Branding

When you’re starting a new business there are so many things to consider before you get out there and begin and one of the key elements to bringing everything together beautifully is good strong branding.

Good branding is essential to helping you attract the right audience or customers especially if you are selling a service or product. Ok. Sounds pretty straightforward right?… well it can be if you know exactly what you want but to build a meaningful brand with wow factor and longevity takes a little more than just choosing a name and a font. Especially if you’re creating it yourself and haven’t got the budget to pay an expert to do it for you.

I know because as part of my mentoring program, I help clients pull together their personal branding all the time and it’s something I really enjoy doing. I’m no graphics expert but the designer and stylist in me can capture the ethos and vibe of a brand fairly quickly and easily by asking the right questions.

So how do you go about branding yourself when you have a head full of ideas but you’re struggling to pull them all together coherently?… well it’s not easy, I know because I’ve just spent hours doing it for myself!

I think the biggest problem I faced was that I already have a very well established brand and business that has been going strong for years and because that space has been my backdrop for such a long time, stepping out from behind it to build my ‘own’ space felt like a fairly big deal. I had to ask myself a lot of questions and as I’ve already created a pretty strong vibe the hardest one was what does the Allison Sadler brand look like?.. obviously I wanted all the visuals to be perfect and I was struggling to fall in love with anything I’d seen online.

I absolutely knew I didn’t want something that would date or be too faddy and so after weeks of looking at every single font on the planet I decided to go back to keeping it really simple just like we did all those years ago when we created People. It’s 17 years old in June and we’ve never had to change a thing. So I figured if it’s been good enough for my lovely shop all these years then it’s definitely good enough for me! After all, the two things are both my babies so it makes sense they sit happily side by side.

Along with the branding, I was also pretty keen not to over design the space as I’m a huge fan of pure white, this way I have the freedom to fill it up with whatever I fancy and I can let my colourful content do all the talking. So that’s what I did. No fancy layout or lettering and no restrictive colour story, just a blank canvas for me to showcase my work. This space will obviously grow and develop with me overtime but for now I’m really happy with how the design worked out. What do you think?

Here’s my advice if you’re creating a brand or new blog space yourself…

• just start, your brand like you, will evolve and develop overtime, if you overthink it too much striving for perfection (I know I’ve been doing it for weeks) you’ll be in danger of overcomplicating things before you’ve begun. Nothing is written in stone that can’t easily be changed later.
• keep it simple and let your content do the talking, you’ll be surprised at just how quickly your blog will start to feel like you as soon as you start writing posts and filling it up with your photos.
• Try not to take too much notice of what everyone else is doing, your audience will click through to your site because they’re interested in YOU. So pour yourself into your new space and create something that reflects you and your unique personality.

Hope this helps a little if you’re starting at the beginning or thinking of rebranding, it’s a big job so keeping it simple is key!

Be back soon, big love for now

Allison x