For the past two weeks, a fortnight if we want to be colloquial, I’ve been working with a group of talented people trying to get our business off the ground. We’ve already done all the legwork, submitted a business plan, worked out our unique selling proposition, registered and everything else. But now we are onto the hard part, building our literal brand and web presence.
Building a brand sounds easy, a few values here, a quirky writing style there and viola, you are now the proud owner of a new baby brand. The problem is that branding a new company is like writing a novel as a group. Each person has his or her style of writing, preference for settings, and an innate sense of where this is going. Too bad the innate sense doesn’t mean we are on the same page. We are 90% on the same page, its the other 10% that’s proving to be our area of grey, murky fog ridden land of imprecise something.
And in this land, the one with the lamp and supposed overriding vision is the copywriter, me. Yep, I’m apparently meant to lead us through these treacherous waters of uncertainty and “blah.” The problem is that I’m bluffing my way through this. I hope my choice of direction is right but I’m not a human compass with a true north. All I have to guide me is the copywriter’s nature.
What is this copywriter’s nature as you call it?
Well it’s like a literal magical brand, a thing etched into your skin and soul. That’s right, it’s the copywriter’s manic love of narratives. Everything I do has to have a narrative. The toast I ate this morning enjoyed a life of suburban excitement until the day it meant me, had a moment of Kismet and was gone. Now if this is what I do for my toast, coming up with a brand identity should be easy for my business.
Yeah, not so much. Because in my head there are visuals, and communicating these visuals to others is difficult. So this leads to a high amount of ridiculous research into art styles, modern example of my chosen art style followed by “it should tie with this but not this. Also remember it should be this but not cliche like.” And the recipient of such elegant descriptive prose would be my web and visual design partners.
From here I bombard them with mood boards of what I’m thinking while trying to find a way to describe the visual I have in a manner that would make someone think I had a decent command of proper nouns. The internet is very useful. The internet may have given me too much information. The internet made me spam their emails with inspiration options.
So what to do? Our logo needs clarity? Our icons need to be shaped and given purpose? What am I to do? Surely there is some heroic method to abort such reckless, feckless visual descriptions?
Alas I’m human. All I’ve got is the welcome knowledge that maybe, somehow, they might get what I mean and make it better. So today, I submit this post in hope that somehow what I’m thinking will mesh with theirs and from this magical union our brand will be born.
