Sophie Miller, founder of Pretty Little Marketer, is a powerhouse creator and rising star in the marketing space.

She has grown her following to 250k+ on her LinkedIn Company Page, 180k+ on her LinkedIn personal account, 85k+ on Instagram, ~20k on Threads, and 22k on her Newsletter.

Her branding plays a major role in her growth and it’s a great example of how simple but deliberate choices can result in a unique, immediate recognizable, and memorable brand.

You do not need crazy complex branding to stand out.

———

Sophie uses the same brand identity for both her business and personal brand.

This is probably a deliberate clever choice that helps her transfer brand equity back and forth between her business and personal brand, and grow faster than she would if she had different visual identities.

Remember ☝️, people prefer following other people more than brands.

Bringing herself into the picture humanizes her business and makes it that much more approachable and relatable.

She does an amazing job at keeping it consistent across all touch points of her customers’ journey. Everything from her socials, to the website, emails, and even real life events is branded to perfection.

If you come across her brand, you will know it’s hers.

What makes it so brilliant? Let’s find out.

Sophie and PLM’s brand identity can be broken down into four pillars:

• Colors

• Typography

• Graphic style

• Imagery & Iconography

Colors

Sophie’s color palette is very well-balanced, clearly match her personality, and allows for great contrast, which helps her content stand out, grab attention, and be easily readable.

Her primary brand color is a soft pastel pink she pairs beautifully with a complementary pistachio green that serves as her secondary brand color.

These two are then combined with her neutrals; a deep charcoal black/grey and a subtle off-white.

This simple color palette works wonders throughout her channels and results in crisp visuals that grab the eye instantly and provide a solid base for a consistent sense of familiarity.

Typography

Typography plays a BIG role on the overall visual feeling of the brand.

Her primary font, a serif typeface by Nicky Laatz called Eighties Comeback, has a very unique personality that infuses the brand with a strong aesthetic and polished vibe, while remaining playful and quirky.

It fits Sophie’s brand voice perfectly and makes her visuals look both professional and approachable. This last characteristic is also emphasized by almost always using it in lowercase.

This typeface is so fundamental to the identity it is used on its own to make up the monogram logo with the initials of Pretty Little Marketer.

She then pairs it with her secondary font Montserrat, a classic geometric sans-serif Google typeface that provides great readability and contrasts beautifully with her primary serif.

Graphic style

We can classify her graphic style under the spectrum of Neo-Brutalism, which combines features of Brutalism and Minimalism.

It is characterized by:

• clean layouts

• rounded corners — These tie in with the friendly factor of Sophie’s main typeface.

• solid shadows in brand pink or green. They are used on cards and buttons.

This style has been very popular in the last few years as a response to the excessive use of minimalism.

It’s particularly effective on socials as it clashes directly with the reigning minimalist features of most user interfaces and does a great job at grabbing the attention.

Imagery & Iconography

Finally, everything comes together in how she incorporates images and additional graphic elements into her visuals.

• Image cutouts with branded color outlines. This is a clever way to keep assets on-brand while incorporating visuals that don’t belong to her brand and might defer in terms of color and aesthetic, which is something she does often as she shares highly valuable analysis of how other brands do marketing.

• Emojis are a distinct feature of her brand. They help making her content more relatable and are a great and easy way to add more playfulness and drive humor.

• Hand-drawn highlights in her brand colors for important keywords. Her primary font is so thick that she can’t use bold text to highlight text. These hand-drawn scribbles are a way to enable that important function and use it as an opportunity to reinforce the playfulness and approachability of the brand, while bringing in additional touches of color into the visuals.

———

If you really look at the core elements of Sophie’s brand, they are all pretty simple and accessible.

However, brought together with intention they create a unique identity that gets her the right attention and helps her build her thriving business.

Of course, she pairs it with an absolutely incredible content strategy. But I bet you, without these visuals, her content alone wouldn’t be able to stand out like it does.

———

If you want to test out these branding principles, try them yourself using our app!

You can play around with Color, Typography, and Graphic Styles to find what suits you best 🤓