Warning: You might wanna grab your notebook for this one!

When putting together (or improving) your brand identity, it’s easy to think that the best place to start with is designing your logo, as that’s the thing that everyone will see... right? Riiight?

WRONG.

This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions out there, and it’s a pitfall that many small business owners jump into, as they think their logo is the most essential part of building their branding.

Real talk: If you’re focusing on creating or improving your branding purely from a design perspective, you’re essentially creating something just for yourself. Not for your potential clients or for your brand, but for the one person you don’t need to convince that your business already is amazing! So what should you do before jumping into the design phase?

Understand your brand substance.

To better understand the visual direction for your brand, first, you need an understanding of the substance behind it, which is done via your brand foundations/strategy/roadmap (whichever word takes your fancy).

Not got a brand strategy in place, or haven’t reviewed yours in a while?

Remember I mentioned maybe needing a notebook?

Why not set some time this week and start to map out your responses to these questions:

Why you’re running your business and the impact you’re aiming for
What values you do and don’t stand for
What your brand purpose is
What your brand voice is
Who is it you want to attract?
What are their core beliefs and values?
How can you build a connection with them via your services?
Your differentiators
The emotional impact you want to make

Getting these core brand foundations in place first can essentially make designing your branding much easier. How, you might be asking?

Pay attention to repeating keywords.

On reviewing your answers to the questions above, you may start to notice a few keywords popping up consistently, especially concerning anything based on feelings and emotions. These are critical things to pay attention to, as they can help to form the basis for exploring ideas for your visual direction.

Words are powerful things, so spending some time discovering which of your keywords connects to different colours and typography styles (all of which have different psychological meanings to them) can be incredibly beneficial if you want to be intentional with your brand identity. It’s just one of the many ways you can explore improving your branding and making sure it’s aligned with your foundations, before diving headfirst into the actual design of it, and it’s exactly one of the exploratory steps I take during client projects.

This brand research phase will help to clarify who you are, what you’re doing, who it’s for and most importantly, your WHY. All of these juicy answers can then be used to inform your branding, rather than jumping straight into the design phase and faffing about not knowing what direction will work best.

And there you have it, a little pep talk about designing your branding.

Why not dedicate some time to answering the questions in this post and let me know how you get on? Some answers may come easier than others, but trust the process, enjoy the exploration and know that your answers can, and probably will, evolve.

Got a question or want to bounce your ideas around? Ask away! My inbox is open. 🙂

With my brand and Squarespace website design services, I take my clients from brand confusion to brand elevation, and it all starts with going deeper beyond the design by shining a light on these questions and more. Intrigued to learn more about how we can harness brand strategy to elevate your brand? Explore my design services!

Let's elevate your brand