Week 11: Challenge Activity - Real WORKS

A Little About Me

I’m really invested in this weeks topic of the personal branding and the processes and techniques carried out to create this. In 2011, following a period of employment at the University of Manchester, I began offering my design/branding services to small start-ups on a freelance basis. This business venture did not last long as I was very soon offered a role as a Design Assistant for a streetwear fashion company, however this short foray into the world of branding design ignited a real interest in the topic. Enthusiasm for this topic continued throughout my time working as a fashion designer - a solid understanding and consideration of the brand I was designing for was a core element of my job.

After five years immersing myself into one brand and following some life-changing decisions, I relocated from Munich where I had worked and lived for a some time back to my home town to care for my elderly parents. As care needs intensified, my free time became more scarce. I worried about taking too much time out of work, not only financially, but I also didn’t want to lose touch with the design industry. I knew returning to full-time design work would get harder the longer I was away. So I used my free time to create my personal brand and website, Yo Patchy!. This intended to to perform as an online portfolio, show showcase my design thinking and product development processes.

Personal Brand vs Personal Branding

A personal brand is the product of the personal branding process. This process determines not only the creative vision we want to convey, but also the unique qualities that form the foundation upon which we build our reputation.

“every person already has a personal brand of some kind. The challenge is to manage that brand strategically.” (Rangarajan, 2017)

Brand Styling

During this period, I spent a lot of time learning about branding and logo design, but also how to pull together these components in order to style a brand effectively. In her 2015 book ‘How To Style Your Brand’ Fiona Humberstone highlights the brand styling processes as 6 stages:

The Basics - Early stages where we research, look around us and get inspired.

Planning - What is the focus of your business? What is its’ intention and purpose? This early stage of thinking is beneficial in order to create an informed brief from which the branding design can be created.

Create the Vision - Create an aesthetic concept for your business, helpfully informed by your previous planning stages, through creative research and brainstorming. It is helpful to visualise your research on mood boards and to consider the effects of colour psychology.

Logo Design - Armed with creative research and planning, now is the right time to design the logo.

Brand Elements - A brilliant logo design is great, but in order to create a strong brand identity, one must consider what other brand elements can be added to enrich the aesthetic of the corporate identity. These elements include fonts, illustrations, imagery, graphic elements and colour palette.

Styling - This stage explores how your new brand can be styled across different formats online (website) and offline (stationary/business cards/packaging etc).

Yo Patchy!

I created a brand styling sheet which highlights my primary logo, colour palette that will be used throughout my online and offline portfolio, typography for headings and body text, as well as some graphic elements that add flair and depth. I intend to go through my blog and utilise these brand elements more.

I also have another website that I use for my fashion design portfolio. When we were tasked with setting up a blog at the start of this course I wasn’t sure whether to create a new brand for UX that did not crossover with my fashion portfolio, or to merge the two sites together. In the end, I chose to create two branches of the same brand aesthetic.

Reflection

“Looking ahead, occupations - such as UX design - that engage with sociotechnical systems and design are also set to feature strongly in future occupational demand” (Bakhshi et. al, 2017).

There is a growing demand for UX designers, and it is clear that in the future, if not already, companies seeking talented and competent UX practitioners have a wealth of individuals to select from. It is becoming ‘an increasingly competitive attention economy’ (Davenport & Beck 2001) and so if we want our voice to be heard then we need to say the right thing and speak up.

It is also important to focus on specific areas or discipline, to be amazing at one area as opposed to a generalist in all. In addition, having a strong personal brand aesthetic that is relevant to your practice and a focused portfolio that showcases your talent is invaluable. It is imperative to put the effort into building your brand, and to keep it current and relevant through ongoing review and evaluation.

Whilst we are in the early stages of studying for our Masters, it is very important that as budding practitioners we begin to explore our niches, the areas that we intend to present to the industry. Tools such as ‘The Art of Approach’ curriculum are incredibly useful.

References

BAKHSHI, H. et.al. 2017. ‘The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030.’ London: Pearson and Nesta.

DAVENPORT, T. H. & BECK, J. C. 2001. ‘The Attention Economy: Understanding the new currency of business’ Boston: MA: Harvard Business School Press. Accessed on (23rd August, 2021)

HUMBERSTONE, Fiona. 2015. ‘How to Style your Brand’. Copper Beech Press

RANGARAJAN, Deva, Betsy D GELB and Amy VANDAVEER. 2017. ‘Strategic Personal branding—And How It Pays Off’. Business horizons 60(5), 657–66.