Create a visual identity for a brand: what is it?

Branding professional Marty Neumeier defines a brand identity as “the outward expression of a brand, including its trademark, name, communication and visual appearance.” 

Generally speaking, a brand identity is a way for a company to communicate with the world, differentiate itself from the competition, and create an experience that encourages people to engage with it. 

So, it’s essential for any business that wants to excel in its industry to develop a strong branding foundation.

– How to generate leads

Some companies have managed to create a visual identity so well thought that have become a striking artistic expression, such as Apple and BMW, for example.  

A brand identity is made up of what your brand says, what your values ​​are, how you communicate your product / service, and what you want people to feel when they see or interact with you. 

Essentially, your brand identity is the personality of your business and a promise to your customers.

With millions of companies trying to build a name and image in the marketplace, creating a strong visual identity has become crucial to differentiating themselves from the competition.

5 Steps to Create a Visual Identity to Your Brand

The terms “brand” and “logo” are often used interchangeably, but while a logo may be the symbol of a business, it is not the entirety of a brand. 

It’s commonly the first thing people recognize about a company. However, an appealing logo may be unable to capture the target market’s attention without a well-established brand identity. In fact, creating a logo is just a small step towards developing a strong brand.

To create a consistent and effective visual identity to your brand, here’s a simple step-by-step:

1. Know your business, audience and competition

Just as when starting a business, the first step to create a visual identity is to do market research. 

You need to define 3 factors:

• Audience: Know what your audience wants and expects in the type of product / service you offer is vital to create a visual identity that people will love. It’s also helpful to learn about the common trends popular among them so you can offer something that would catch their attention. 

• Competition and value proposition: What makes your company unique in your segment define the difference between you and your competition. Reference is essential for the development of a successful brand. Looking at other examples of branding that worked or failed will also help you make more assertive decisions. 

• Personality: To stand out from the crowd, your brand needs personality. To create a visual identity for your business, you’ll use colors, types, and images, but beyond that, this visual representation needs to communicate who your company is.  For example, is your business as dynamic and bold as Nike? Or elegant and professional, like Givenchy? You can develop a unique character for your brand to connect with your target audience. It would also help you conduct campaigns and brand marketing strategies in the future if your brand has a personality. 

2. Create a logo

Once you know your business inside and out, it’s time to bring your brand to life. 

In the words of graphic designer Paul Rand, “design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”

– Design Tips for Creating Professional Presentations

While the logo is not the full brand identity, it is a vital element as it will be the easiest part to remember and therefore most recognizable to the public.

The process of creating your company logo comprises the various factors that are listed below. 

Logo

The logo is a visual representation, made up of symbols and words.

To create a distinctive design to symbolize your brand, the best option is to hire a designer and give a detailed briefing of what you want.

This way, you can elaborate on which elements and style you want to include in your company emblem. 

There is no ready recipe for creating a logo, each designer has his own method, but to help you and him/her, scribble what you have in mind on paper, it makes things a lot easier.

In general, keep your design simple, without many elements that can cause visual confusion, so that it can be easily identifiable.

Colors

Once you have solid visual images, you can explore colors. 

The colors you choose should support the personality you want your brand to have. You can take advantage of color psychology to attract people’s attention and send the right message.

Think of the emotions that best align with this personality, they are not universal, each individual thinks of colors a little differently, but in general, the emotions associated with colors are these:

• Orange: enthusiasm, change, expansion and dynamism
• Green: freshness, balance and harmony
• Blue: power, safety, confidence
• Red: action, urgency, agility
• Yellow: happiness, sympathy, animation
• Pink: romance, docility, innocence
• Purple: luxury, mystery, beauty
• Gray: conservative, modern, formal, solid
• White: brightness, cleanliness and tranquility
• Black: strength, formality and elegance

Answering which of these features best matches the personality and purpose of your brand will help you define a key color to create a visual identity for your logo. 

You can then play with different shades and color finishes when designing your logo. For instance, you can use a matte tone to showcase sophistication or opt for a gloss finish to showcase a dynamic brand personality. 

But you don’t have to choose just one option. Creating a color palette is a way to enrich and enhance your identity.

It offers variety so you can develop unique designs for your business while staying true to brand identity.

There are some great sites that can help you set a color palette for your business.

– Design and video editing tips

A good color palette is clean and flexible, providing designers enough options to be creative, but not enough to overwhelm the viewer. It can include:

• 1 main color
• 2 primary colors
• 3-5 complementary colors

Take a look at the color palette that Coursify.me uses and makes available to assist its customers:

Typography

Typography can also be a double-edged sword if not used properly. Creating a visual identity for your business means creating a pattern, and for that there cannot be dozens of fonts being used.

