It starts with curiosity. What visual styles am I attracted to? What colors? Images? Fonts? Textures? Which words? Your brand must be a true reflection of you. If you don’t like your brand, you’re likely to let it go before it takes root and grows. 

Your brand is the container for your work. Committing to a set of style and brand guidelines is an easy way to take pressure off yourself and your team. So many questions are answered once a brand is committed to. No longer do you scroll through the list of fonts and choose a new one each time you create a graphic. Choosing which photo to post or print becomes easy. You know what types of images you like. For my brand as a musician, I’ve committed to photos where there is an elegant and bohemian woman at center, head cocked upward, stones or greenery behind her. Things become simple and streamlined. Why? I have a set of brand guidelines.

Creating a brand as an artist is the same process as creating a brand as a business. The sooner you can come to embrace your artistic craft as a business, the more auspicious the results. People love consistency. Just like you enjoy returning to that same café with its same chairs, with its predictable ambiance, with its familiar quality of light, a customer or a fan wants to come to your business and feel welcome home, again and again. A set of brand guidelines makes this experience possible.

That’s why I approach branding like I did landscaping. Both practices are analogous. They focus on creating vibrant and organized realms where life can unfold and people can feel at ease. The wonderful thing is that once the structures are in place, the rest is simply routine maintenance.

Here is what I include in my brand guidelines, both for this marketing business, Brigid Arts, and my business as a songwriter and artist.

• A collection of inspiration images

• Five or six brand colors and their corresponding hex codes

• A set of fonts, two or three, for the Title, Header, and Body positions.

• Brand visuals description

• Product description

• Brand voice description

• Brand story description

• Ideal customer description 

• Social media strategy based on ideal customer

• Web copy, including story, mission, and vision.

At first, this looks like a lot of work. It is. That’s why I help folks like you generate their brand guidelines. The guidelines are an invaluable resource. They are like the guardrails on a bowling alley. You’ll hit those pins every time if you use them. I suggest committing to your brand guidelines for a year, at least. As I mentioned, the brand needs time to take root and flourish. Your audience needs time to feel welcome inside of your brand. They will come to expect a certain feeling. You want to make their experience as seamless as possible.

Building a brand as a creative, as an artist, as a musician, as a small business, will pay off in spades. It’s less about convincing people to enjoy what you do, and more about comfortably expressing your expertise in an authentic way. It’s about feeling relaxed and at ease. It’s about calm. 

I suggest you start your branding journey by getting help from a professional. It is possible to create brand guidelines on your own, but the benefits of having another person reflect your strengths to you is invaluable. I help you craft brand guidelines that are evergreen, long-lasting, and which can grow and change with you as your business matures.

Please get in touch to learn about how Brigid Arts Brandscaping can best serve you.

Images of are some of Bob Dylan’s album covers. You can see the visual through-line: close-up images of his face, looking straight at you or off somewhere else, rendering him in profile. Not all of his album covers do this, but it’s one of his consistent visual styles.