Describing your own brand is 100x harder than describing someone else's.

Why is it so difficult to describe yourself? This week's task was to figure out the personality of our own brands. 

Brand personality

Focused and thoughtful. Understanding and friendly.  Easy to talk to. Gets along well with everyone. Rational but imaginative. Decisive. Accommodating. Professional.

Brand traits

Focused but not narrow-minded. Rational but not uninspired. Intelligent but not pretentious. Balanced but not weak. Honest but discrete. Attentive but not obsessive. Calm but not boring.

Voice

My brand is a real person. Casual & friendly but always maintaining professionalism. Always grammatically correct with correct spelling. Aims to understand you – asks questions and listens to the answers and always responds back personally to you.

Hello!

Hey, it’s Jess again.

Thanks for your time.

Want to get in touch?

Visual Lexicon

Color: soft colours. Black & white. Classic colours that could have been found a century ago and will still look good a century from now. Blues, greens, greys. Colours found in nature. No fluorescents or “artificial” colours.

Typography: Clean and simple, usually sans-serif. Avenir is a go-to font choice because of its clean and classic appearance.

General style notes: Strong lines. Photos generally cleaned up but not treated. As close to natural as possible. Limited colour palettes per piece, usually shades of a single colour combined with black, white, or grey.

Engagement methods

Joy

Trust

Curiosity

Visualize the tone

Focused.

Friendly.

Understanding.

Unexpected.

Project Brief

What are we marketing?

Research, discovery, and visualization of thoughts.

What is the role of the communications?

To make people excited about the way I see the world, and wanting to know how I can bring their ideas to life.  To get a graphic design contract with Destination BC as an independent designer.

Who are we trying to reach?

Destination BC or other similar companies.

What do we need to say?

I am a talented human being and a graphic designer who grew up on the edge of the world. I see things differently. I love British Columbia.

Why is this true and relevant?

I grew up on Haida Gwaii, and yes, I am a strong graphic designer, but I am a good person first. I don’t just have the right skills – I am the right person.

What is the competitive advantage?

A huge appreciation of the place that I live in, born from a life in the oceans and the forest, plus an extensive knowledge base from the wide range of jobs I’ve had, both in and out of the field of graphic designer.

What is the tone?

The tone is understanding. Friendly & genuine, but always professional. No slang but the occasional :)

Brand YOU.

This past week, we've been focusing on how we are going to present ourselves to our potential employers & clients. It's hard to stand out from the crowd - and the harder you try the less genuine you come across as. We watched a talk in class about branding and I've been trying to apply the speaker's techniques to how I present myself to clients. Her main point was that when you talk about you, you sound like everyone else. Nobody wants to hear about your problems because 20% of people don't care, and the other 80% are glad that you have them. Looking at any design firm's website yields similar results: the same words, multidisciplinary, outgoing, creative, yada yada yada. She's right - it's not about how people feel about your brand, it's how your brand makes people feel about themselves.

I am a focused, aware weaver.

You'll recognize me because I'm intelligent, refreshing, reliable, meaningful, and layered.

One of my classes this semester is focusing on branding ourselves. Part of that is figuring out who we really are. At the end of the term, we are going to send out our branding packages to an organization of choice, either applying to them as someone we'd really like to work for or as a freelance designer looking to get work from them. I'm taking the second option. I want to be independent, and am looking for contracts. That doesn't mean I wouldn't sign on to work somewhere for x amount of time but rather I want to have more of a handle on the way that I work and the way that I like to delegate my time.

The business that I'm applying to design for is Tourism BC /Hello BC/Destination BC. 

http://www.hellobc.com

From their site:

"Destination British Columbia is responsible for marketing the Super, Natural British Columbia ® brand to the world."

They are dedicated to promoting long-term, sustainable growth of the tourism industry by marketing BC as a tourism destination locally, nationally, and internationally.

The outdoors is my passion. Sharing my love of British Columbia is my biggest source of joy in life. I spend my free time exploring every inch that I can (with my dog, of course), and I would be a valuable asset to their team because of my experience with graphic design in various medias, mainly print and web, and my outdoor photography skills. I am confident in my ability to follow the brand that they've established, and my personal taste and attitudes align perfectly with that of Destination British Columbia. It's our paradise to share.

Portfolio Reviews: soak it in.

Last week, a slew of professional and accomplished graphic designers from around Vancouver Island came in to our marketing class to review our portfolios. We are spending the semester learning how to brand ourselves, which is absolutely fantastic. The practicality and real life skills that I've gained over the last few years is worth any amount of tuition (although university costs in Canada are a whole different blog post..).

In any case, the feedback that I received was nothing short of amazing. I left the class with my head so swollen with compliments that I'm surprised I made it through the door. I had a lot to show, which always feels good, but I could tell that each designer who came around to look at my work was visibly impressed with the breadth of my work, the fact that nearly all of my portfolio is actually client work as opposed to student work, and the amount of physical pieces that I had. Although I spent quite a bit of time compiling digital work on my computer, the physical prints I brought certainly stole the show. 

In particular, all the reviewers were extremely impressed by my work with Rewild Homes. I've been working more passionately and with more dedication on Rewild than anything else I've done over my entire design career. Having two consecutive years of Portal Magazine was great too, even though it's not the most cutting-edge design, because they said that it showed my ability to handle large documents and follow through to print. 

The spice packages were a big hit too. I got some really great feedback on how to take my display photos to the next level though - stop photographing them on white backgrounds. Sure, it looks nice, but it also screams student work. Rather, align the packages on a nice countertop and photograph them there. I'm going to do that over this semester with all of my work. High-ho silver, away!

Bunderfost Creative was featured online by the Wired Beach.

Read the whole story at:

http://www.wiredbeach.ca/bunderfost-creative.html