This weeks’ episode is another solo episode, covering some of the basics that you need to know when it comes to branding. Although I am not a designer and I have little experience when it comes to creating assets, branding and design is incredibly important from a marketing point of view. Having had lots of conversations about branding recently, I thought now would be a great opportunity to cover some of the basics you need to know when it comes to building a brand that is recognisable.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Your logo is your identifier but your brand is absolutely everything that goes with it. When you see a logo, it’s very rare you’d see it alone. It could be on a website, a business card, on social media or on an email signature.
• Your brand also includes fonts, colours, styles and photos.
• Your branding is effectively your shop front. It’s how people are going to judge you.
• Think about the brands you interact with and how you perceive their brands.
• If you’re struggling when it comes to inspiration, Pinterest is a great place to start. Try searching for your industry and then using the word ‘logo’ or ‘branding’ afterwards. Save a board of everything you like, making a note of the aspects you like as you do it.
• Pinterest is also great when it comes to searching for colour palettes.
• If you’re in a sensitive industry, you need to think about the imagery you’re going to use. Stock sites are a great place to get inspiration for these photos.
• When you’re looking at your new designs, you need to think about whether or not they’re going to look good on social media. The easier to read, the better.
• If you’re your business, it’s okay to use your face.
• You need to ensure your branding truly represents you and your brand.
• Think about where you’re going to use your branding, as often this will often determine how many elements you need to make up your branding.
• Your designer will need to send all of your files over to you when they’re done. They don’t need to design every social media graphic for you, as they can send you over a file that you can easily edit yourself.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Coming up with a logo and accompanying branding is incredibly difficult and if you don’t have any design skills, hiring a designer is the best way to ensure you’re doing everything right.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What Is the Difference Between A Logo and A Brand? – 03:21
• Your First Steps – 05:40
• Finding Inspiration – 11:25
• Thinking Ahead – 13:10
• Considering Social Media – 15:00
• Creating Your Branding - 17:00

Transcript below

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Hello and happy new year. So you might be listening to this just before the new year. You might be listening just after, you might be listening in the middle of the year and therefore that makes no sense whatsoever. But this episode came out just before the new year for the new year, which will be 2020 so if you are listening at the time then yeah, happy new year. Hope you have a good one.

(00:55)

Okay, so I'm just going to jump in today's episode because I've been batching contents. If you don't batch, definitely recommend it. Definitely have a think about it going forward. So I'm actually recording this at the end of November and obviously it's not going out until the end of December. But it's so nice to think that I've got all the episodes done between now and then. It's lovely. And also because I have a team that do stuff with the podcast. So I have someone that edits someone who writes the show notes, someone that then manages the whole process.

Speaker 1: (01:27)

It just gives them and me time to get it all done. So yeah, I'm a little bit tired cause I've done a lot of talking and although I can talk for Britain, I've kind of talked about loads of different stuff. So I'm just going to jump straight in with this episode. I've decided that this episode is a going to be a solo because as I talked about in the last episode, because it's a busy time of year for you guys, I didn't want to put an episode out, which was an interview and then have them maybe not get as many listens as they might do normally. And secondly, I want to talk about kind of going back to basics on some stuff. So what I'm going to talk about today is branding. Now, I don't often talk about design-y stuff and branding stuff because I am not a designer.

Speaker 1: (02:10)

Let's just get that straight right away. I don't want any designers listening to this thinking, what are you talking about? You're not a designer. I'm talking about branding and design. Coming from a marketer's point of view. However, I've obviously worked with a designer. I have a designer in the team who constantly takes the Mickey out of me because I think I've got an okay at things and he just like, Oh, when did you get your design degree? And I'm like, yeah, okay, fair enough. So we've got a designer in the team. I've worked with loads and loads of designers. I used to work in a marketing agency other than my own that had a fleet of designers. And yeah, so I've had lots of experience, but I'm not a designer, so I'm not necessarily coming at this from this point. But there's some things, and the reason I'm going to have is because I've had two people that I've been consulting for recently and they have been setting them in new and it's not often that I speak to people.