In your logo, on the website and in all documents created by your company (print and digital), there should be consistent use of typography. 

If you take a look at the Nike site and ads, you will easily notice that they use the same set of fonts in all their materials, which helps to create a concise brand image.

Therefore, choose the font you will use for your logo carefully so that it matches your company message. 

You should choose or even create a font that reflects your identity and is both readable and unique to ensure your materials won’t confuse your audience.

If you have a brick company, for example, choose a sturdy and robust font. If you sell online craft courses, a more delicate or rustic handwriting may be a better option.

– Copywriting Tips

Although you will probably only use one type of font in your logo, there are many other texts that your company will need to create, which means you don’t always (and shouldn’t) use the same font.

Select two or three different types to create your communication, but be careful that they are well readable. Do tests on different applications if necessary. For instance, when creating materials like posters, you can check if your font is clear regardless of the text size.

3. Document your brand visual identity

There are a number of ways and channels a company uses to communicate with the public.

When you advertise your online course, for example, you will likely send emails, create Google ads, create informative banners that can be online or print, and perhaps even distribute business cards to potential customers.

Whatever it is, the creation of models (even details such as email signatures) will provide your company a more unified, reliable and professional appearance. 

Hence, it’s ideal to align your materials and brief your team members on your brand identity. This way, everything you release that carries your company’s name will appear uniform and on brand.

Consistency is what can create or break a brand identity. 

So, make use of the design options you have chosen for your brand in all areas of your business. Whether it is a process flow diagram to be used in presentations or a marketing collateral, make sure everything you create aligns with your brand identity. 

This standardization is the only way to create a visual identity solid and striking.

To ensure that your business adheres to brand “rules,” develop a set of guidelines, also called a brand style guide.

This way, any employee or partner who uses your brand can keep it within the correct standards, preserving your image. 

4. Make a final analysis

Finally, before you aprove your brand’s final identity, make sure it is:  

• Distinguished: stands out among competitors and catches the attention of your audience.
• Attractive: causes visual impact. 
• Scalable and flexible: can grow and evolve with the company.
• Cohesive: each part complements the brand identity.
• Easy to apply: can be used on different materials without impairing its readability.

5. Monitor your brand 

Similar to other aspects of your marketing, it’s hard to know what you’re doing right (and what isn’t) without applying performance indicators and closely tracking your results. 

– Performance metrics for online business training 

Use Google Analytics, surveys, comments, social media discussions, and more to track your brand and get an idea of ​​what people think and talk about you.

This will give you the opportunity to implement changes as needed, either to correct an error or to improve your identity.

Yes, consistency is crucial, but staying flexible in a society that is always looking for the next best thing is just as important. 

Flexibility allows adjustments to advertising campaigns, slogans, and even a few tweaks to your overall brand identity, so you can continually keep your audience interested. 

To create a visual identity memorable for your brand requires consistent use of logo, colors and fonts, but it’s worth it.

When consumers instantly recognize who you are and what you represent based on a brand, you become more than just a name and a symbol.

Create a visual identity for online courses

With all this information, you are ready to create a visual identity attractive and potential conversion high.

Digital businesses, like online courses, benefit greatly when they have a well-built and strong brand.

Investing in creating a visual identity for your online school not only gives your business a more professional look, but allows your students to easily identify you.

Brand created and course ready, time to host it in an easily customizable Learning Management System such as Coursify.me.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and promote courses on the internet.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform offers a variety of customization options so you can create a virtual school with your “look”. 

We have three plan options for you to decide which one best suits your needs.

Visit our website, test the platform and start creating and selling quality online courses right now.

The post Step by Step to Create a Visual Identity to Your Brand appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

In distance learning, its role is to facilitate learning through the construction of didactic material. 

Instructional design: basic principles

In the book, Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Supporting Learning and Motivation (2012), the National Research Council of National Academies states that Instructional Design must be such that students develop ‘conceptually rich and organized representations of knowledge that resist forgetting, can be retrieved automatically and can be applied flexibly across tasks and situations’.

In practical terms, instructional design is linked to the development of classes, courses and the construction of teaching materials such as video, printed materials, virtual learning environments or any other element that can be used to improve the learning experience of students.

To better understand how this is done, let’s explore some basic principles of an Instructional Systems Design (ISD).

