Life is complicated. Good design shouldn’t be. Especially when your brand is driven by purpose, sustainability, and a hunger to change the world.
Weaving those elements, and your brand essence, into a visual identity is what sparks connection and elicits opportunity — and it’s essential as the trees are to the forest.
So, what does your branding need to communicate? And how do you find your brand essence? Let’s find that out together!
Brand Story
Storytelling inspires and creates emotional connections with your audience.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for your brand’s communication. If you want to build meaningful relationships and create an elevated brand your people care about, you need a purposeful, authentic story to tell.
Here’s the structure for good storytelling:
01
PROBLEM:
Describe the difficulty, situation or problem that you set out to solve.
02
SOLUTION:
Describe how you solved it with your ideas and passion
03
SUCCESS:
Describe how your solution is making people’s lives better
Brand Purpose
To create a brand identity that is rooted in strategy, designed with purpose, and resonates with your ideal client, we must get into the WHY of your brand first.
Your brand purpose makes you irresistible to your target audience. It’s the foundation and the very reason your brand exists.
It goes beyond profit.
If used strategically, your why can be the driving force behind your brand’s success
Vision
Your brand vision states what your brand does for your audience. Think of it as the picture of where you want your brand to be in the future.
Your vision should be measurable, attainable, inspiring, unique, cultural, and straightforward.
The brands that are most capable of inspiring us and earning our trust are the ones that make us feel like we’re more than just another customer. They make us feel like we’re part of something even bigger.
Mission
Think of your brand’s mission as the route to follow to achieve your brand’s vision.
Your brand’s mission is what your business strives to do for your audience.
Think about what products and services you offer and the impact they have.
Values & Ethics
What does your brand stand for?
Values are at the core of your business. They influence how consumers perceive your brand and help them align with their own values.
Your ethics help define your purpose, personality, and visual style.
From the colours you use, your logo, your voice and customer service, everything should be meaningfully defined around your brand values.
Promise
Your promise is how you commit to every client. It’s the way that makes your brand unique, and it’s what your target audience expects from your business.
Your promise helps you position yourself in the market, as it sets customers expectations on the brand’s quality and feel.
Personality
Brand personality is a set of characteristics that your brand can purposely use to evoke the right emotional response and increase trust.
Brand personality is what humanises your brand and makes it resonate with your target audience.
Because we connect and purchase from brands we like and relate to, it’s important to define your brand personality to be engaging.
Audience
By knowing more about who you’re serving, communicating and connecting with your target audience becomes easy as a breeze.
Who is your audience and where do they look for when they find your brand? What are they searching for?
Customer Persona
Creating a customer persona allows you to understand your audience better and recognise key traits and patterns and how your brand can help.
01
RESEARCH:
Research the problems your ideal clients are facing. What do they look for? Where do they seek help?
02
DEFINE:
Define your customer persona. Think about age, interests, profession, routines, goals, aspirations, etc.
03
DETERMINE:
Map out their decision-making process and where and how your brand can help them.
04
MAP OUT:
Map out their decision-making process and where and how your brand can help them.
Colours
How your target feels about your brand is more potent than what they think about your brand. This means that your brand colours should be selected by their meaning, a preference is not enough.
Brand colours are a reflection of your brand identity and evoke a strong and immediate emotional response.
Typography
Like colours, your brand’s fonts can make or break your visual identity. After all, it’s not just what you say: It’s how you say it.
Selecting the right typography can help amplify your brand’s message and give your logo and overall brand identity a unique feel.
Autumn 