Branding is a process

And it certainly isn’t linear

When every day of scrolling is filled with beautiful brand stories and wonderful testimonials on how the designer NAILED IT and how they LOVE EVERYTHING, you know you’re ready to rebrand. You start seeing reels on the design process and a little thought pops into your head ‘I can definitely do this myself’. But you’ve been in the business game long enough to know you should stick to the things you’re good at. So you go ahead and hire the designer you’ve been following for ages; the one your friend recommended and yesterday you saw yet another testimonial on how they absolutely nailed the brief. It’s a done deal.

You have your discovery call and you’re instantly best friends; they totally get you. The moodboard comes and there’s one thing on there that you aren’t really vibing, but a quick little clarification on that and you’re on your way to the brand of your dreams.

2-3 weeks later, it’s a Friday and an email notification pops up ‘Your new brand awaits’. This is it, the moment you’ve been waiting for. You open the concept document and you like it, but where the hell are the fireworks? The choir of singers and kaleidoscope of butterflies?

And now you’re looking at it closely, you have a couple of edits. This is NOT how you were expecting the process to go. You wanted the ‘one and done’ feeling…

And it’s at this point, that I’m going to stop this car-crash of a fairytale right there.

Yes, there are plenty of times where we designers absolutely nail it first go, our client sends us lots of lovely emails detailing how much they love us and everything we’ve created for them. It’s the ultimate; 3 x chef’s kisses and a little wave of the wand, we created the perfect brand; or so Instagram would have you think.

What you don’t see on Instagram (and what takes a lot longer than a 30-60 reel to show you) are the really in-depth brief forms, the rounds of changes to perfect the colour palette, the type-face tweaks and the carefully curated image selections. We simply can’t video the thought processes and strategy that goes into the complete brand package you see in a single post and before any of that, the years of study and learning on-the-job that we do (are still doing) to be able to tell you that your canva-made script font logo is not it.

Don’t get me wrong, the fireworks and angel choir love affair is ultimately the end game for every single one of our clients, but there’s so many ways to fall in love. Sometimes the connection is instant and sometimes it’s a slow burn; this is so so normal. We urge you to please embrace the process; it’s part of the fun and it’s why we’re good at what we do. We collaborate with you (and always, internally as a team) to develop a brand that you are proud to show off.

It might not be a one and done concept, but it sure as hell will be worth it in the end.