1. Maintain an efficient pace

Taking students quickly to a point where they can begin to put their knowledge into practice is essential for effective Instructional Design. 

To do this, consider the history of people enrolled in your course when designing your classes. Focus on developing content that challenges them without overloading them. 

Offer supplementary material for students whose experiences or skills allow them to learn more quickly than the rest of the class.

Likewise, include some extra material that can help students with difficulties. Tutorial videos are a good solution. 

– Record video tutorials: tips for getting the best result

Organize your online course in a logical sequence. For example, in a history course, the sequence can be chronological, while for a literature course, dividing classes by themes may make more sense. 

Divide the content into modules to facilitate learning. People learn better in  small chunks, than if you ask them to digest a lot of material at once. 

2. Contextualise information

When students can relate new information and theories to what they already know, they tend to learn faster. 

Since not all of your students will have the same knowledge and experience, using a wide variety of examples helps to convey information. If you know the background of your students, you can get examples of situations that are familiar to them. 

It is also necessary to consider how each individual learns. Some find it easier to assimilate information through written material; others with the help of graphics and many prefer video lessons.

– 10 tips for producing quality video lessons

Use instructional design to include a wide variety of formats to best suit each person’s learning styles.

Link theoretical concepts to practical experiences. When creating a section of your course in which you have a set of instructions on how to do a task, don’t just ask them to memorize the steps. Make them practice the skill as you teach it. 

Daily experiences can also become powerful tools to help your students understand new principles. If they are learning about creative writing, for example, ask them to narrate some interesting facts of their day in prose form. 

3. Create a learning community 

A learning community, especially in distance education, plays a valuable role in the learning process.

Peer feedback not only helps the student better internalize the material, it also helps the evaluators. For example, a student learning to develop a journalistic text. If your classmates, like the teacher, evaluate your writing, they can point out what they consider right and wrong, while the teacher makes the necessary corrections. Everyone will learn from the experience.

This aspect of instructional design is important in helping individuals function as part of a team, an essential skill in a corporate environment. They will need to learn to present their ideas with confidence and apply their knowledge as part of the team.

– Benefits of Online Corporate Training for Companies

In distance learning it can be more difficult to connect students with each other, however, it is essential to expand learning. Encourage the creation of groups on Facebook, use the chat on your teaching platform, encourage conversation.

Debates about the contentl taught and its practical applications tend to bear much fruit when it comes to internalizing facts and concepts. Not only that, but a course that includes these opportunities can create connections that help students expand their professional networks to find more opportunities.

– Ways to communicate with the student in online classes

4. Encourage critical thinking

A course that only requires students to remember information to take tests, in order to speed up teaching and “show” results, provides a terrible service. 

The task of instructional design is to promote real learning and, for that, nothing better than including opportunities for students to practice. After a reading, video presentation, or other explanation, ask students to write down their thoughts, opinions, and ideas about what was presented.

When discussing the content in their own words, they will internalize the principles presented – if only to refute them. However, require them to use reasoned arguments based on the facts they learned during class. 

Teach your students to look for contradictions, explanations and solutions. Critical thinking is one of the most transferable skills for today’s workforce. Problems often arise due to contradictions at the heart of a theory about how something works. 

Critical thinking helps students look for these anomalies, find out why something is not working, and find a way to make it work.

Discussing a point of view both for and against something makes the mind expand in search of a solution, which is sometimes something completely new.

The saying “teach someone to fish and you will feed them for life” is the focus of instructional design. 

Teach your students to ask questions, never accept the status quo. Arouse their curiosity. 

Once this seed is planted, they will never be the same. They will develop a thirst for knowledge that will keep them at the forefront of their field for life. 

5. Create assessment tools 

The old model of passing a lot of content in a class and taking a test on all of this, results in students who appeal to decorating. This, in turn, relegates information and skills to short-term memory and is therefore readily overlooked when testing is over. 

Instead, provide students with material at a pace at which they can internalize knowledge and have a chance to assimilate it.

Allow plenty of time and opportunities for them to “digest” new content before making any assessment. Smaller and less formal assessments, such as the production of articles, demos or quizzes, work better than massive tests.

– How to create online questionnaires

One of the advantages of instructional design is its fluidity. Evaluate test results and questionnaires to see if anything is missing or if certain questions are unfair or unclear. Observe carefully, to see if reformulating them can produce better results.

Also be careful about the evaluation method. A simple score tells the student little about what he did wrong and how to make corrections. Instructors should provide comments that help the student to identify the point where he went off track. 

