Web design and corporate identity

If you're just starting out in the business world, it's important to establish a solid corporate identity. This is pretty much the "persona" of your business, and it can be very influential in gaining trust and loyalty with your customers. In general, your corporate title, logo, and any supporting colour themes, typefaces, and styles should be kept consistent to maintain visual continuity and maximum brand recognition.

Your web design should also reflect your corporate identity. In fact, web design is usually the first point of contact between your business and potential clients. This is especially true for businesses just starting out. It's therefore paramount that you get you establish your corporate identity in the right way through your web design. As it's is also your most complex and dynamic tools of marketing, getting your image right through web design will simplify the translation of your branding to other tools like business cards, letter heads, with compliments slips and so on.

So, how do you set about making a strongly branded and unique web design? You should first think about colour themes and logos. If your business already has a logo, the web design should match the same colours and aesthetics as the logo. That is, if your logo is minimalist, your web design should also be minimalist. If it's got plenty of star shapes in it, add some similar star shapes to your web design. However, don't go too far that your web design ends up drowning out your logo. Your logo is of prime importance and should be complemented, not suffocated, by your web design.

Next, colours. If you've got your logo sorted out already, then this stage of designing should be fairly straight forward. If not, how do you know where to start? Get a feel for your competitors' web designs, and try to go with something similar yet different. It also depends on what you would like your business image to be. If you're a serious, conservative firm like a legal centre, you might want to stick with serious colours on your web design. If you're a childcare centre, you want a bit of individuality and fun to your web design. You should also research into the psychology of certain colours to determine which ones might work best in your web design. For example, purple conjures up ideas of royalty, decadence and exoticness. Blue and green can make you feel serene and relaxed. Things like this can really supplement the sort of message you want your web design to put across.

Typefaces are another important part of web design. While most web designers have stuck to traditional, readable sans serif fonts like Arial or Verdana. Today, anything goes. Combine serif and sans serif fonts for a fresh, modern look, or keep a web design conservative with a serif font like Times New Roman or Baskerville. Use over decorative fonts in moderation, and remember to match your font style to the look you're going for in your web design. Obviously, it should be the same font you will use in your logo, on business cards and other forms of marketing - so it's important that your font style will be easily translatable to these other mediums when the time comes.

Colours, logos and fonts are just some of the important web design components which can come together to either make or break your corporate identity. In today's world where websites are the most viral way of spreading a marketing message to the widest audience, it's absolutely imperative that your corporate identity comes through loud and clear in your web design.