Finding my Brand …… Part 3

Found my brand Logo, found my brand colours and font but wait my brand has a personality too! Why did i start my business, what are your beliefs and values, what do i do better than anyone else, what makes me special, what three words do i want my customers to describe me by? All questions that i need to answer apparently. It seriously makes you think about yourself and what your trying to accomplish as its not just about going out and taking your amazing photographs or making your fantastic art, that’s just the beginning.

My new logo is…….. a Hedgehog of course!

I personally started taking photographs as a form of therapy, to deal with pressures of family life and it snowballed into a business. I suppose looking at the questions it kind of helps to form a very loose start to a business plan, if you’ve not got one to start with. I really loved pulling the words together that i felt symbolised what i wanted my brand to say and how i wanted potential customers to think of me then matching those words to colours. Words have such power and create a response in your audience that i wanted to get it right, out came the mind map and colour wheel and i think i have my three colours for my brand.

Colours

• Blue —— Reliability
• Orange —— Artistic
• Green —— Friendly

Fonts

• Head text —– DrCarbfred Pro
• Subtext —— Elina web
• Body text —— Acumin Pro

Putting it all together i now need to make my templates for social media posts on facebook and instagram, these are the two i regularly use, i use Adobe Spark to make my templates but there are other apps to make them in and after i have my templates made i seriously need to get down to making some art! I have neglected to an extent my photography as we haven’t been able to go anywhere, my garden is empty of flowers so i cant get inspiration there so basically i have not done a great deal. However my lovely husband bought me a very exciting birthday present this year and i am going to enjoy using it to make my photographs in a different way.

My next project is Polaroid Lab, hang on to your lens caps its going to be a fun ride…………………………………………………………..

Finding Your Brand

Many, many, many years ago when i was a young woman not sure of what i wanted to do with my life i decided to explore Graphic Design as a career. Baring in mind this was around the time when schools had just started to invest in IT and were finally buying computers for their ‘Computer Lab’s’. The IT tutor was a dinosaur when it came to teaching women, he wouldn’t have them anywhere near his precious computers actually, so i learnt graphic design the ‘old’ way. I really loved the whole concept of designing a brand from the bottom up but at the time, the whole community was so tight knit that it was incredibly hard to find a job, unfortunately when it came to it, i just dont think i had enough of what anyone was looking for to move forward, so i did something else instead.

Now as i design, or should that be, redesign my website and branding i’m finding that i actually need to learn a ton of new stuff and it is so interesting. I started by looking at my brand name and to be honest, even though i have been told to change it as its, well what it is, i’m really not going to, i’m going to stick with it no matter how naff some think it is because the most important thing is ‘people remember it’. It has a back story to it that i can use to interact with clients easily, everyone likes a good story, so it stays. I’ve a Tag line too, then i looked at colour, i loved colour theory and how different colours make people react in certain ways.

Purple, who doesn’t love purple?

Adobe Purple; #361354

#361354

It’s cutting edge, wise, feminine, shows wealth and luxury but is also playful. Does my work mean any of these? Well its expensive so that could be a luxury item, not sure about the rest though but i do love Purple.

Red, a very hot colour!

Adobe Red #E50305

#E50305

It gives a sense of excitement, passion, anger, its loud, playful, youthful and modern but im not a great fan of Red so im not sure that’s the colour for me. I could go on but google it and you can find tons of stuff to read on the subject.

I then set about looking at brand shapes, did i want to appear intimidating or harmless, friendly and inviting, gentle, light hearted and cute, if so then i’d use a circle or was i going for intelligent, stable and cool, then it would be sharp and angular shapes. Then there is the dependability of your brand to think about, who knew that would be a triangle! Maturity, alternative, bad ass, powerful and sleek are all triangle, is that what i am, it is what im aiming for and i do have maturity on my side, so yes i’m a triangle. I haven’t been able to decide on one colour so i’m using lots of them. And the begining of a brand is born. Now i just need to find a Logo………………………..