Regularly when I get asked what I do for a living, my answer is “I’m a Brand Stylist”. People have many questions about what is my work, and what a brand stylist actually does. Well today I want to take a moment to talk a little bit about my area of expertise and the job I’m actually so passionate about.
When I receive design inquiries there are many areas that they may need help with, but basically I divide projects from two primary basis, one is the type of clients who needs a brand from zero, and the second ones are clients that need a redesign of their current ones, or help updating and maintaining those accounts.
When I have a new client, I usually like to sit down, talk and get to know them, personally or by video conference, I like to have a sense of who they are and the companies they want to create. (Please note that many of my clients are Fashion Designers, Decorators, Make up artists, etc), so the brand needs to tell a story about them personally. Then I ask them to fill in a questionnaire that helps me to have a better feeling about what they do expect from the brand design, concepts and a million of other things that helps me to create the first sketches.
Sometimes we may start with establishing a name, and sometimes that name changes during the process as it happen here in this sample I’m posting today, where the name started as PolishedPretty, and ended up as PolishedPerfect. What I will do next is to start tracing lines according the concepts, colors and aesthetics we talk before and work on two different things, word marks and logo. Many times I work with these two separately and finally together. As you can see, we work with many options first, we need them, as it helps us materialize what is in the clients mind and guide us to define the ONE we and future clients will identify with.
I personally like to work in black and white first, adding the chromatic family later on. And sometimes when we finally have got the right combinations between brand, colors, fonts, it became nostalgic to look at the many other options from before that will never see the light of the sun.
So I wanted to post some of them here, because it shows how much work it takes to actually build a strong brand, and the dedication to evolve in areas like technology and collateral.
I hope you guys enjoy this glimpse into a branding project.
have a wonderful Monday!.
Xo.