Today's post is all about choosing those icons, graphic elements, social media icons, and photo props that we want our brand to be associated with! This can be anything from stripes to cats to sunglasses to tools. Anything can be an icon for your brand.

The Branding Series: Graphic Elements — The Branding Series Graphic Elements by Maker-Monologues.com

You're going to need to grab your worksheet from the first lesson about The Full Picture and see what you wrote down for questions number 1 and 4. Just to remind you of what my answers were for number 1:

Watercolor
Metallic
Plants
Crystals
Light, bright spaces

And for number 4:

Happy
Creative
Familiar (like they just seen their friend)
Certain (like they know exactly what my blog is about as soon as they visit)

Now, I'm going to go over to Creative Market which is who I partnered with for The Branding Series to see what I can find that will match these answers, but also match the choices I've made for other areas of my branding journey so far.

Graphic Elements

I would like something that represents handmade in some way. I saw a lot of cactus and succulent terrarium elements that I collected into a folder. I also looked for crystal elements and found a few that I liked. Terrariums remind me of those fun DIY blog posts where someone shows you how to make your own so I'm really leaning toward that. And crystals are something we (we as in, if you're a jeweler) use in our jewelry. I blog about jewelry making, plus crystals also go with plants and terrariums.

So with this in mind, and also keeping a strong focus on my brand colors, here are a few options I'm liking right now, but I’m not yet ready to make a decision on. There is just so much to think over.

Succulent Terrarium Vectors - Option 1

Now, if I get this set, I will be changing some of the colors to match my own brand colors. Another one I was looking at was this one:

Succulent Terrarium Vectors - Option 2

Here is a crystal element set I loved, that I think could match these succulent ones.

Crystal Elements

And there is so much more in my collection folder on Creative Market. I will be pairing everything down, playing with everything, then purchasing the winners!

I wish I had a solid choice but I've just been going back and forth with this one. There's just so much to choose from and I want something that I'll have fun designing with and something that represents my brand.

Alternative Options

Another option you have is to draw your own little elements then scan them into your computer so you can use your illustrations as digital elements to use on your website.

You also don't have to have icons and elements for your brand. There are plenty of brands that do not include this in their branding process. I just like to have little embellishments when I'm designing promotional graphics or to just decorate my website.

Social Media Icons

The next step in this assignment is to choose your social media icons. Once again you can search the plethora of social icons that are provided by Creative Markets' artists, I'm certain you'll find the set you love.

Since I already purchased the copper foil backgrounds (sold as "rose gold") from Creative Market I can just make my own. So I found each of the social media logos and played around with them to make these super cute, shiny, coppery icons to display on my website!

Photo Props

The next thing to tackle is our photographs. The graphic elements you choose for your brand digitally should show up in your photographs, in my own personal opinion. For example, I chose cactus, succulents, and crystals so I'm going to use those things as photo props when I'm creating a tutorial or snapping stock photos for my social media.

I have some lovely cactus but I need to transfer them to a smaller pot so they can fit into my photographs. I'll also create some small succulent/air plant terrariums that can also fit in as photo props.

I was trying to hurry and choose my graphic elements in time to post this but I felt rushed and those just aren't ideal conditions for such a big decision. So don't feel rushed if you're following along. This series will be up for a very long time.

Once again, I want to see the choices you're making so post on Instagram with #MMBranding so I can see!