Speaker 1: (03:02)

Um, they're part of my 90 day programme that are starting a business from scratch. So I've ended up having conversations with them about their brands because they haven't actually yet come up with a logo or a brand. So let's just talk about those two things.

What Is the Difference Between A Logo and A Brand?

Well, first off, what's the difference between a logo and a brand? I'm not going to give you the theory. What does a brand mean? I'm going to give you like the straight up what I think is the difference. So a logo is the thing that is your main thing. It's your logo, it's your identify. And that's just standalone. That's one thing. Whereas your brand is everything that goes with it. So your logo might be your initials or it might be the name of your business. Maybe it's got an icon with it that permanently sits with the logo. But that's not your brand, that's just your logo.

Speaker 1: (03:48)

And what you have to remember firstly is that when you see a logo it's very rarely on its own. So your logo is very rarely stuck on something that isn't part of your brand. So for instance, I'm just trying to think of all the places you would find my logo. So we've got a my website, but obviously it's a whole website full of stuff. So the brand is very evident there. You might see my logo on social media, but again it's amongst all the other stuff that's on there and my brand is very relevant and stands out on there. Where else might you see? Mine's on my email signature? But it's probably got some other things where they even like... cause the brand includes things like the fonts and the colours and any images and the style of images. And are you going to use photos, are you going to use illustrations?

Speaker 1: (04:32)

So it's all those considerations. And what was really interesting, I was having a conversation the other day and someone was saying to me how they can spot my stuff without even knowing it's from me because it's so stylized in a certain way. And what's interesting is this person said that that is not their style at all. However, they totally get that is my style and therefore it makes perfect sense for me. And what's interesting when I talk about brands and things, if you've ever seen me on screen, which if you've ever seen a live or see me do anything in my office, you'll see that even the colours of the walls or the accessories, they still sit with my brand colours. And I wouldn't say that necessarily, that was done totally on purpose, but what I'm saying is that that's the stuff I like, so therefore it's no wonder that it reflects my brand because obviously I'm going to have a brand that I like.

Your First Steps

Speaker 1: (05:25)

So yeah, I've got a couple of things then just to kind of give you some heads up. This isn't going to be a super long episode, but I thought it was important because I don't think I've ever done an episode on this. So if you are coming up with a brand, the very first thing I want you to do is obviously someone is going to create this logo, artwork branding for you and I want you to think about who that might be because there are lots of people who say to me, Teresa, my husband, my sister, my dad, my brother and my mum, my whoever they like to draw or they are a clothes designer or they are creative or they are this or that, I'm going to get them to do my logo. And although in essence that's absolutely fine and I understand that budgets are tight when you're first starting.

Speaker 1: (06:14)

And I was very lucky that one of my friends at the time just happened to be a designer and therefore my very first logo, which I still use actually for the agency, it was designed by them and they knew me very well. So it again, it represents me well. However, my only concern would be as I said and I joked with my designer that I've got a good eye for things and I think I have lots of the stuff you see on social media is designed by me. I'm not a designer and therefore I wouldn't do my own logo because that is so different. Coming up with a brand and a concept and a logo is given to designers for a good reason because they're good at doing that stuff. So even if someone's creative, even if someone can draw well even if someone has painted something brilliant and beautiful and they're very talented when it comes to that, even if they're a designer, but in another aspect i.e. a furniture designer or a product designer, it's completely different skill sets so I would urge you pretty much 99% of the time if you are going to get someone to do a logo that you get someone who is a graphic designer and that you can see their work and they've been recommended to you. I don't really work. I only hit really worked with Matt. My designer who works has worked with me the whole time I've had the business, so five plus years and I'd worked with him previously before then at another place and I trust him implicitly. He knows me, he knows how I briefed him, we know how we work together. He's great. I would struggle to find another designer I have tried to in the past only because we've got really busy. However, with a good recommendation it was really difficult. So that's the first thing I would say is try and find a graphic designer, try and get a recommendation and also just kind of keep in mind sort of pricing and things.

