How to design your brand checklist:

Before building your brand (marketing), you must design it.

Here are 6 tasks to follow

Reading time: ~1 minute

1/ Establish your purpose/promise

Every company or brand has a reason for existing.

Personal brands: every person has a purpose to what they're doing.

Purposes influence everything and acts as a lighthouse for those who believe similar things.

2/ Define your target audience

Before you can make any decisions, you must know who you're speaking to.

Everything should be based on your audience.

The decisions you make shouldn't be based on your opinion.

Ensure your audience is based on realistic observations you've done.

...Here's a thread I wrote with 9 questions to help you define your target audience: https://twitter.com/ianefford/status/1381030401544753154?s=20

3/ Form characteristics of your brand

Think of your brand as a person. Who would they be and how would they act?

Sample questions:

- How do you need to sound and look to attract your audience?
- How do you want your audience to describe you?
- What are your beliefs?

4/ Develop principles & values

Principles and values are what makes your purpose tangible.

They help by providing a direction for your actions.

If you have employees, values also form the culture of the company.

If not, they help your audience join in on your mission.

5/ Design audience personas

Take the definition of your target audience and create a fictional human character.

Write down their:

- Demographics
- Journey
- Story and reason for discovering your brand
- Needs
- Solutions

6/ Form design guidelines

Design guidelines are a piece of your brand identity.

They make your brand memorable.

Think of them as constraints on colour, typography, textures, layouts, etc.

Guidelines are based on your audience's preferences and your brand characteristics.

...If you're building a personal brand, you want your personality in there, so your opinion also matters for design choices.

However, don't pick your favourite colour if it doesn't fit your brand image and your audience's preferences.

Example: @jackbutcher

Jack has created a memorable brand identity.

He has restricted himself to only using three colours, one very sparingly.

And for the most part, only one typeface.

It's difficult to forget Jack's minimalistic, black & white, thin line designs.

I hope you enjoyed this thread!

- Retweeting the first tweet would be greatly appreciated!
- Reply and tell me one thing you learned.
- Make sure to follow me @ianefford for more threads like this.
- Feel free to message me. DMs are open! https://twitter.com/ianefford/status/1390728450856693775?s=20