I’m going to admit something that as a brand designer is pretty embarrassing. I’ve definitely half-assed my own branding before – even after I was a designer.

Essentially- I wanted that “let’s skip to the good part” style transition and just have pretty visuals that I could use as I needed ASAP.

Starting with strategy felt unnecessarily complicated and time consuming. Plus- I was worried that if I had a brand strategy in place it would restrict me and I’d have to follow all these rules to a tee.

Us entrepreneurs- naturally a bit rebellious eh? Lol

Anyway, I would end up with beautiful visual branding and feel so excited- I mean, look at this beautiful thing I created in spite of skipping a bunch of steps, right?!?!

But the problem? I’d be left feeling like I needed to switch it up every few months. I’d get FOMO easily from looking at other businesses, want to switch up who my ideal client was, tweak my colour palette on a whim and basically end up with a frankenstein’d version of my branding – and then feel frustrated.

And, it would take up a LOT of my time and mental space.

Let’s skip to the actual good part – I used to be a pastry chef and so simplifying things using a cake analogy comes easy to me. Here is an example that I like to use with my clients ( feel free to save this image for later!)

The visual part is the icing on the cake. The strategy is the actual cake. I was basically just making icing and wondering why it didn’t taste like anything!

You start with your cake and layer the icing on top. And you choose what icing you need based on what cake you are baking.

*Mic drop*

See ya soon,

Ayesha.

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