Designing for Two: How to Blend Styles When Branding
Branding is the glue that holds your company together. It is what gives you a recognizable look, voice, tone and charm. It has the power to persuade or even turn someone away. Your brand should not just appeal to your ideal client, but attract them in every way. It should leave trails so imprinted that anyone would know you have been there! Your brand sells for you even when you aren’t around. It shows off your expertise and it encompasses your passion, purpose and personality.
When creating a brand someone should instantly be able to find out all your best qualities, understanding who you are, what you do and why they should care. When Emylee and I sought out to create our own company we knew this couldn’t just be a rebrand, it needed to be new, fresh and different, as we weren’t just merging two identities, but creating something that had never been done before.
Our goals, dreams and passions, although very similar, our aesthetic, taste and styles were quite different. We had to blend Abagail’s vibrant and cheerful preferences with Emylee’s earthy and natural predisposition. The result was a mix of pops of color, dark wood tones and heavy geometric influences. We are so excited to share with you the experience we went through and how a new brand or rebrand made just for you goes through the same process.
Before any project begins Emylee and I want to get to know you. We schedule a brief discovery call to learn about your passions, goals and challenges you are facing. From there depending on where you are located and what your immediate needs are Emylee or I will schedule an in person meeting or a Skype call. During this session we will go over a plan to tackle your immediate needs, walk you through our detailed and personal process and give you an overview of how we believe we can help you in the long term.
The Branding Process
A Creative Brief
For every branding project we start with the same couple of steps. We will begin by presenting you with a Creative Brief where we will nail down your ideal client, go over details of your needs, wants and desires and hash out some specifics. The Creative Brief allows us to capture your goals, your needs and lays a roadmap for the tone and voice of your brand.
Developing an Inspiration Board
Simultaneously we will provide you with access to a private Pinterest board. Here is where we ask you to pin things that appeal to your personality, evoke the qualities you want your brand to portray and speak to your ideal client or customer. From here I will compare the voice you captured in your Creative Brief and contrast it with the visual aesthetic you portrayed on the Pinterest Board. This allows me to create a more refined inspiration brand board that will serve as a graphic dictionary from which we will judge all further designs.
For more on exactly how the inspiration board process works check out this blog post.
Creating A Style Guide
Armed with all the right information it is now an easy breezy process to begin diving into your logo design, font choices, color palette and visual elements. These components come together in a consistent style and become an easy reference guide for you going forward.
Capturing Your Voice
While these visual parts and pieces are being created we also work to capture your voice in a more concrete way - in your website copy. We understand it is not always easy to even know where to start and that is why we offer the complete package. We comb through everything you have written about yourself to this point and redirect it slightly to make sure it will completely appeal to your ideal client or customer. We want your copy to speak to them, to call them in and to make them feel at home. Your website is your digital welcome mat and we want to make sure we create an inviting place for them to hang out.
Photography that works for you
This is where Emylee becomes a completely unique asset to the team. Not only does she bring years of knowledge and business advice with her, but she is a talented photographer waiting to capture your personality, expert knowledge and process in a completely transparent way. Sure, you can have a beautiful website without photography, but these documentary style images add a relatable quality that would otherwise be lost. Emylee picks out the details, showcases all your best qualities and sifts through what would otherwise be chaos. She captures images in real time, in natural light to ensure you come across as genuine and your products or services are highlighted in such a way that they aren’t just beautiful, but they work for you!
We bring all these elements together to design you a brand and website that aren’t just beautiful, but actually work to get your business up and running. Our goal is to help you start selling, seeing profits, connecting with clients (or customers) sooner rather than later. This isn’t just a pretty face for your business, but a strategic approach to build you a foundation for success.
