The Branding Series
/Welcome to my new series where I'll be taking you on a journey with me. A journey to branding Maker Monologues. I have partnered with Creative Market, a fun online marketplace for anything digital. I always go to them for my vector images, patterns, elements, fonts, etc. I even created my jewelry biz logo using vectors from artists on Creative Market. They have just about everything you need to create a beautiful brand.
I've started a few online businesses and one thing I've learned is to not brand right away. Especially if you're a small, organically grown business. The reason being is that I have branded before launching and ended up learning more about actually running the business, being in that market, and meeting my first customers that it gave me more solid insight as to how I would show up best in my niche.
This always leads me to re-branding (which, if you've ever done so, takes up a lot of mental space!). So, now, I like to wait until I've got a bit of a groove with running my business, or blog in this case until I feel like I know how I want to show up in my little virtual corner of the internet. I may add have fun worksheets for you if you want to follow along and brand your blog or biz with me.
The Branding Series by Maker-Monologues.com
So, as you can see, right now my blog is darker, there's a lot of grays and I choose a dark green just to add a little color. I choose these colors from the start just so I had something to work with. I have also already chosen my main font which is what I use in my blog graphics and my logo, which is a simple name logo. I really like how it looks so I'm thinking of just keeping it.
With that said, let's talk about the syllabus for this series and what I'm going to be going over and just the basic overview for each post in this series so you are a bit more prepared in case you plan on doing this thang with meh! And I hope you do!
As you know, I run a full-time jewelry business so it's tough finding the time. So each blog post may roll out every two weeks or so. That way there's time to work through each different area of branding. Each post in this series will also start with "The Branding Series // [Topic For That Post]" so you know what to look out for.
The Branding Series Syllabus
This first post will just be going over the big, meaty questions. Who are you? What are your goals for your blog/biz? How do you want to show up? What do you want people to think when they think about your blog/biz? Etc.
This is the fun part. This is where you'll create a brand mood board based on things you are attracted to. This will be colors, lifestyle images, typography, etc. nothing is out of question. We'll also choose our inspiration photos from our mood board.
This is where we'll be choosing our brand colors. It's a tough one but so much fun.
This is where we'll be choosing our fonts. Simple as that.
Next, we'll be choosing the fun icons and graphic elements we want to use. These will be recurring things that show up in photos as props and on your site, things that people start to associate your brand with. For example, when you think of the Oh Joy blog/brand you think of confetti, geometric planters, balloons, etc.
We'll choose patterns that we want to be associated with. This could be stripes, gold foil, polka dots, chevron, etc.
Here we'll create our main logo and a few smaller logos that can be used for packaging, social media profile photos, our favicon (which is the little logo at the top of your browser tab when someone is on your website). This is something you can do yourself, so something simple. I've always been a DIYer so that's what this whole series is about, but you can certainly hire out just your logo or your entire branding process.
Lastly, we'll take everything we've sifted through and picked out to create a brand style guide. This will be a single PDF or image that houses all your brand info; your color's hex codes, your icons, logo, etc., that way you can always reference when you're creating blog graphics, editing your website, etc. It's also good if you want to source out a project, you can send the developer, or whoever you're working with, your brand style guide so everything stays on brand and looks cohesive.
This will be a very long process but once you complete it you'll be so happy you did. The most important key here is to stay consistent. You want to train people so that when they see your font they immediately know that it's your brand.
If you have any questions or comments just leave them below! Who's excited about this?! I know I am!
