Creating "The Brand"

Coral Ryder
Feb 29, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Jun 13, 2024

Brand what is it? According to dictionary.cambridge.org: Brand is: "a type of product made by a particular company and sold under a particular name".

Branding what is it? According to dictionary.cambridge.org: Branding is: "the act of making a product, organization, person, or place easy to recognize as different from others by connecting it with a particular name, design, symbol, set of qualities, etc."

A company's brand is what sets it apart from other businesses, and makes it stand out. It's what makes it memorable to the public and highlights its unique personality and products. A well established brand can draw the public to your business. When established it gives confidence to the consumer as they associate the brand with the companies reputation. It can boost advertising and sales, gives the impression of a trustworthy company with quality product and/or services. Some people will buy a product simply because it has a brand logo on it, for example bags designed by the fashion company Gucci.

To establish a brand takes research, strategy and reflection. Choosing your company name and logo, what imagery, typography, and colours resonate with your enterprises individuality. What will make it easier for the consumer to identify your business above the competition? Research plays an important role in creating your brand, from drawing inspiration in its design, to ensuring your logo and name has not already been taken.

Looking at Simon Sinek's "The Golden Circle and to the why, how, and what, behind our enterprise provides insight into creating our businesses vision and mission statement. Why do we do what we do? what is the purpose, what drives us. How we do it? and what we do.

"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" Simon Sinek

Creating a Brand

In creating my own brand we started with looking at our values, vision and mission. Being a high functioning autistic person, honesty and trust are extremely important to me. As a Spiritualist "Personal Responsibility" is a key principle in how I live my life. I believe education is the key to enlightenment and have a drive within me to teach and to be of service to others. I have dedicated decades of my life to helping others and serving the community. The keywords I highlighted within this Brand exercise in relation to my values, vision and mission were: community, creativity, honesty, openness, peace, meaningful work, helping others, reputation, quality, responsibility, tolerance, tranquillity, trust, and work/life balance.

My vision is to expand upon my enterprise of speaking, demonstrating and teaching about mediumship and the spiritual arts to creating, designing visual merchandise of a spiritual nature. The idea behind it is to fill a gap in the market for such merchandise and perhaps educate people along the way. Growing up within the spiritual movement, I have noted a distinct lack in produce aimed specifically at us. As previously stated I cannot simply walk into a shop and buy a Hydesville card. I therefore have started to design such merchandise by a Spiritualist for Spiritualists. The mission is not only to fill that gap so Spiritualists can buy products aimed specifically for them but to educate the public in the process through visual products as conversation starters. The aim to breakthrough the historic bias towards my kind so that we can eventually be accepted by society for who we are. To "normalise not stigmatise".

Having previously established myself as a sole trader in the field of spirit portraiture I already had business cards and particular colours and fonts I liked to use. However, as I am now introducing a range of spiritual products aimed at a wider audience I felt it was important to revamp my brand more fitting for the modern market.

The Mind map: putting thoughts to paper has always been an issue for me and I have to admit I struggle with it. Creating a Mind Map can help to overcome this issue. This task was therefore particularly useful in guiding me in creating my brand. Collating my thoughts around a central concept in relation to my business enterprise gave insight and brought some order to my chaos, providing clarity and purpose.

The Mood Board: I also found the mood board useful in drawing inspiration in determining what colours, shapes and fonts I liked, that would work well for me, and my business.

Being a retired re-enactor I am very drawn to the medieval looking font on my old business cards, however it is not easy to read, and from a distance "within" looks like "witchin", which is not quite the impression I was going for. Wishing to expand my enterprise and reach a wider audience. I opted to revamp my brand utilising an easier to read font. Still in keeping with my love of the past, and combining it with a modern palette to create a "Modernish style with a Ye Oldy twist".

Inspired by my tutor and peers I chose a piece of my own artwork for the background. I was then able, utilising Canva, to match my brand palette to the colours within the painting. "

Feedback from our peers was extremely helpful in finalising my own brand. Having another set of eyes and opinions giving positive and friendly constructive feedback gave other unique perspectives to each others designs and logos that we personally may not have seen or thought of.