Creative Component - The Redesign

I’m thrilled to present the latest podcast episode, where I spoke to Lea Alcantara about “Branding for Designers”. Lea, who is based in Alberta Canada helps businesses find their identity to be seen, be heard and be read.

Grab the MP3 File | duration 25:28

During the interview, Lea talked about CONSISTENCY, and how this is is the most important aspect of branding.

After doing some self-examination, I feel that consistency is one area I need to improve going-forward, both in presentation and site content.

Lea says:

Consistency is hard, weather you’re a big corporation or a small little shop. I think there is an idea with big companies that, while they have more resources and they can have someone focused on branding… it’s very difficult, but that’s part of the reason why brand guidelines exist, and you should have some sort of document, weather it’s a formal several-page document, or if it’s just a cheat-sheet. Keep double-checking to remind you of what your goals are and what kind of general scheme you need to follow. The big companies — they have a similar arsenal, they just have more people to help keep it in-line. You can just pair that down for a one-person shop too.

The biggest take-away in our discussion was the part about keeping things real with your visitors/readers.

On the Creative Component blog, I would often post anything that came to mind — the funny, the interesting and sometimes would even write articles on Web Design. I’ve come to realize that people were likely confused when visiting my site. These posts were definitely an extension of me, but I think the direction for the new site will be to carve-out a specific area for the ‘fun stuff’ and to make a distinction between all things business-related and wacky.

Lea says:

Some people {meaning: the better blogs} do a mix successfully, but when you really stop and take a look at their blog, it’s not really THAT much of a mix. It’s really focused on whatever their niche audience or articles are, and then occasionally, they put-in slices of life, but they tend to be really meaningful slices of life, as in “I just got married”, so for example, that’s a big enough thing that people wouldn’t mind you interrupting the flow of your general business/design talk. I think if people are going to your blog for a certain reason, then if you put-in the more-qwerky, less epic events in your life, that turns-off lots of visitors. They expect a certain type of quality, and consistency.

Always be aware of your visitors expectations.

It is a bit of a balance though. One reason why blogs are so appealing, and another strength of branding is you need to evoke and express your personality. Say you have a huge passion for food, but you only have a design blog. If you want to talk about food in your design blog, it needs to somehow relate to design.

Visit CreativeXpert.com for the rest of the show notes

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