Speaker 1: (08:01)

Don't actually don't throw loads and loads and loads of money at this. Obviously I want you to throw a bit of money at it, but don't like, I used to wait for an agency when we did a brand for someone, it was like two, three grand. As business owners, small business owners do not pay that for that. Cause I promise you it does not take that amount of money or that amount of time necessarily. But again, different horses, different courses. So you know, that's cool. Anyway, so you're going to get a brand, you're gonna get someone to design this for you and hopefully they're going to be graphic designer. But again, I totally get if money's a problem, but remember this is your shopfront, this is how people are going to judge you and view you and look at you. And if it's something that you've put together and it looks a little bit amateurish and I'm really careful to it cause I don't want to offend anybody, but if it does look a bit amateurish, then that's exactly what they're gonna think of you and your brands.

Speaker 1: (08:50)

So I just want you to bear that in mind and I want you to think about some of the brands that you interact with and what you read into them. So one example I gave about branding and customers is supermarkets. So obviously I know I have lots of you listening in the States and I'm here in the UK, but we have Asda, which is owned by Walmart. Now I don't know where Walmart is in the kind of level of stuff, but I know if you take like a lower supermarket and I can't think of which one it is. But anyway, take a light lower end supermarket and then take like your whole foods or we have Waitrose. And what you'll see is the branding on their stuff is so very different. So if you walked into an as the supermarket, which is your lower end or you know, deemed as the lower end supermarket, you'll see that they use really primary colours because they're the most attractive and most outstanding.

Speaker 1: (09:41)

They will use really bold positioning on price. So it's all about how much it costs. It's all about buy two get one free. It's all about something's half price. They use big bold fonts. They have their logo on everything. It's really distinctive, but it's really barely aggressive looking. And like I said, their branding is all around price and bulk for families. But then you look at Waitrose and when they put an advert in a magazine, and again, whole foods might be the same. I'm not entirely sure, but that's the kind of level I'm talking is that they might put something out in a magazine and you barely notice the logo on it, but it's much more muted colours. It's much more complex fonts if you like. And that complex maybe isn't the right word, but it's not, you know, big bold in your face fonts.

Speaker 1: (10:30)

It's the messaging is less about them and less about price and less about families. And it's more about quality and treatment of animals and that sort of thing. So I want you to imagine that. So for instance, if you have got a high end product or you are selling something for quite a lot of money, then for sure invest in someone to do that logo for you. Because if you're going to whip together a clip art logo or something that you can do yourself in Canva, and don't get me wrong, I adore Canva and I use it myself, but I wouldn't create a logo in it, so it is totally worth investing that money. Again, saying that they are, even if you sell a low end product, I still wouldn't just like whip up a logo yourself, but I think you could get away with it a little bit better if you were selling something that was cheaper.

Finding Inspiration

Speaker 1: (11:14)

Okay, so you're going to get someone to this logo. What I want you to do is if you haven't gone on to Pinterest, go onto Pinterest and literally type in the word logos brands. Try putting the word of your industry first, so consultant logos or photographer logos or whatever you do, and just see what comes up. And what I want you to do is create a board. You can create a private board so it doesn't have to be available for the world to see. And I want you to literally just save images of things that you like and you might need to make a note for yourself or just kind of reminds us of which bit it was that you liked about it. But was it the colour, was it the font? Was it the styling, was it the type of images? Was it the icons, was it the design overall?

Speaker 1: (12:00)

What was it that you liked about that? The other thing that you can search in Pinterest is colour palettes. And what's really nice about that is because you don't just have one colour in a logo, you have a pallet of suite of colours. I do, I, you'll know if you've followed the podcast and you see my stuff on social media, I either use this particular dusky pink or I use a really nice blue, and that's part of my palette that I have. So I want you to go on and have a look at that. And I want you to save all these things because honestly, design is one of the most trickiest things in the world when it comes to personal opinion. Because your designer, whoever you're getting to do it could create something perfect and bang on for your customer, but if you don't like it, then you're not going to want it.

Thinking Ahead

Speaker 1: (