How to find the brand identity for your creative or purpose-driven business

I'm thrilled to share a lovely guest post from brand designer Ellie at Bowie Design on how a define-before-design approach to your brand identity can really benefit your creative or purpose-driven business. Over to Ellie...

Ellie Bowie of Bowie Design. Credit: SuperFunkyPenguin Photography

You may be wondering what a brand designer is doing bursting into a blog about copywriting, but like most creative disciplines they're more interconnected than first appears. My approach to brand design takes you right back to your foundations. Without clearly defining your business, it’s impossible to create a visual identity that really connects with your audience.

The same principle applies to copywriting. Without understanding who your audience is, what your offer is and how it benefits them, you can’t write copy with a clear tone of voice or that reflects your unique pizzazz.

When it comes to designing a logo, picking a colour palette and choosing fonts, there are a variety of pick 'n' mix directions that you can go in. But without a clearly defined direction, you can merrily disappear down a rabbit hole of inspiration, based on your own tastes and aesthetics.

So how can you anchor your brand identity to your business? And why do you need to?

Helen has invited me to share my deep-thinking, define-before-design approach to brand design with you. Taking this richer approach has many benefits to your business and your visual and written identity. The biggest benefit being the clarity it helps you find...

Who is this designer anyway?

Hello there, I’m Ellie, the creative curiosity behind Bowie Design – a brand identity studio rooted in my deep-thinking, define-before-design approach.

After decades of design, I was fed up of working to brief briefs* that always left me wondering why. Sparked by curiosity, and a passion for positive impact on the world, I developed my own approach to brand identity design that digs deep into your strategic position first, and beautifully crafts your visuals later.

Bowie Design works with deep-thinking clients whose businesses aim to gently disrupt and create positive ripples in the world. I want to amplify and support businesses that use their expertise to shape a kinder, more compassionate and equitable world. Because that’s what I’m doing with my expertise too.

And that’s also where Helen and I overlap – a shared passion for working with ethical businesses.

*to be clear, I’ll never ask to see your pants.

The (usual) briefing process

Usually, the briefing process is given as a detailed list of requirements or restraints and more focused on the functional output:

"We need a logo that will work across digital platforms and can be embroidered onto a shirt."

Sometimes, and this is my personal bugbear (see above!), the designer is presented with particularly brief briefs…

"We need a logo, that appeals to everyone and needs to pop."

There’s nothing wrong with this as a start point, as long as it's used merely as a jumping off point for further exploration.

Why, not what

While these briefs explain what the client needs, it doesn’t fill in the gap of why. Now, maybe you’re thinking I’m a fool and it’s obvious why you need a logo. Maybe it is. Or maybe a logo that works in every dimension isn’t quite what you need, perhaps a simple icon or symbol is the key, or finding a way to ‘own’ a particular colour. (Anyone recall Orange Mobile?)

The danger of focusing on what, instead of why, is that your brief gives the solution instead of asking the question. When you invest in a designer, you’re opening a creative door to view your business in an entirely new way. By being too prescribed in your brief, you’re only allowing that door to open a fraction and not seeing the whole epic sunlit view.

Taking a define-before-design approach to the brand identity for your creative or purpose-driven business

When you spend time thinking about your business first and truly understand what you’re about, what is your unique pizzazz and what you really stand for, you start to see either what your clients value about you, or what they’re not seeing about you. When the brief is opened wide and then, like a wonderfully mature whisky, carefully distilled down, it creates new creative boundaries that can be explored in an exciting way.

Finding what makes you unique is incredibly hard, especially for yourself. It requires holding a mirror up and scrutinising every element of your business, including the bits at the back of your head that you’ve forgotten about. It’s also an opportunity to look forward and consider how you want your business to feel and what might need to change to get there. This is way more than picking cushion colours to match a logo. It’s the hard stuff. It requires time, dedication and brain power. But when you get it right, it’s magic.

