Branding for creative professionals —
The past year saw us working with more creative professionals than ever. In particular, we’ve seen an increase in the number of architects and interior designers who walk through our door for workshops and/or branding. Each project has reinforced the similarities we share as creative professionals and improved our self-awareness too. Certain themes have cropped up repeatedly that we thought would be useful to share.
DIY mentality
While you may have the skills to create a logo or roll-out some marketing collateral, that doesn’t mean you should. Results aside, you’re missing out on an opportunity to learn through collaborating with a professional. Understanding that finances often dictate the need for DIY, we offer flexible payment terms and we’re sure other studios would be open to discussing this too. So, don’t let money be the sole deterrent!
Empathy for clients
Most creative industries have a bit of an issue with client blaming. When a project doesn’t go to plan, people often look for a scapegoat before looking inwards. It’s something we actively avoid at JAC& and encourage our clients to do the same. One of our architect clients shared a great snippet of wisdom in a workshop last year that we think about often. For every project – regardless of size or budget – she reminds herself that it’s likely the biggest and most important thing her client has done to-date. A really useful thing to recall if tensions or anxieties arise.
Project lag, folio struggle
For architects in particular, projects can often be a long process, which makes updating your folio regularly a struggle. While it’s beneficial to find a way to share what you’re working on in the interim, it’s a much better idea to communicate who you are through your brand. Rather than relying solely on your work to tell your story, use your brand character to connect with your audience and attract ideal clients.
Though we’ve seen these patterns in working with creative professionals, these themes can be present in any industry. If you’d like to chat about any issues you’re facing in your business and explore how your brand can help, please do get in touch.
Our word for 2019 —
The start of the year is the perfect time for big thinking. Good friend of JAC&, Jo Hook, suggests choosing a theme word, something that captures the feeling you want to experience and to keep you on track. This really helped us last year, so we’re doing it again.
Our word for 2019 is grow.
2018 saw us settle into a new pace after a big year of change in 2017. We reviewed and refined our approach and processes repeatedly throughout the year to make the most of our time and reduce stress in the studio. Feeling a bit like a well oiled machine now!
In 2019, we’re ready to grow. Staying true to our values we’ll be doing this at a steady and considered pace, but are looking forward to testing our limits and taking on some new challenges.
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Celebrating collaboration —
To express gratitude to our clients, suppliers and peers for their support in 2018, we made a gift that celebrates collaboration.
Imagery was created with Willem-Dirk du Toit (photographer) and Natalie Turnbull (stylist) for a personal project called 1–3. We gave ourselves 1 hour to collect props and 3 hours to execute a series without intention or reference.
The giclée prints were produced by Hound & Bone Studio (a small business with an approach we really respect and admire) on Canson Rag Photographique.
The textured note cards were made by another excellent small business called Dodgy Paper using Hound & Bone offcuts.
We then documented the collaboration with Jill Haapaniemi.
This project goes to show that it really does take a village! It’s an honour to have such talented people in ours.
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Your brand is not a logo —
When people think of a brand, a logo is often the first thing that comes to mind. This isn’t wrong, your logo is a big and important part of your brand. However, a well thought out brand includes so much more than just a logo.
At JAC&, we break brands down into two components; the invisible parts and the visuals. We focus on the things you can’t see first and foremost. This helps us design with purpose and ensures our clients are thinking of their whole brand before getting caught up in visual details. Our process covers:
The invisible parts
- Your brand story
- A clearly defined offering
- Audience profiling
- Brand character and tone of voice
- Purpose exploration
- Your position in the market and point of difference
The brand visuals
- Your logo
- Supporting graphics or imagery
- Typography selection or creation
- Colour scheme
Once these things are finalised, we sum everything up for you in comprehensive brand guidelines and work with you to create a launch and marketing strategy. We work this way to ensure our clients are well-equipped and confident when they take their brand to market.
There are varying takes on what makes a successful brand and everyone has different levels of depth in their process (hence the wide discrepancy in brand pricing between studios). We believe a successful brand is one that not only looks great on the outside, but on the inside too.
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Adapting —
One of the benefits of being a small business is the ability to adapt quickly.
At JAC&, we start our branding process with a thorough pre-design phase which entails a workshop that – amongst other things – explores purpose, defines audience and clarifies offering. We think this is a hugely valuable process for a business of any size to go through, at least once. For a small business, revisiting the process regularly can help considerably with improvement and growth. We find brainstorming the following regularly can be very helpful:
- Revisit your purpose. Why are you doing this? Why did you start?
- Understand your audience. Are your audience who you thought they’d be?
- Clarify your offering. Does your offering appeal to your actual audience?
Recently we went through this process ourselves and thought it would be valuable to share the journey. After announcing our new offering, JAC& Brand Workshops, we took some time to reflect and adapt.
We started with purpose, brainstorming why we created the offering and uncovered the following:
- To help small business owners understand what a brand is and how valuable it can be to business.
- To help new business owners build the invisible parts of their brand and gain clarity around who they are.
- To help existing business owners revisit and strengthen their brand.
- To help people with lower budgets build a brand with depth and substance.
To better understand our audience, we:
- Reviewed all data and insights available to us.
- Assessed all enquiries received for underlying concerns/hesitation.
- Asked questions of as many people as we could.
After going through the above steps, we realised we knew who our audience were but not what they needed. We spent considerable time assessing how we could achieve our purpose while balancing the business’ needs at the same time and landed on a compromise. Increasing participants slightly and reducing ticket cost invites our intended audience back in and allows us to help the people we want to.
Going through the above process can lead to so many different outcomes – financial or otherwise – if your business or offering isn’t doing what you thought it would, ask questions of yourself and others then, adapt.
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