3 Reasons Your DIY Brand *Still* Looks Amateur (and how to fix it!)
Before we jump into the post, if you prefer to listen, I’ve covered this topic in more detail on the latest episode of the Connect + Create podcast! Listen below, or add the show to your favorite podcast app to get notified when I release a new episode!
If you’ve ever felt embarrassed to send out your service guides or share your sales pages because they look a little amateurish, or if you’ve found yourself procrastinating on launching a new product simply because you can’t stand the way your branding looks, you’re not alone.
I hear this all the time from online business owners. They have so many ideas for social media content, webinars, or products, but when it comes to actually creating them, the end result never quite matches what they envisioned. And on top of that, it takes so long and the process is often so frustrating that they procrastinate or even abandon the idea entirely.
If that sounds familiar to you, you’re in the right place. In this post, we’re going to break down the three biggest reasons your DIY branding might still feel amateur — and, most importantly, how to fix it.
1. You’re trying to DIY without learning any basic design principles.
One of the biggest reasons coaches, course creators, or service providers struggle with DIY design is because they’re trying to jump into branding without learning even the most basic design principles. This is especially true if you don’t come from a design background.
You’ve probably watched dozens of Canva tutorials and YouTube videos that promise to make design “easy,” but somehow, it still feels difficult every time you sit down to create something. That’s because you’re learning how to fix specific problems in isolation — like designing a Pinterest graphic, or achieving a certain text effect — without gaining a broader understanding of why design works the way it does.
Hierarchy is about guiding your viewer’s eyes through your design or content in a specific order, and the way you intentionally position elements within a design to influence this order.
Scale, Balance, and Alignment work together to help you establish hierarchy, and help ensure that your design is legible and pleasing on the eye, without feeling lopsided or cluttered.
White Space (which doesn’t actually have to be white!) is all of the blank space or area in any given design or layout. It provides breathing room for your important content, increases legibility, and allows your viewer to digest information fully before being hit with the next thing.
You don’t have to become a design expert, but understanding these basics will make it a lot easier to work with templates or create your own simple designs.
2. You’ve been Frankenstein-ing unrelated templates and resources together.
Another big reason your brand might still feel amateur is that you’re pulling together a mishmash of templates and resources from all over the internet. Maybe you grabbed a logo template from Canva, found some Instagram templates on Pinterest, and downloaded a color palette from another source. Now, nothing really fits together the way you want it to.
Even I’ve been there — believe it or not, sometimes even designers don’t have the time or the energy to create every last little element themselves!
It can feel like grabbing a pre-made template or resource on an as-needed basis will save you time in the moment, compared to the work involved with pulling your entire brand identity together all at once. But more often than not, you end up spending even more time trying to make these unrelated elements fit together. Every time you need a new graphic or branded material, you’re hunting for another piece to plug into your brand and trying to adjust it to match the rest.
This piecemeal approach leads to more frustration, and before you know it, you’re tempted to overhaul everything — again.
The best solution here is to take a step back and build a cohesive brand identity from the start. Yes, it can feel daunting to create everything at once, but it will save you so much time in the long run. It doesn’t have to be a complex process or be the most intricate brand in the world - if you need more help, you’ll love my Ultimate Guide to DIY Branding - check that out for free on the blog here!
3. The information or resources you’ve been given are just… not very good.
Sometimes, it’s not your fault at all! Another major issue is that many online business owners are working with either bad information or poorly designed resources.
Bad Information
A lot of the information and resources available about DIY design is often bloated, overly complex, or written for people who are trying to become professional designers or offer design services — not for business owners who just need to create simple, functional branding. This makes it frustrating and time-consuming to sift through content that’s either too advanced or irrelevant to your needs.
Bad Resources
Even when the information is solid, sometimes the resources you’re using — like templates — can let you down.
I love templates and have always been a huge advocate for them — I use them myself, and I create them almost every day for my clients. But the massive increase in the demand for templates has led to some serious issues with the way they are being made and consumed, and this is a problem that I think a lot of graphic designers need to acknowledge and address.
Too many template sets rely on layouts and hierarchies that are too complex for someone with no design experience to confidently make adjustments to. In fact, many template sets aren’t designed to actually function as adaptable templates. A lot of the sets I see available online are so dependent on the placeholder content that they fail to function once you start customizing the design. If you’ve ever started adding your own copy to a template only to have the whole thing rapidly fall apart or look like a mess, this is the likely culprit.
As a designer, it’s very easy to create a set of designs quickly and throw them online for sale, but it’s much more difficult and time consuming to actually test them properly for flexibility and adaptability. And a lot of non-designers unfortunately fall victim to sloppily designed templates.
Additionally, many template sets (especially those on Canva) come with no additional instructions or guidance on how to modify the design. Those that do come with written or video instruction often only show how to make specific or surface level changes. They often leave out the necessary background on why certain design choices have been made, or how to adjust when things aren’t working.
Ultimately, a lot of people online will talk about certain resources or templates like they’ll solve every problem you have, but when the resource just isn’t up to scratch, or doesn’t take some of the other reasons we’ve already discussed into account, they can actually lead to MORE frustration and MORE difficulty.
So… what’s the fix?
How can you take your brand from looking and feeling like a bit of a mess to something that you actually don’t have to think too much about? The good news is that you don’t have to spend your entire life fighting with your brand — done right, your brand identity should support you and your business, not make your day-to-day work harder.
If you want to learn the foundational design skills that will make your DIY branding so much easier, you’ll love my Starter Brand Success Kit. Before I hand you all the templates and resources to build or refresh your brand identity, I take you through a full module on the core design principles mentioned in this post, complete with practical examples and exercises. These lessons will help you understand what goes into successfully executing on a brand identity so that you can do it yourself for your own business.
Want a taste of what the program offers? Grab my Starter Logo Font Guide for free! It’s a step-by-step tutorial on choosing the right font for your logo and designing it in Canva, pulled directly from the logo design module of the Starter Brand Success Kit.
See you in the next one!
Emily Banks
