Or… ‘what’s my branding all about’ – a question posed by Lenka Koppová – which I thought was worth a share
Being in the business of branding, like most designers – the most difficult brand to create is your own. Even though you know your own clients, and the work you like to do, it’s still difficult to be objective about yourself. When you are working for a client, you are working towards a goal, usually a deadline for a brand, re-brand, or campaign. You’ve worked out and agreed a budget, you’re part of a team. So the only way you can effectively brand for yourself, is to become your own client, or hire another designer… which does work in large agencies, but not for any self-respecting consultant designer I know. Tantamount to cheating in an exam?!
So, you need to get on with working out the ‘‘why’ you bother’, because really – that’s what it’s all about.
I’d like to say that I had a big idea when I set out on my own over 20 years ago, but like a lot of independents, I had a couple of redundancies, and being in the ‘sales & marketing’ area of the business, meant that I was considered an overhead in tough times. My drive in the beginning was being in charge of my own destiny – and it was scary, but I was resolute. And that’s the very thing that connected me to business owners, small ones, big ones, one-man-band ones. We all want to be in charge of our own destiny. To fulfil our dreams (whatever they might be). To believe in ourselves, our own power. To bring our product to other people, because we know we can make their lives better, for me it’s their business lives – to bring them the power of graphic design to make them look, sound, and feel good, but for a manufacturing company it could be a life-saving widget, or software, or … you know – fill in the gap.
So, my name is a nickname from school (fuz), and my branding is about ideas, dreams and possibilities. I like black and white, it’s honest, so that is fairly strong in the palette, but I also love colour (all of them), hence the rainbow and stylistic nod to one of my favourite designers, Milton Glaser. It was important that I didn’t use a stock image, it was important that I was the focus, because that’s what my clients buy – me, and my creativity to their table.
Yours, angie moyes at fuz.co.uk