3 Steps to Turn Your Travel Vibe Into A Personal Brand

Want to Turn Your Travel Obsession into Cold, Hard Cash?

It’s possible, you know it, I know it, we see “suns-out buns-out” influencers doing it all day long. But how in the world are they getting the brand collaborations and affiliates to make so much money? Believe me when I say, it’s all about personal branding. Here are 3 steps to turn your travel vibe into professional personal brand aesthetics in order to score paid brand collaborations online.

What’s a Personal Brand and Why Does It Matter?

Your personal brand is the feeling you are known for. It’s the vibe you’re putting out there every time you show up online. Truth is, you’ve already got a personal brand, you just don’t know how to visually showcase it consistently and intentionally.

Why does this matter for scoring brand collaborations?

Brand collaborators are looking for content creators with personal brands that match their brand and speak to a similar audience. Which means if they can’t look at your online content and immediately see that your personal brand aligns with theirs, they’ll overlook you as a valuable marketing asset. And they certainly won’t reach out with a legitimate, well-paid brand collab offer.

When you have a consistent visual presence online, you are immediately seen as someone who is established, trustworthy, and legit.

If you’re an aspiring travel content creator who’s ready to ditch the endless, low-reward brand pitches, make a stable income while exploring, and become the go-to in your field, it’s time to transform your natural, unique travel vibe into a legit, collab-worthy personal brand.

There are a bunch of things that go into a personal brand (values, voice, mission, audience), but today we are going to focus on the biggest, most immediate indicator of having a legit personal brand: the visuals.

Step 1: Creating A Purposeful Mood Board for your Brand

First up, make a mood board to capture the essence of your travel vibe. I usually do this through Pinterest (yup, you can use Pinterest for more than building your dream van(; )

Here’s what you’re not going to do: add a bunch of photos of pre-made color palettes, logos, fonts, and other things you think of when you think of “brand.” We don’t want to copy other people’s brand, we want a brand that is specific to YOU, so you can stand out and establish your space online.

Instead, search for images that simply feel like YOU. They should make you feel seen, inspired, and happy. This could be a location, an art style, fashion, food, people, animals – anything! For example, I might search, “Vanlife in Hawaii,” “Slow Living Outside,” and “Granola Girls.”

Pro tip: adding the word “aesthetic” to the end of your photo search always gives golden results. Ex: “Granola Girl Aesthetic.”

Make sure to search for textures and shapes that match your vibe too. Ex: ocean textures, beach shapes. This will later help add depth, movement, and structure to the aesthetics of your personal brand, which all greatly impact the overall feeling. Is your vibe wavy and fluid like the ocean at sunrise or clean and stark like the moon against the night sky?

Step 2: Extracting Your Brand Color Palette

Time to play color detective. Now that you’ve curated a purposeful mood board, we’re going to extract colors from that mood board to create your personal brand’s color palette.

How to do it:

1. Screenshot your mood board.
2. Go to coolors.com and import your mood board screenshot into the color generator.
3. Pick 6 colors with the color picker that are most prevalent in your mood board.

Pro Tip: try to choose two light and two dark colors so you have one for every occasion. You can even establish two primary colors that best represent your brand vibe and bring the personality.

(If you want a little more guidance through this whole process, I’ve got a pdf Guide that walks you through it step by step!)

Step 3: Finding Fonts to Match The Travel Vibe

You’re going to need three font types that go together: a title, subtitle, and body copy font.

Title font: this font will be used for titles throughout your branding.  It will always be the biggest font and will be used the least. Subtitle font: this font will be used for subtitles, usually underneath the title or as paragraph headings.  This font is smaller than the title font and used slightly more frequently. Body Copy font: this font is used for paragraph text throughout your branding.  It is the smallest font in your suite and used most frequently.  It is important that this font is easily legible.

Choosing fonts can be super hard – there are so many to choose from! But don’t worry, refer back to your mood board for direction.

1. Make a list of the shapes and textures you see in your mood board.  For example, in my mood board, I see circles, waves, organic forms, asymmetrical triangles, and curved lines.
2. If you noticed more round shapes, curved lines, and organic forms: You’re going to look for fonts that have rounded, soft edges. Some examples are fonts like “Roca” and “Puffin Display Soft“. If you noticed more Angled shapes, straight lines, and geometric forms: You’re going to look for fonts that have clean, sharp edges. Some examples are fonts like “Fang Roman” and “Greycliff CF“.
3. Visit Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, or any font site of your choice to find three fonts that match your shapes and textures. Feel free to have your title and subtitle fonts decorative and abstract, but make sure your body copy is simple and easy to read.

Pro tip: picking a title, subtitle, and body copy font with similar height and weight (thickness of letters) will make your font suite feel unified. They’ll look good together!

And please, for the love of travel, stay away from Papyrus.

And There You Have It:

You’ve got the goods to create a personal brand aesthetic that captures your unique travel vibe. With a consistent, professional look, you’ll be attracting those sweet, sweet brand collabs in no time.

Remember, your personal brand is like your favorite backpack – it should feel comfortable, represent your style, and have room to grow as you continue your journey. So don’t be afraid to revisit and refine it as you evolve.

Now go forth and conquer the travel world, you branded beauty! Your future self (probably sipping a coconut on a beach somewhere) will thank you. 🏖️✈️

As for me, I’ve got a date with a hammock.

Advice For The Next Adventurepreneur

It’s super helpful to put all of these – mood board, colors, and fonts – in one place so you can refer back to them easily. Make sure to include the color hex codes for each one of your brand colors so that you are always using the right shade for each. I would suggest a little one-page pdf; call it your Brand Aesthetics Page!

This page will be your trusty sidekick moving forward. Whenever you create content or pitch to brands, make sure it all aligns with your brand aesthetics.

If you need more direction on this process, here’s a step by step guide on how this works: “Creating Your Personal Brand Aesthetic Guide.” It’s kind of what I talked about in this blog except x10 with a lot more direction and detail. Plus it includes examples on how these brand aesthetics can all come together and a little ready-made brand page where you can plug in your own mood board, colors, and fonts.

Love you, good luck, and stay sane.

Alia

P.S: If you need more direction on this process, here’s a $47 step-by-step guide on how this works: Creating Your Personal Brand Aesthetic Guide.

P.S.S: if you read through this whole thing and thought, “NO, THANK YOU,” I’ve got a special offer where I do this for you AND include one design asset of your choice (like a media kit, landing page design, merch design, etc). Check it out HERE.

Next time on Sent Packing: Design Guide

6 Sneaky Website Tricks That Manipulate Visitors (And How to Spot Them): I’m talking about some sketch internet trends that you do not need to fall for!