Parts of the brand guide for a herbal company called Alin. I crafted their story, designed their brand identity and helped with the direction of their packaging.
Branding has always fascinated me. Brands are mystical creatures that live in our heads. People give them meaning and shape them into alive entities with their own personalities. For better or worse, they are the totems of our modern culture.
In the past decade, I have had the chance to brand many startups on my own, collaborate with teams to elevate scale-ups and help corporates extend their brands in the digital space.
Parts of the brand guide for a fintech startup. An identity created to empower GenZs and Millennials to think and act on their financial freedom after retirement – and the best time to start doing that is now.
Branding is way bigger than only the visual identity. It starts with a sound strategy. Good strategy is simple - it means knowing your audience, knowing your competition, and knowing what products/services to offer.
The next important step is your brand positioning. Having an understanding of your audience, your products/services, and the market you can search for the sweet spot. Techniques like competition matrix, customer journey, position statement, and many more can be very helpful in claiming the best possible spot in the market based on your audience. Positioning is essential, otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to truly differentiate you from the competition, or connect with your brand.
After a solid strategy and positioning, comes the personality. See... brand personality needs to be fed from somewhere. A high-over strategy and on-spot positioning can be translated into an engaging and consistent brand personality.
This is the framework I use in the branding process. It’s a simplified visualisation of the hierarchy between strategy-positioning-personality as well as a starting point of what techniques to implement
I wish there were shortcuts in the branding process, but I would have to disappoint you. Neglecting each one of the three main pillars would result in an airy-fairy, half-baked brand that either doesn't appeal to the right audience (because the strategy step is missing/flawed), is inconsistent and people don't trust it (because the personality step is not done properly) or does not differentiate from the competition and people don't care/buy (because the positioning is not there). There are a million other things that go wrong if either strategy, positioning, or personality is missing. The result is always the same though - an expensive disaster. If done right, the branding process can be done in a few months and it would last a lifetime. If done wrong, in less than a year, the damage will be noticeable.
The three main pillars of a proper branding process clarified.
My vision is to move brands away from a copy-paste culture of mediocracy and bring them closer to their audience with real, emotional, and uniquely theirs story & design. At each step of the process.
My aim is to bring agency-worthy work for a fraction of the cost and time it takes a big agency to deliver. Because proper branding shouldn’t be expensive, it should be unique and made by humans, for humans.
Parts of the brand guide for Devspace. I had the pleasure to rebrand them, design their new website and help with their social content.
Cheryl Swanson
