I Branded A Substack Publication with Cohesive Visuals

We are a mother and son illustration team. Our drawings are hand-drawn and traced in the computer. Our goal is to help Substackers illustrate their publications with fun and simple drawings. We’re trying to restore the human creativity that is being lost from the progression of technology and AI.

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Free Illustrations

A month ago, we launched our Free Doodle Art Library. A collection of 25+ illustrations available for immediate download.

We created this library with the intent of helping Substack writers attain hand-drawn illustrations.

A human touch goes a long way on social media.

Why? In the age of AI, your best bet at standing out is to show your humanity, your personality.

These hand-drawn illustrations do just that. They aren’t perfect. They’re not meant to be. They’re meant to be fun, interesting, and different.

Designing Branded Visuals

For this post, I challenged myself to create branded visuals using only our doodle art library.

I created promotional designs, buttons, bulleted list images, and more. All of these will feel cohesive, meaning they’re part of the same brand.

Good branding looks like this…

When one of the visuals is seen by itself, the viewer should immediately recognize what publication the visual is from.

Quick disclaimer: The designs are just example designs for a generic publication. If I were creating designs for a real publication, I would be much more clear with the wording.

The Design System

For these example designs, I used bold colors and fonts.

My color scheme is a deep blue and bright yellow.

Enough talk; let’s get into the designs. :)

Subscribe to the Publication

First off, we have a simple visual telling people to subscribe to the publication. The computer illustration came from our free library, of course.

This image would work great at the end of a post or even in Substack notes.

Once in the door, we’ll want new subscribers to participate in the publication’s community. This is where the next image comes in.

Community Chat Promotion

Using the chat bubbles from our library, I created this image.

The idea is to promote the publication’s community chat. Listing the benefits helps advertise why someone would want to join.

If you're trying to build a community, I highly recommend using an image like this.

Advertising a Product

This is a design with a customer testimonial advertising a digital product.

This advertisement makes the product feel exciting and fun. Again, if this was for a real product, the wording would be more specific in the ad.

Buttons

I realized something: Substack buttons are boring. They’re easy to create, but everyone is using the same type of button.

I had an idea to create buttons using the illustrations in our free library. Of course, these buttons are on brand with the same colors.

Who could resist pressing a button like these? 🤔 Go ahead, and try them yourself.

These add a nice touch and will make your publication feel unique.

Using Stock Photos

Our illustration library will not solve all of your visual needs. You’ll probably still want to use stock photos or other alternatives.

Tip: Don’t use stock photos straight up. Incorporate them into an image that feels on brand.

Stock photos alone feel generic. But when used in an image like this? Now, they feel custom and unique.

Buy Me a Coffee

Many writers just use Substack’s built-in custom button option to ask for donations. An image like this, however, is much more interesting and hopefully more engaging as well.

You can try this button too—just to see how it works. 😉

TL;DR

This design is to summarize the blog post.

A long post with useful content should have a nice image at the end to summarize it all. The kind of image that gets saved for later and even shared with others.

You really should subscribe to AJ Doodles for more content like this. Just saying. 🙂

So, what do you think about my designs? 🧐 Great, okay, just plain bad?

Could you see yourself wanting visuals like these for your publication?

Let me know in the comments.

➡️ If you want to create designs for yourself, browse our Free Doodle Art Library.

➡️ Don’t have design skills? Don’t have the time? No problem. We’ll design for you. You can hire us to design an image using the illustrations in our free library for just $15. Buttons, a promotional image, a summary image? We got you covered. Find out more.