Blog002: Stepping out into the realm of brand discovery. For science.

Dare to dream, work to succeed.

Building a brand in 1 easy step.

Step 1: Hire someone.

Seriously, I know that’s the worst click bait starter to any post. But if you want a 1 step wonder that’s pretty much it.

I was fortunate enough to have a friend reach out to me for portfolio, this blog is about part of that experience (It’s an ongoing thing!). If you genuinely want to get started building your brand, do yourself a favor, research some brand identity development brands and reach out to them for help.

Starting with good ingredients.

Starting a brand sounds glamorous and exciting, and frankly it can be. I will add this caveat… only start actually branding 3-5 yrs into your business, give your ideas and business time to mature a little prior to jumping into a long-term brand. If you’re just starting out, get to work, make the mistakes and build an understanding of what makes a good business. That’s the core ingredient to success with a brand, is knowing what you do, who you do it for and why.

A friend of mine approached me a few months ago and offered a branding overhaul, his idea was to bolster his portfolio and build a process for him to help other businesses grow. Usually I wouldn’t have considered it, but I have been thinking more about my companies brand presence and decided to go through it, mainly to be able to experience what my own clients usually go through. Often a design agency will give me a creative overview of the work, and then I fulfill that concept, the creative brief is often directly formed by the brand ethos.

Prep your ingredients, read the recipe fully.

Alex started by asking some questions that were very similar to some questions we ask our clients. These questions refine what / who is the company. This helps for design choices and really builds a solid concept for the brand to develop. It was fascinating to me how the process actually shares a significant amount of similarities with the overall image creation process. We find out the “why” of the company before starting the ad imagery or library imagery, we want each image to share the brands story, brand creation follows a similar track – asking questions to discover why the business does the work that it does. This process made me reflect on the past years endeavors and how my focus has been shifting to developing strong imagery with purpose, telling the brands story in one frame. This approach has already started to affect the overall approach to how we create imagery for clients.

Let your ego take a back seat, listen to the experts.

As a lifelong creative this next step has to be the hardest for me. Visual aesthetics and creation is my jam, so when this part happens I’ll have to really try hard to keep the focus on letting Alex do his thing. I’ve got confidence in his overall approach, his designs are fantastic and I look forward to that next step. (To be continued!)

These blogs are designed a little selfishly, I often wish I had notes on parts of my business creation so I can look back and learn from what I had done, so parts of these blogs will have a more business lilt. I’ll share more on this process as I continue with Alex, and I look forward to sharing the final product here! I wanted to post this here to show the intricacies of the business. I deeply believe in sharing as much information as I can with fellow entrepreneurs and creatives, to help them build a road map for their adventure. This process of brand dev really did help me to refine my approach. I have a keener eye for what my business stands for, the type of clients and work that it does. Even my imagery has started to change subtly, the overall focus has been distilled.

If this post has helped you or you want to discuss let me know in the comments below!

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