We’ve been talking all things strategy for a little while now.
But I know that strategy isn’t the first thing you think about when you hear the word branding.
No—branding brings to mind color palettes, logos, fonts, your aesthetic, and your vibe as a whole.
Your visual identity.
A big part of my whole thing here at Cedar June is to teach you to think about your brand as so much more than just your visual identity.
Because your strategy is the foundation of your brand’s visual identity.
It’s the whole reason a Brand Story Session is the first step in my Brand Brushstrokes 1:1 client process.
Because there are specific things I need to know—things about your strategy that you need to have a good grasp on—before I have enough “stuff” to help you translate the vision you have into an actual set of guidelines you can apply to your brand.
You’re probably wondering: Okay, I think I have my strategy down… how do I know if I’m ready to move on to updating my brand’s identity?
Here’s exactly what I think you should be able to answer in your own words ↓
The story you need to be able to tell about your brand doesn’t have to be complete yet—we just need to know this much in order to create a brand that feels like you and can grow with you.
- What's the origin story of your business? How did it come to be?
- What problem were you trying to solve when you started your business?
- Are there specific experiences or moments that shaped your brand's evolution?
- What do you feel is your mission right now?
- Who are your ideal clients, and what problem do you solve for them?
- What are 3–5 words that best describe your brand's personality?
- Are there specific symbols, objects, or elements that hold special meaning for you/your brand?
- What makes your brand unique compared to competitors / in your industry?
- Tell me about your offers and all the places that you create content.
- Do you have any upcoming launches?
- What needs do you have for your brand identity? Do you need logos for specific things? To rebrand your newsletter? What does your brand identity need to do for you?
11 questions. That’s all I ask my 1:1 clients when we start Brand Brushstrokes.
I ask them via Zoom—because I don’t want you to edit yourself.
And if you can’t answer these on your own, in your own words—if you would need AI to fill them in—you don’t have enough clarity about your brand to make investing in your brand worthwhile.
Okay—so you can answer these questions. In your own words. Imperfectly is preferred.
Now what?
How do you turn that into a brand identity?
For me—it all starts with color.
It’s the whole reason I created the Cedar June Brand Color Kit (my PWYW brand color resource).
Because the more online business owners I talked to, the more I realized that:
- A lot of y’all were just making stuff up—choosing colors willy-nilly in Canva that kind of looked like the ones you usually used… but you didn’t have a set HEX code, guidelines, or any idea how to really use the colors you sorta-kinda had.
- You had brand colors. Maybe you even paid someone to design them for you. You had the HEX codes, the PDF… but you didn’t really like them. And they didn’t work all that well. So you only ever used a couple of them.
And nothing can give you more bang for your buck than color.
The way I design color schemes for my 1:1 clients (and how I teach it inside the Brand Color Kit) is all based on a mood board.
First, we gather all the inspo.
Photos from our real lives
Inspo from Pinterest
X NOT other people’s brands in your industry on Instagram
Then, we pepper in things that represent our story
It’s why my clients’ travel photos from places they had breakthroughs and ideas always make it to their brand boards.
It’s why I ask about symbols, objects, and imagery that are important to you.
Eventually, you get the mood board
And from there, we directly pull out your brand’s color scheme (detailed here in a new blog on my site).
After we pick the colors, fonts are next up.
When pairing fonts, a general rule of thumb I like to follow is to keep it to one decorative “vibey” font.
Either a handwritten accent.
Or something funky that will only be used for the title.
I break down a few different frameworks for font pairings inside the 2D Design Masterclass.
And even just those two things are enough to help you build a recognizable brand identity that feels like you.
Another thing I want to mention...
When it comes to updating a brand you already have, there may be some elements you want to keep—and that is okay.
It is okay if you want to just update the colors and fonts.
It’s okay to keep some parts.
Parts that are working.
I’ll never forget when I met with Brand Brushstrokes alum Jayne Tancred.
She had a couple of elements from their existing brand they wanted to save.
And she was honest and told me the reason she hired me is that I didn’t tell them they had to get rid of them.
I told them we can update things around them.
There are a lot of parts that make up your brand’s identity. But you don’t need them all.
Bare minimum: you need set fonts and colors, and a vibe of your own, to have a recognizable visual brand identity
Like most things, when it comes to brand identity, there are a million things you could do (and could include). And that can get overwhelming when you’re trying to figure out what you need to update and what you want to keep.
Which is why I recommend you start with your colors—and then go from there.
Maybe you want the whole shebang: textures, illustrations, new brand photos, a whole visual identity rebrand. (I mean, talk dirty to me—there’s a reason I call that the fun stuff.)
Or maybe you just add on those layers and edit them over time—kinda like I have.
Brand identity doesn’t have to be all or nothing in order for it to work.
It just has to be rooted in something more than a trend or something everyone else is doing.
It has to be rooted in your story—your strategy.
