Would you agree that branding a business means humanizing it? As in giving the business human-like traits?
If we think of branding in that way, giving a business human-like traits, it might be easier to define our brand's identity. But I do have some general steps to help you get there faster.
Brand identity is one of the most important things in our brand. It helps us connect with the right audience and assists in making our business look and feel unique. When it comes to visually defining a brand's identity, things can become tricky.
1. Being True To Our Brand Or Following A Design Trend?
It seems simple, but a lot is involved in visually defining a brand. For starters, being true to our style instead of following trends is no easy feat. It seems like all popular brands in our circle are "dressing" the same style, doesn't it? As of now, in this post's latest edit, it's classy serif font in a mix of regular and italic on header titles, all in a graphic or website made of tons of beige with black.
I want to be that tall, skinny, serif font in beige clothes bitch too! But feels unaligned. Feels limiting for my business and is not the only type of people I hang out with (A.K.A. buyers).
Everyone says they want to be their "authentic self" today, but everyone is wearing beige with serif.
Love, we can't all be serif in beige. Some of us are a rainbow! Some of us are modern and minimal. Some of us are feminine… And they are all fabulous, as long as it's the right style for your business.
2. You Are NOT Your Brand, Your Business Is Your Brand.
Since I just humanized branding, I feel this is an important distinction to make -especially for personal brands: you are not the brand.
We may love vintage and feminine style, but is that our BRAND?
When creating a brand's identity, and then designing its visuals, we are not browsing for a new painting for our living room. It is not supposed to be something we visually love because it feels "so me!".
The function of a brand's visual identity, the logo included, is reinforcing the business goals, amplifying the brand's messaging, and being that beam of light that will attract the right audience. We are designing more for the audience than for ourselves.
That's why being clear on our target audience and doing market research is so important: we want to create a brand identity that helps our business stand out from the crowd (competitors) so we can be seen by those awesome people (target audience).
A brand is the audience-facing side of a business. A brand is never a person. A person is too awesome and rich and infinite to fit in a brand.
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NEW TO BRANDING? START WITH THIS MOODBOARD BLOG POST.
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3. Start Branding With Purpose
One thing I’ve learned is that we all should be branding with purpose, not accidentally, as we go. Why? Because otherwise, we are wasting time, energy, and losing money. Being intentional and purposeful means we have a vision and, hopefully, a plan -these will increase the chances of our business success.
When we have a clear purpose for our brands, it all becomes much easier.
So, before I finish this post, I’ll leave some things I think can help anyone on their journey to achieve the perfect brand identity structure (if such a thing exists!):
Discover
* Understand your purpose
* Define your audience
* List your goals, services, products
* Be honest about the things you like and dislike in your brand
* Organize your ideas and eliminate what doesn’t seem doable at the time
Define
* Collect inspiration and define your visual style
* Define your brand’s message and purpose clearly
* Research your market
* Understand you