Partial credit for ‘wrong’ answers that demonstrate some mastery of the material can help to encourage the student. A programming teacher, for example, whose student made a small slip that made the result not work as expected, can congratulate his efforts while making the necessary correction.

Do your best to provide immediate feedback. People learn best from feedback right after the assessment, while the work is still fresh in their minds. 

– How to engage students

Instructional Design Model

There are many instructional design models. One of the most used is known by the acronym ADDIE, which means Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. Let’s understand a little more about its steps.

Analysis

In this first phase, the professional collects and analyzes all content available, separating the useful from the useless, identifying what is interesting for learning. He also gathers all extra material that can assist and support the content.

Design

Stage in which are defined the objectives of the course, which are its target audience, which are its limitations, how many hours the course should have, among other factors. In this phase, the outline on which the material will be developed is drawn.

Development

Time to get your hands dirty and format the course. With the information obtained in the two previous phases, the instructional designer should organize the content in a didactic way, dividing it into parts, according to a logical order and making use of resources that facilitate understanding, such as tables, graphs, videos, texts and other elements that make the material attractive to the student and facilitate learning.

Implementation

To prove the effectiveness of the material produced, before it is released, the designer does a pre-test with some participants who are part of the target audience. This test is only performed when the material is fully formatted, so that the results are as effective as possible.

Evaluation

Finally, an analysis of the results of the course is made to see if it has reached the objectives set. This is done through an assessment of students, to test their learning and prove its effectiveness. This assessment helps the professional to devise new strategies and continue to improve their methods and results.

For online courses a good formatting job is essential to hold the student’s attention and make him learn. 

With a course design that moves forward at an efficient pace, puts learning in a practical context, engages a learning community, encourages critical thinking and provides appropriate and thoughtful feedback, instructors can provide relevant courses that will produce students who can safely assume their place in the chosen field.

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet, without having to invest to start their own business.

Attending companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.

– Learning Management System: What is it?

Coursify.me offers three plan options for you to decide which best suits your needs.

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform, and start creating successful online courses now.

The post Instructional Design and Distance Education appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

The rise of distance learning has not gone unnoticed by classroom teachers and, especially now, with the crisis of the new coronavirus, having the content of classes in digital format has become fundamental.

Tips for creating online classes from traditional classes

Many professionals believe that passing the material used in the classroom, such as handouts, PowerPoint presentations, questionnaires, assessments, among others, to the digital format, is enough to create online classes.

The truth is that it’s necessary to be more careful about the instructional design and the treatment of the content to ensure the quality and effectiveness of the material.

Making this migration requires good planning and adaptations to obtain the best result. 

Check out some tips to convert your classroom classes into distance learning courses successfully.

– 7 tips for setting up a Successful Online Class

Define the format of the online course

There are three formats of distance learning courses to which you can convert your face-to-face class:

• Asynchronous Learning: the student interacts directly with the content, and the interaction with the instructor occurs with delay, through emails, forums, feedback, etc. The advantage of the asynchronous format is that it allows the student greater flexibility in terms of time, place, and pace of learning.
• Synchronous Learning: the class takes place in real time, transmitted online through audio, video conference, chat, among others. This model brings together instructors and students in the same time interval and allows everyone to communicate with each other. The advantage of this model is to break the student’s isolation, allowing him to solve his doubts on the spot, participate and share knowledge.
• Hybrid Learning: combines characteristics of asynchronous and synchronous learning. A very complete form of teaching, it allows the student to establish his own learning pace, studying the content alone, but he also has moments of interaction in real time with the instructor and colleagues.

– Blended learning: how your school can combine online and face-to-face teaching

All three formats have their characteristics and advantages and you must decide which is the best for your business model. 

When in doubt, think about which model best meets the needs of your target audience.

With this question defined, it will be possible to have a clearer idea of ​​the adaptations that must be made in your material to transform it into online classes.

Apply principles of Instructional Design

No matter how successful your content is in the classroom and how good it looks the way it is, it will still need to undergo a redesign with a focus on instructional design.

The visual part of your online course is very important to attract and delight new customers, but it is also essential in the learning process.

The way the content is presented and the information is passed on can help or hinder the student’s assimilation.

–  Learn how to record videos at home

Beautiful images, videos and fonts are not enough to make teaching material more effective, it is necessary to understand a little about how the human brain usually processes information.

An area widely studied by psychology, there are five multimedia principles that, when used in the creation of online classes, help to avoid the cognitive discomfort caused by the wrong combination of texts, audios, photos, drawings, graphics, videos, animations and other learning objects.

