Branding is the way you portray yourself or your business to others. When you create a brand, you have an idea and a value that you want to share with the rest of the world. You want this brand to portray the beliefs and values that you put into it.
When I was creating my brand, I took the time to ask myself: asides from your services, ideal clients, etc, why do you do this? My answer was simple: Everybody deserves good design, no matter the price. I ended up creating different packages at different price points so that everyone could afford my services. I also knew that I wanted to work closely with my clients, take the time to have them go through my questionnaire, so I know their likes and dislikes to better serve them. Everything I want to do for them is because I care about them.
When it came to building my visuals, I thought it would be great to keep it simple and straightforward so I can showcase my work, my inspirations, motivations and processes with ease. I had designed my logo since my final thesis in Grad School and really liked the way the backward L looked like a box, and the C was coming out of it. It was like “thinking outside the box,” which was what I did when I was designing it.
I also had my colors since Grad School: the red for passion and the black for grounding. I have looked at a lot of Instagram pages and was really inspired by James Victore’s page where he has some regular typefaces and a burst of color from crayons or something. This was very interesting to see, not something I saw on other Instagram profiles which were more; clean, simple and elegant. His profile was real, and it spoke to me.
After finding my inspiration, I decided to go with a bold font (I used Helvetica Neue; it was my favorite font when I was in school). Bold font, Bold colors, and to top it all off, a lot of white space. Next, all I had to do was translate that into my website, my social media platforms, my promotions, etc… I had to figure out a way to show my client’s work without compromising my own branding. I have found that borders and frames do a great job of separating the work from the rest of the page. Red, Black or White to keep the colors from my branding.
There is a lot of thinking that goes into creating a brand and showing it off. I have found that the most important thing about branding is the repetition and consistency of the colors, fonts, and imagery. I really enjoyed creating it for myself.
