I can still hardly believe that I FINALLY hit GO for this launch. This has seriously been two years in the making and I have put my heart and soul into it. Over the next few posts I will be touching on several different aspects about my new brand and this launch. But I wanted to start by kind of explaining the WHY behind the rebrand.
For those of you who have followed be from the beginning (THANK YOU!), it has been a crazy six (!!) years. I started out with a passion for design and zero knowledge of the paper industry, but I dove in headfirst. And with lots of googling, trial and error (lots of error), I have come to love and have a great appreciation for this industry and my fellow stationer community.
Over the years, I have had two previous “brands”, we’ll have a whole other post on those later! But with both of those brands, I created the logo myself, and thought that was about all I needed. What I have learned over the years is that a brand is not a logo, a brand is how your clients and your community perceive you and your business. It doesn’t hurt to have a cohesive logo, website and collateral pieces too! I also learned that I needed to leave it to the professionals. Enter in, Megan Martin Creative, Megan is a brand designer specifically for creatives and local to my hometown! Megan and I met two years ago to start discussing my rebrand, but then came along maternity leave for both of us and a crazy life and schedule to follow, so my brand went on the back burner for me.
Over those two years, I honed in on my style and how I wanted my clients to perceive me. I LOVE whitespace, clean, and minimal. I’m a sucker for soft, romantic and feminine styles and knew I wanted to incorporate that into my new brand. Megan knocked it out of the park! With some lovely watercolor art from Pink Puddle Studio, I fell in love with MY logo.
From there, everything seemed to fall in place perfectly with my brand! I feel like for the first time my business has an actual voice and I can’t wait to shout it from the rooftops!
After drooling over this pretty brand board, it was now time to start incorporating it into my business and website. Megan put together my beautiful new website for me and I started working away on new collateral pieces to coordinate.
After going through this full rebrand process, the right way this time, I wanted to share the top three tips to anyone who is currently rebranding or thinking of rebranding.
3 tips for rebranding a business
Hire a Professional
I can’t say this enough. I am a graphic designer, I have a degree in graphic design, but I am NOT a brand designer. There are individuals and companies out there who specialize in rebranding businesses. I would find someone who specializes in rebranding businesses in your specific field or market. They are the ones who know what will work and what won’t and it will make the process 100% easier!
Brand Photography
Yes, there is such a thing! If you are browsing some of your favorite sites and you notice how cohesive everything is, it’s probably because they have photography to complement their brand. Again, there are brand photographers out there who specialize in this. I hired the amazing Amalie Orrange to shoot my branding photos, and had them styled by the insanely talented Dairing Events. Now I have a full gallery of images that complement by color palette and style that I can use throughout social media and my website.
Have a Game Plan
Now that you’ve hired this professional and have beautiful images to go with your brand, what do you do!? Get a launch plan together. You don’t want to spend so much time, effort and money in rebranding and then just hope people find your new website or notice your new look. You want to shout it from the roof tops! I worked for about 6 weeks on my launch plan, list after list of every little detail that I needed to cover before going live. Trust me, if you do this, you can sit back and pop the bubbly when it’s time to launch!
-heather
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I just went through this process, and these are great tips!!!
Thanks, David!
You create such beautiful work!!
Thanks, Sara!
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