when they first glance at your logo, website, collateral, sign, etc., but there are definitely things they will observe that help generate a certain feeling towards your company. So how can you perfect your brand to make the right first impression?

Keep these things while designing your company aesthetic:

Consistency

Try to keep your brand consistent. Being consistent with font styles, colors, language and more will simplify your materials and draw focus to the message you are trying to get across, rather than a changing design. This is especially crucial for startups that need to build an image and begin to gain a sense of brand recognition.

Typography and Color

One thing that draws potential customers in is a well-thought-out color scheme and font. Your choices should be bold, yet maintain your overall company feel. Bringing a unique color or set of colors into your design will help customer associate your company quickly. As a reference, I think of how well Nike has claimed the color orange, or the way you can distinguish the main cell phone carriers; AT&T, Verizon, T Mobile and Sprint by their branded colors.

The font you use gives an immediate message to your customer. Fonts can instantly give off the vibe of your company, whether it be upscale, fun, simple, strong, etc. Your customer can sense the message of your company by simply looking at your text. They don’t even need to read it!

Send a message

Make your brand easy for people to understand. If you can give the customers an idea of what you’re all about just by the image or style of your logo and brand, do it! It doesn’t take as much effort to look at a picture as it does to read a block of text. Another plus for visual messages is time—it takes only a couple seconds to look at an image and understand it.

Here's an example: If you're trying to convey to your prospects that you are an organized and clear-cut company, then reflect that in your logo and your branding with clean designs and fonts. These messages are subtle but are often picked up by the customer.

Try out some of these tips with your graphic design branding and give yourself a leg up against your competition. Do you have other tips to add to this list? Let us know in the comments below!