A huge passion of mine is creating stunning branding for business owners. Your branding is typically the first thing potential leads notice when it comes to your business presence. Does your brand represent you while also connecting with your ideal clients? If not, you’ve definitely stumbled across the perfect place! Being a full-time photographer, videographer, and graphic designer, I know how important it is to have a brand that is both memorable and fitting. It’s also important to have an online home that helps your business reach its goals, but that’s a blog post for a different time! Let’s focus on what it would look like if you booked me for branding.
A few previous branding projects -
Picking a Branding Package
Although all brands are unique to their owners, the needs are fairly similar. The majority of my branding packages are few different combinations of company branding, marketing material, training on Canva, and site starters. Most choose packages that include company branding. Company branding is basically what comes to mind when you think branding - primary logos, secondary logos, sub-marks, branding colors, recommended fonts, and sometimes icons. Once you have your heart set on a package, we will discuss the details of your package either in person or over the phone. We will also chat about your brand at a high level so I can better understand the final needs of your brand! Once we’re all on the same page; a contract, invoice, and questionnaire will be sent your way. To finalize your booking and give me everything I need to get started; the contract must be signed, the first half of the invoice must be paid as a non-refundable deposit, and the questionnaire must be complete. The very detailed questionnaire helps frame the why of your business, which I need to get started!
After I have reviewed your questionnaire, I’ll get started with my first draft of your branding. This typically takes about a week depending on season. The first draft will include all the components of your branding, such as primary logo, secondary logo, sub-marks, colors, and fonts. Instead of just sending the logos to you by themselves, I prefer to paint the full picture by putting all the branding components together on a branding mood board. Here’s an example of that -
Round 1 - The start
ROUND 2 - huge change after feedback
Round 3 - Touch ups
When you get your first draft, I’ll ask a simple question - What do you hate about it? I need you to be brutally honest with me during this step in the process. At the end of the day, you’ll be using your branding day-in and day-out for your business, I won’t. So, I promise your feedback will not hurt my feelings! What will hurt my feelings more is returning a brand to you that you have no connection with and end up scrapping.
During the draft process, a combination of three things might happen.
I will simply email you full branding mood boards to you after you give me your feedback. This typically happens for the second or third draft depending on the feedback I’m getting back.
I will start texting you snips of your branding as I make tweaks. This way I can get responses quickly.
I will set up a meeting for us to work through your branding. If we keep hitting roadblocks, I have found great success in sitting down with my clients to work through all the details that might be hard to discuss over text/email.
The Drafts are the main portion of the branding process. Therefore, it’s the most time consuming. We can get through this step within a week or 2 months. The sooner you get back to me with feedback, the quicker I can give you new revisions of your brand. Some clients respond within a day, which results in their brand getting done quickly. Other’s take several days or even a week to get back to me. Those clients see their final brand much later. I absolutely understand needing time to ponder and discuss your brand revision with those you trust, but just keep in mind that the more timely you are with responses, the quicker your brand will be done! This might be a huge deal to you based on upcoming deadlines for your business.
On average, this process takes close to 2 weeks.
The Final + Delivery
Once we have a draft that we’re in love with, we move on to the final branding mood board and delivery of all your branding components! When I prepare to export your final logos, I create each logo in each of your branding colors. That way you should always have a logo option no matter what backdrop you’re putting it on! When I export your logos, I export them both as a .png at a 300dpi and a .svg file. Most are familiar with a PNG, but not everyone is aware of a SVG. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. SVG files are preferred for most designers when creating different marketing materials for you. That way your logos maintain their quality no matter the size. On the other hand, your PNGs will be perfect for using your logo on paper print-outs, digital graphics, and even designing t-shirts online!
All your final logos and final mood board will reside in a google folder. I’ll organize all your components by their type and file type. For example, Logos > PNG. You will be given link access to your branding files once the final payment has been completed.
Next Steps
Majority of the packages booked include more than just branding design. However, if your package only includes branding, this is farewell! If your package includes marketing material, we will move on to the designing phase. Similar to the Draft process for your branding, I will send you versions of your marketing material designs as both the design and a mock up. Here’s an example of that -
Once your marketing material designs are approved, the PNG and SVG of the designs will be uploaded to your google folder where your branding resides. The package that includes marketing materials only includes the design of those materials. It’s then up to you to find a vendor to take your designs to. If you don’t know where to go, I have plenty of vendors to recommend! If the vendor you choose needs slight changes to your designs to make it work, I’m here to do that (at no extra charge)!
If your package includes Canva tutorials, we will set up either an in-person or online meeting to go through the online program. Before we meet, you will need to create a Canva Pro account. Once you have that log-in, send it over to me so I can prep your Canva account with all your branding components prior to our meeting. That way we can jump right into the greatness of Canva during our meeting!
I offer a few other services in my package, such as graphic templates, photo sessions, and booklets/guides. If you’re interested in any of these services, let’s chat about all the details! I would love to bring your visions to life! The next step for most clients is a website. If you’re interested in my site starters and additional web services, meet me on my next blog post.
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