Visual identity: logo, colour, type and photo style

What you will be able to do

• Specify a logo set with the versions and file formats a small event business needs
• Build a colour palette and check its text contrast against the WCAG 2.0 Level AA ratios
• Write photo style rules and secure written ownership or licences for logos and photographs

Visual identity is not decoration. It is a short set of rules that makes your Instagram post, your proposal, your banner at a wedding show and your invoice look like they came from the same careful business. Clients read that consistency as competence. The good news is that a small event business needs far fewer rules than a large company, and most of them can be decided in an afternoon.

Read the transcript

Visual identity: logo, colour, type and photo style.

Visual identity is not decoration.

It is a short set of rules that makes your Instagram post, your proposal, your banner at a wedding show and your invoice look like they came from the same careful business.

The logo set.

A single logo file is not enough.

Your logo appears in a circle the size of a fingernail on Instagram, across the side of a van, embossed on a menu card and in white on a dark photograph.

Colour.

A practical palette has four parts: one primary colour that clients will associate with you, one or two secondary colours, a dark and a light neutral for text and backgrounds, and an optional accent used sparingly for buttons and highlights.

A common rule of thumb is to use roughly 60 percent neutral, 30 percent primary and 10 percent accent across a page or a document.

Worked example: Lantern and Lane's palette.

Priya chose a deep teal as the primary colour, a warm cream as the light neutral, a charcoal for body text and a lantern gold as the accent.

She ran each pairing she planned to use through a contrast checker.

Type.

Use two typefaces at most: one for headings with some personality, one for body text that is easy to read at small sizes.

Many good options are available under open licences that allow commercial and web use; read the licence of any typeface before you use it on your website or print it on paid materials, because desktop and web licences are often sold separately.

Photo style.

For most event businesses, photographs carry more of the brand than the logo does.

Clients scroll your feed and your website and form an impression in seconds.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

The logo set

A single logo file is not enough. Your logo appears in a circle the size of a fingernail on Instagram, across the side of a van, embossed on a menu card and in white on a dark photograph. You need a small family of versions.

Ask for each version as a vector file, such as SVG, EPS or PDF, which scales to any size without blurring, and as PNG files with transparent backgrounds for everyday use. Test the mark at the size of a profile picture before you approve anything. Fine lines and long names disappear at small sizes, and the small sizes are where most clients first see you.

Colour

A practical palette has four parts: one primary colour that clients will associate with you, one or two secondary colours, a dark and a light neutral for text and backgrounds, and an optional accent used sparingly for buttons and highlights. A common rule of thumb is to use roughly 60% neutral, 30% primary and 10% accent across a page or a document.

Record every colour in three forms: HEX for the web, RGB for screens and CMYK for print. Printers and sign makers will ask, and colours drift when people guess.

Then check contrast, because a beautiful palette that clients cannot read is a poor palette. The international web standard, WCAG 2.0, sets a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text at Level AA. Free contrast checkers online will calculate the ratio for any two colours.

Worked example: Lantern & Lane’s palette

Priya chose a deep teal as the primary colour, a warm cream as the light neutral, a charcoal for body text and a lantern gold as the accent. She ran each pairing she planned to use through a contrast checker.

The gold failed on white, so Priya made a rule: gold is used for lines, icons and buttons on dark backgrounds, never for text on white. For the rare case where she needs a gold-toned word on white, she added a darker bronze, #8A6A1F, which reaches 5.05 to 1. One afternoon with a contrast checker saved her from a website, a proposal template and a wedding show banner that a share of her visitors would have struggled to read.

Type

Use two typefaces at most: one for headings with some personality, one for body text that is easy to read at small sizes. Many good options are available under open licences that allow commercial and web use; read the licence of any typeface before you use it on your website or print it on paid materials, because desktop and web licences are often sold separately.

Choose system fallbacks for the places your fonts will not travel, such as email and shared documents. Lantern & Lane uses a serif for headings and a clean sans serif for body text, with Georgia and Arial as fallbacks in email. Set a minimum body size for print and screen, and stick to it. Planning documents read by parents and grandparents need generous type.

