How Do You Choose Your Visual Branding?

In my last blog post, I shared a bit of the work that goes into creating your brand in the background. I dug into why your branding is actually informed by your messaging and relationship funnel, but now I want to talk about the visual aspects of branding, which is usually what people think about first when they hear the word ‘branding’.

If you haven’t read my previous blog, I really encourage you to do so, because I've noticed that many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of worrying about the visual branding of their business without actually putting any thought into how their messaging is the most influential part of their branding. 

Don't get me wrong, a website, a logo, branding colors, are important, but the only way to get to those things and a branding kit that truly reflects your business and it’s mission is to know what exactly your business’s mission is and how you want to communicate it. 

To further illustrate that point, I want to share with you how I got to the elements of my branding kit for my rebrand last year. I worked with Lilacs on York to do my rebrand, a beautiful black woman owned business. The designer Alison Mason, who I adore, asked me, "What message do you want in your brand colors to send?" I was like, "I don't know. I just want it to look cute," but it forced me to really think about it.

One of the things that I was crystal clear on was that I didn't want apples or anything that looked like an apple as a part of my brand. One of my pet peeves is when people correlate our profession with fruit. I don't like it. 

So I'm like, "I don't want apples. I don't want neon colors. I don't want crayons. I don't want my brand to look like an elementary school classroom." Because that to me is completely contradictory to what I actually believe is the reality of our work.

So I knew what I didn’t want, and upon further reflection I determined what I did want. I wanted to look at my brand colors and go "That's a black woman."

When I think about black women, I think about bold, brave, courageous, swag and wealth. Those are all the words that come up for me and I want my brand to reflect back all of the beautiful things about black women. I didn't want it to be muted, neutral or pastel. That's not who I am. I come from a culture of bold, bright and in your face. You cannot overlook me and I wanted my brand to be able to reflect that back.

So I say that to say, when you're thinking about your brand, it's deeper than just “what are my favorite colors?” It's around deeply understanding your values, your message and who you serve. Because of the work I do in Get LaunchED Consulting™️I knew I needed to have branding that reflected back all of my beliefs around myself and black women. We talk extensively about building wealth in the program, so obviously I wanted my brand to feel wealthy. 

It was interesting because, when I first named that for Alison, she did such a beautiful job, she did this research and she was like, "As I look at research on luxury brands, their branding is actually usually black and white. That's usually their brand. So, if you were to look at high-end luxury brands like Gucci or Prada high-end luxury brands, their branding is actually pretty black and white."

And I was like, "I don't want a black and white brand, I need color." Then I had the revelation that luxury brands are not created for black women. So I was like, "If I had to pick colors that represented wealthy black women, what would those colors be? What would be the color of the suit of a millionaire, billionaire black woman? What would be the color of her suit?" She wouldn't wear black. She might wear a nice white suit, but what would be the color of her lipstick? She would totally have a pop of color. 

Those are the things that I thought about. And those things aren’t just something you know within the first month, quarter or even year of your business. Those technical things that actually require a really sophisticated understanding of your branding, your values and who you serve in order to land and arrive at the right place.

You’ve probably heard me say this a million times before, but you don’t need a website to start your business! Honestly, you don’t really even need one within the first year, but if you want one, just make one quickly, with the basic details you want to share. Don’t spend more time than you need trying to make it cute, because you need to be spending your time growing your business, not embellishing your website. 

I’ll be honest, I had the same website the first three years of my business. My first logo, if you look back on my social media, was a little pink dot with ‘EJT’ in the middle. I made that on Canva in five minutes. I was not pressed about the logo. Then I just rebranded last year (which you can always do at any time 😉), and now have completely new brand assets that align to all the things I know I want to be true about my brand, my target client, their pain points.

Even my logo had changed from pink to gold and there's a reason why it's gold. There's a reason why some of my logos are black, but I never would have known that reason if I didn’t investigate for myself what I wanted my brand to represent. 

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