Multimedia Principles

• Coherence: any and all content or learning objects that are not related to the topic to be taught should be excluded.
• Signaling: important elements of the online class should be highlighted by visual or vocal resources to direct the student’s attention.
• Redundancy: it is better to use audio and graphics (as one complements the other) than, for example, audio and text, which causes cognitive overload in the student.
• Spatial contiguity: the descriptive information of graphics and images must be close to the content to which they relate.
• Temporal contiguity: visual and auditory information should not be presented successively, but simultaneously, to facilitate the connection of the contents.

Design Principles 

The principles of design aim to develop projects and products with a harmonious, efficient visual identity, easy to assimilate and memorize.

• Alignment: linear grouping of similar items to create a visual connection.
• Balance: grouping of items at strategic points to balance the look.
• Consistency: standardization of some elements of the layout to create a harmonious visual identity, easy to assimilate and recognize.
• Contrast: grouping of different items to direct the look and attention.
• Proximity: bringing similar items together helps to create a link between the related elements.

These are some principles and techniques that help in building an online course with more elaborate and efficient design, but it is certainly possible to go further. 

Like any other product, a distance learning course allows its developer to dare and experiment in creating his design, testing the best ways to involve his student and make the learning process easier.

– Design and video editing tips

Bet on interaction

Another subject related to the development of distance learning courses are the three main means of interaction to be considered in planning online classes:

• Between student-student: held between students participating in the same course, with or without the presence of the instructor. This type of interaction can be carried out through chats, discussion forums or other digital environments and provides the collaborative construction of knowledge.
• Between student-instructor: in this type of interaction, the teacher stops being just a source of information and becomes a guide, a facilitator, a support, acting in a more active way. It can be done through live classes, online chat, email exchange, phone, etc.
• Between student-content: occurs when students obtain information directly from teaching materials. It allows the students to set their own pace during the course, with support material that they can study, pause, reread and repeat this process until they master the subject.

Again, see which model is best suited to the needs of your students and format your course according to that definition.

– Tips for using eLearning in school education

What to expect from an eLearning Platform

After converting your face-to-face courses into online classes, you will need to host them on an eLearning platform, that is, a Learning Management System.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

Many teachers used only to classroom classes, still have doubts and suspicions about online teaching, so we have gathered here some frequently asked questions on the subject.

1. Are online classes easier than classrooms?

The main difference between classroom and distance courses is the pedagogical resources, the type of activity and the technologies used in the teaching-learning process. 

When it comes to undergraduate courses, both in classroom and distance learning, the subject program respects the same curricular guidelines and deals with the same themes, so at the level of complexity, the two formats are equivalent.

2. Do online courses have assessments?

It depends on the course. When we speak of graduation courses, to obtain this recognition, higher education courses need to describe how the student evaluation process will be. 

In addition, distance courses can employ different methods of student assessment, whether in individual or group activities. In free courses, it will depend on the instructor and the teaching method used by him.

3. In eLearning, does the student study alone?

No. Despite allowing students to choose their own time to attend online classes, study the material and carry out past activities, distance learning courses have several resources that allow interaction between the student, teacher and colleagues. 

This can be done through chats, video conferences or even face-to-face meetings provided for in the course program.

– What is an e-Learning platform

4. How do online courses assess student attendance?

There are several tools that fulfill this function. Unlike what many people think, despite the availability of the course for the student to access at the time they prefer, the activities and classes of a distance course have their accesses controlled. 

With a LMS such as Coursify.me it is possible to know when and for how long each student accessed the content, which pages they went through, the exercises they completed, whether or not they participated in a class and whether they finished the module.

5. Do I need to know about computers to take an online course?

No. The level of knowledge required is “user” level. Basic knowledge of how to access the internet, type, use the mouse and work with simple text editing programs is necessary. Depending on the course, the instructor can create a tutorial to teach the student how to access the system and navigate the virtual environment of the course. 

In addition, the student can ask questions directly for the teacher and person responsible for the course. At Coursify.me, for example, the website interface is already designed to allow intuitive navigation, facilitating access for everyone.

Attending schools, businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic Learning Management System, ready to serve you.

This means that you do not need to invest in building your own website. The Coursify.me is ready for you enter your course and create a fully customized page for your business.

We have three plan options for you to decide which one best suits your needs and the good news is that the Beginner Plan is free!

Visit our website, test the platform and start making your classes available online right now.

The post Learn how to transform your face-to-face classes into online classes appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.