Photo style

For most event businesses, photographs carry more of the brand than the logo does. Clients scroll your feed and your website and form an impression in seconds. Write down a photo style in five lines:

• Light: natural and warm, bright and airy, or moody and dramatic.
• Colour: one consistent edit, not a different filter on every post.
• Subjects: what you show most: people, hands at work, details, rooms, food, reactions.
• Framing: wide scenes, close details, or a deliberate mix.
• Avoid: stock photos presented as your work, heavy filters, photos of other vendors’ work without credit, and images that do not match the events you want more of.

A caterer might choose overhead shots of hands plating under warm light. A rental company might choose wide, evenly lit room shots that show the whole set-up. Lantern & Lane chose candid moments between the two families in warm evening light, because that is the feeling their position promises.

Putting it to work

Build the identity into templates so that nobody has to remember the rules: a proposal, an invoice, a timeline, a social post, a story frame and an email signature. Store the logo files, colour codes and fonts in one shared folder with a clear name. When a new freelancer, printer or venue asks for your logo, send the folder, not a screenshot.

Do not forget the event itself. Your identity shows on the things guests see: a sign on an easel, a tag on a rental crate, an apron, a business card at the bar, a branded case for a DJ’s controller, a menu card at a buffet. Keep these quiet and consistent, using your one-colour or mark version, because at someone else’s event your brand should be recognizable without competing with the hosts. A photographer’s camera strap or a caterer’s clean, matching aprons can do more for recognition than a large banner, and venues are far more likely to welcome them.

In Canada and Ontario: who owns your logo and photos

Many small businesses pay for a logo or a photo shoot and assume they own the result. Under Canadian copyright law, that is often not true. This is general information, not legal advice; for your own contracts, check the Act or ask a lawyer.

Logos. Under the Copyright Act, the author of a work is the first owner of the copyright. A freelance designer who draws your logo is its author, so they own the copyright unless it is assigned to you. An assignment is valid only in writing signed by the owner or the owner’s agent. The exception is work made by an employee in the course of employment, which belongs to the employer in the absence of an agreement to the contrary. Designers also hold moral rights, including the right to the integrity of the work and the right to be associated with it. Moral rights cannot be assigned, but they can be waived in whole or in part.

So your design agreement should include three things: a written, signed assignment of copyright in the final logo to your business; a waiver of moral rights, so you can adjust colours, simplify the mark or crop it without asking; and delivery of the vector source files. Read the Copyright Act, sections 13 and 14.1, for the wording. If you use a template or a generated logo, make sure you can show where it came from and what rights you hold before you build a brand on it or apply for a trademark.

Photographs. The former rule that made the person who commissioned a photograph its first owner was repealed, and the change came into force on November 7, 2012. For photos taken since then, the photographer owns the copyright by default, even when the client paid for the shoot, unless there is a written agreement saying otherwise. The Act lets an individual use a photo they commissioned for personal purposes for private, non-commercial uses, but a business using event photos in its marketing is outside that exception. If you are a planner, florist or rental company using a photographer’s images of your work, get a written licence that covers your website, social media, ads and print, and credit the photographer as agreed. The photography track covers licences in depth.

Accessibility rules for your colours

Under the AODA’s Information and Communications Standard, businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees in Ontario must make their public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA, and have had to since January 1, 2021. Ontario explains the rule on its page on how to make websites accessible. Most small event businesses are below that threshold, but the standard is still the best guide available. Level AA includes the contrast minimums used in the worked example: 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text, which WCAG defines as at least 18 point, or 14 point bold. Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no minimum contrast requirement, so your logo itself is exempt, but the words around it are not.

Following the standard now is cheaper than retrofitting it later, and it matters to the venues, public-sector clients and corporate buyers who increasingly ask about accessibility. It also matters to guests: older relatives reading a timeline on a phone in a dim reception hall are exactly the people a low-contrast palette lets down.

GTA practice notes

Print colours shift between suppliers, so ask GTA sign makers and printers for a proof before a full run, especially for banners for the fall and winter wedding shows, when print shops are busy. Bring your CMYK values and a printed swatch, and approve the proof under the light it will be seen in.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)