What is graphic glue & why do you need it?
Graphic Glue is our new coined term. It is the visual magic that sits between a brands logo, colour palette, fonts and imagery. It brings all those things together and creates a stronger brand identity: telling the story of your brand.
In this blog post we explain…
What is graphic glue?
Why is graphic glue important?
What is subliminal messaging?
How can you create your own brand graphic glue
What is graphic glue?
Graphic Glue is essentially any recurring visual element featured across your branding - it keeps the imagery cohesive and is immediately identifiable. It should also be unique to your brand (we’ll explain why later).
For example, nooh Studio’s graphic glue is the use of squares to create a pattern. Why? Our name comes from the name of our founder’s childhood comfort blanket, which is a square. So our repeated patterns tie into that theme. The squares are hand drawn too (the child-like feeling) and sit well alongside our two fonts, colours and imagery that we use across our website, marketing collateral and social media. Read more about our nooh branding.
The theme continues in our messaging asking people to think inside and outside the box, via our three core pillars: learning through creativity, storytelling and community. And then we take that one step further and ask our friends, family, clients and colleagues to join our community through a little exercise to draw inside a box.
Why is graphic glue important?
The human brain processes visuals up to 60,000 times faster than text. From a sales viewpoint, the first few seconds when a user is on your website, app or social media is the most crucial - creating a memorable first impression immediately is what’s going to get people through the door, exploring your service, product or body of work. This inevitably will increase the likelihood of sales and further interest, so having established graphic glue reinforces the brand on each stage of their user journey.
The use of colour, shape, typography and positioning is key to ensuring customer engagement, a better user experience and, often, it can be more about the empty space than the filled space. Using visual branding - images, graphics, videos, icons - across your marketing helps consumers remember information about your brand and keeps your brand at the forefront of their minds long after they look away.
Here’s an example of graphic glue from one of our case studies, Nicky Affleck Consultancy:
For Nicky’s brand, we started with the positioning, working out her three core pillars and then translated this into the three colours and slashes. The shapes also evoke movement, tying into her expertise in the sport sector.
What does your graphic glue say about your brand? Your visual branding should almost immediately tell a story of what you are offering to your audience, in clear and accessible terms. Psychologically, you only get a few seconds to grab someone's attention and, in the age of instant gratification, this is ever increasing in necessity. Visuals are an extraordinary way to make sure you're doing this; commanding attention, stimulating curiosity and establishing your brand's personality via subliminal messaging.
What is subliminal messaging?
Subliminal messaging is visual or auditory stimuli that the conscious mind cannot perceive, embedded into different media, such as an icon, image or briefly flashed at an audience below the level of conscious awareness. Genuine subliminal messaging cannot be discovered or noticed by the conscious mind, even if you’re actively looking for it.
Some questions you should be asking yourself: What does your imagery symbolise or represent? Does your imagery adhere to your tone of voice? Can your target audience relate to your imagery? Does your imagery relate to what you’re offering?
How can you create your own brand graphic glue
Start with a brainstorm, what information do you want to portray and what do you have as your starting point? A logo, colours or maybe some graphics. Have a good sweep through Pinterest for inspiration and then get some ideas down. You can also look at your favourite brands and also your least favourite to see how they do it.
In conclusion, graphic glue is important because it ties your brand together. And why is brand imagery important? It is used on websites, marketing collateral and social media. It plays an important role in creating a recognizable look and feel for your brand. It also engages your customer whether they are viewing your website, instagram profile or something in print.
If you want to hear more about graphic glue, reach out and we can have a virtual cuppa. As you can tell, we are very invested in spreading the word about our new coined term!
