Q&A – 9 steps to your corporate identity

I received many nice comments and reactions based on the post about my new branding. So I decided to create a little guideline to help you where to start if you are thinking about rebranding or branding. I want to make clear that this is just my point of view.

So if you are now thinking about your new website or blog and you feel stuck in your process there are some tips I would like to give you on the way.

1. Find your style before you start creating.This sounds quite easy but believe me it is the hardest part. If you are doing it right you will thank me forever at all points that will come are much easier than starting from a point of knowing nothing.
2. Some simple tips: look around what inspires you ? what are you pinning, what makes your heart jump, what books are in your shelf, which image did you always wanted to create. Look up to your idols and look out of the wedding market look further to those big few names that are called the best photographers. Who inspires you most ? Finding your self and your style is a lot more than only this. It starts from who you are to creating a personal positioning to where you want to go. Since last year Conrad and me offer a personal mentoring program to help others from the starting point of finding yourself and your style to developing it through your communication and branding
3. If you know who you are start collecting all items that might inspire your brand. Colors, patterns, typography maybe even clothing styles. Don’t be shy collect everything that speaks to you it will create a big great image that shows you where to go. Pinterest is a great way online but clipping services like Evernote or simply a scissor and a magazine will do the same for you.
4. When you look at this big picture, what inspires you more than other things. Erase, delete and cut off everything that is not on top 10 list that inspires you.
5. Find your colours based on what is left on your mood board. Those might be just one main colour and simple colours as black and white supporting it or maybe more different colours. Try to keep it simple not more than three strong main colours and two supporting colours otherwise your branding will look like a circus (unless you are ultimately inspired by a circus !).
6. Find your typography based on your mood board. I already had my fonts from an earlier stage of my business but you might change everything at once. Find one decorative font and one or two for supporting fonts for the texts on your website. Have a look if they work nicely together, play around you can do nothing wrong.
7. Wow – you have a vision, you have colours and you know which typography to choose now lets get creative: a logo is needed. Honestly for a logo you can best consult a designer. There are great designers out there who can create beautiful unique logos. There are websites for contests of young designers where you can offer your logo design as one contest. Maybe you know a designer who can help you out and needs images in return. Or if you don’t have the money or you are creative yourself than do it yourself just keep it simple again (can never go wrong) play with your decorative font and your supporting fonts.
8. With all these items you can start our corporate identity and your website design. For your website you can also hire great designers out there. They are super creative heads that help you create your vision online ! But what if you cannot afford a designer or again you want to do it yourself as you know coding and you want to make your vision happen yourself ? There are great themes you can customize. Themeforest, Squarespace or Prophoto will offer you the perfect starting point theme for your website if it should be based on wordpress.
9. I guess we came quite far if you are at this stage of your branding process. The next point will be choosing images for your portfolio that fit your brand and creating marketing and materials as watermarks or business cards. But choosing images for your brand is a huge topic and will fill another post.

I know this is a lot of information and I hope I could inspire you. This is just my very personal approach to a branding process it might not be the right for you or some people might say it is not the right one. I hope you enjoyed these steps and they help you during your process. If you have any questions or comments about this process or how you should proceed from here please leave them below.If you have questions about the mentoring program please contact me.
Special thanks go to the team of Iaan van Niekerk at ++- who helped me with all the technical problems, struggles and extra wishes I had to realize this site. If you are searching for a design and development team for your site you should contact ++- .

P.S. This image of us shows quite well what type of photography inspires us.