In this next section, we'll start to go over the tone of your Instagram and we'll start to pick some tone words to help guide the visual style that you're going for. So let's dig in. Before we start, I want you to ask yourself what feeling Do you want to convey through your Instagram? Are you the summary la beach brand, or maybe the dark and mysterious fashion guru in New York City. When you start to get clear on how you want to be seen, you will be able to form your tone words. Your tone words will help create a guideline for you to measure your photos up against each and every time you post.

You will choose five words to convey the message and the value of your brand. Remember, your USP is very important in determining your tone words. If your USP is all about being edgy, select tone words that speak to this element of your strategy. You can brainstorm by circling each word you think may apply to your brand on the provided worksheet. You can start with all the words you think fit your brand and after the brainstorming session you can eliminate some words until you have the most descriptive and accurate words for your branded Instagram. We will choose words that are visual.

If I have not provided a word you want to use, you can still use it just make sure it is a visual adjective. These words must be visual adjectives, because they will feel our brand identity design. Also, be sure to use words that are different. For example, try not to use bold and strong. Do not use words that are too closely related because this will waste some of your words. We want to make each word count each words bring something new to the brand.

Some of your words can even seem to conflict with each other words like edgy or soft but this is a good thing. We want our brands to be authentic and different. At first, it may seem that some of your words are too oppositional. But conflict is actually a good thing. It can give us a dynamic look and feel to our imagery. And I'll show you what some of those photos can look like where we have two opposing words that are actually working together to create an unique and cool visual style.

Here is an example of a photo that displays both an edgy and soft element. We see a baby blue color in the background and a soft feminine teacup. None of the colors are edgy, but the way the teacup was slammed down gives us an edgy energetic feel. Here's another photo that is both calming and energetic. We see a quiet blue hallway, and then a bright electric pink and orange color coming from the center of the hallway. It's almost like a heat map.

We are in the middle of the calm walking towards the energy. Here's another example of a photo that encompasses both nature and wimzie. The natural organic background really sets the scene while the bright neon lights create an edgy and whimsical feel. Remember, these words are for your use only you won't tell your customers or clients these words directly, you will just use them as a guide for your visual style. So let's start with some of the words for bad pitch branding as an example, I chose the five words empowering, bold, intellectual, edgy, and create Creative, empowering. I focused this brand on empowering, do good brands, which leads me to choose the tone word empowering.

I want to empower men and women that are working to make the world a better place. bold. I want my brand to be both aesthetically and emotionally. I use the word pitch in my brand name, which is a very bold move in general. A lot of my other languages also bold, not to mention the design style, which often features bold colors and a strong graphic style in my Instagram, intellectual. I challenge my clients to see their brand in a new light.

The days of believing your brand as a logo design are long gone. I focus a lot on brand strategy and the process of creating a compelling, intellectual and competitive brand edgy. I also wanted this brand to be edgy. People that stand up for things they believe in have been seen as edgy or breaking the rules for so long. And being edgy is just more fun. Creative at Babbage branding, we really work to push the envelope with client work.

We value creativity above all else and reflect this in our brand strategy as well as our design. As we move forward with our tone words, let's let them be a guide for everything we do. I'll come back to my tone words as they make choices farther down the road in regard to my brand. So your tone words aren't just for Instagram, they can be for a lot of other things. Write these words on your office whiteboard, memorize these words and compare everything you design or choose to these words, they will be a guide for your visual style. I want you to pick five tone words for your Instagram feed, download the PDF and choose these five words that define what you want to say with your Instagram brand.

Like I said before, do not fear opposing words. This will help keep your brand interesting. So you want to choose feminine yet edgy, that's fine. Actually, a lot of my Instagram features this sort of aesthetic. I use tone words all the time when I'm designing for clients and to keep brands visually consistent. There have been times right have a tone word say my tone word is elevated.

Maybe I'm designing something for a client and I'm making the text too big. I go back and I look at the tone words and go through them and make sure whatever I'm designing aligns with those tone words. So Sam does it for a cosmetic brand, one of the words is elevated. But I go back and I look at the design and the types too big, I might not think that looks elevated. So I'll kind of keep myself in check with using these tone words. That is a good example of how they work.

So always compare your tone words to whatever you're posting, or your visual style, whether you're getting a logo design or business cards, or maybe a sign for your business. So go ahead and pick your five words from the PDF provided in this lesson. You can even take a look at your favorite Instagram accounts and give them tone words while you dissect what they've done. For example, I've given panco tone words free, wild, retro, risky and warm. For Billy. I've given them the tone words real feminine, alternative, quirky and useful.

Or how about another brand I really love Charity Water. Do you guys have any guesses? I would say charity waters tone words are warm, inspiring, diverse, soulful and happy. What about bespoke bride? I would say their tone words are friendly, bright, handcrafted, fun and quirky. You can see how they have a specific tone.

They are translating through their grid. What about Carly Chrisman? I have classic, luxurious, subdued, stylish and calming. So Carly may ask herself does this photo that I'm about to post lend itself to my tone words of classic, luxurious, subdued, stylish and calming. If she can't say yes, she simply won't post them. It also helps to get an app like Preview to see how your grid looks when you choose a new image.

Preview is meant to help you plan out your grid. It has been a great tool for me when I need to see what my grid looks like with the potential new post. We'll go into using preview a bit more at the end of this class.