The benefits of thinking first and crafting later

My clients often tell me they’re surprised by the process I take them through. By carefully listening, questioning and doing my own research, I’m able to articulate back to them a vision for their business that brings together every disparate thread in a succinct and inspiring way. And often this blows their mind.

I’m able to see the things that they already know, but take for granted, things they don’t think matter and connect all those dots. It sounds like I’m amazing but I’m not. They are. They’ve built an incredible brand already – it’s my job to find it and bring it to life.

When you find your inner brand identity, it becomes a cornerstone for your business. With a clarity of vision in place, you can build every facet of your brand out. As a brand identity designer, I use it to craft your logo and visual identity. It will also inform your photography style, or any illustration you might use. You can use it when building your website and when writing your copy.

If you’re briefing a copywriter it’s a core starting block, a platform to build out your key messaging and tone of voice – a brand element that is so powerful, yet can be overlooked.

Whether you’re investing in a designer or creative for your business, a clear vision will ensure you build a brand that resonates with your clients and maximises your time and energy. Your copywriter will be able to tap into your thinking, your ideal client and understand what your tone of voice needs to be (although ideally you’d define your tone of voice too). This means you can trust that everything you receive will be perfectly aligned and enhance your brand identity. Every element of your brand will build on the last, with a visual identity in place and cohesive copy to accompany it, if you need to create a website, you’ll have a clear understanding and the building blocks to bring it to life.

4 simple questions to ask – start at the beginning: who, what, where, when?

While it’s always easier to do the deep-thinking in partnership, it’s not always possible. So where do you start to do it on your own? Begin with the basics, to get your brain juices flowing.

WHO is your target audience or customer?

Get to know them in detail. Learn their pain points and aspirations. What brands do they like or are influenced by? How can you help them? How do you want them to feel? Can you base this on a previous client? Or is this person different from your existing clients? If it is, then you know that your current positioning might need some work.

WHAT do you stand for?

What are your values and goals? What are you really selling? Dreams and aspirations, or are you making lives simpler? What does it need to achieve? How will you measure its success? Your values matter, they run through everything you do and they’re relevant to what you view as success.

WHERE will customers find you?

Online, social media, networking, events, shop, studio, markets... If you go to events, does your brand need to be visible at a great distance? Or if you’re digital only, maybe it needs to scale to a teeny weeny size beautifully.

WHEN? What’s your deadline? And what’s realistic?

Do you have an event coming up? What do you have time to do? Avoid making last minute investments unless you’re sure they fit your brief. Always allow longer than you think, or your designer has estimated. Creative processes often spark new ideas or directions and can easily through you off course. Whilst you will find someone who can produce a logo over the weekend, consider whether that is the approach you want to take.

These are simple questions, but so often overlooked

With the basics in place, start digging deeper

Think about how you want your clients to feel when they interact with you. Communicating professionally and building trust is a given. Depending on your business, you may want to inspire them, make them feel nurtured, eager to learn or like they’ve found the perfect product they were looking for. Your brand may need to be bold and excited, or quiet and calming – or somewhere else entirely. This relates directly to your messaging and tone of voice. Thinking about how you want to talk to your clients can lead into the feeling you’re trying to create.

My aim is to get you to slow down, put pen to paper and make a plan. There’s plenty of time to invest in design, websites and other exciting things. And when you do, you want to be sure that you’re building a long-term vision for your business.

To help you with that long-term vision, I’ve developed a free brand review guide, to help you do a mini brand audit for your business. It’s carefully crafted to help you move through your brand uncertainties and find positive steps forward. You'll find more information about signing up and downloading my brand guide here.

Ellie Bowie is the creative curiosity behind Bowie Design – a brand identity studio rooted in her deep-thinking, define-before-design approach. Ellie’s work is at www.eleanorbowie.co.uk, and you’ll find her wondering how to make the world a better place through exploring the power of words visually on her LinkedIn profile and her Instagram profile.