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Written By The Art of Business Content Team
I asked our Founder Amanda, and our Art Director Edward if they felt that branding impacts the direction of a business, if so – how?
They were both in agreement that it does make a huge impact and gave me multiple instances where a business should rebrand. Edward replied, “Usually, when a company needs rebranding it’s because new offerings will be available, or they have a motive for expansion, or simply because it is a must to have a look that connects the business properly with the intended customers. When this is done well, the brand is able to connect with their audience in a way that doesn’t create friction.” Friction in a way where your business brand and the product do not mesh, creating a lack of focus and direction for your customers. Ed continues, “When a brand is successful in reducing the friction, their clients have a positive emotional reaction, because they like the message behind the brand, along with their products or service offerings.”
So you can see that even though your product or service offerings are absolutely the most important aspect of your business, branding and the way you present yourself goes hand in hand. Amanda said something very similar in response to my question of whether a rebrand can change the direction of a business, she responded, “Big time yes – that’s why we did a rebrand – we wanted to elevate our business and show what we are truly capable of. The logo and overall branding we had previously was not reflective to our skills and capabilities. It did not represent what our business had evolved into – our previous branding was created by someone we no longer work with and the thought behind the previous branding was now dated, and no longer fit with where we were wanting to go.”
There you have it, the answer to the question of whether a rebrand can change the direction of a business is YES! Branding can have a huge impact on your business, so long as you are mindful in shaping your brand to show exactly who you are and where you want to go. We often come across businesses who need of a rebrand at about the 3-5 year mark, they are now established and have some funds to invest into the creation of a full business brand identity. When businesses are starting out, you may be able to relate – it is often with the DIY approach, a homemade logo or JUST a professionally designed logo – to get the doors open, the business cards made, and the traffic flowing. Timing for a rebrand is appropriate when growth has occurred, when there is a new product or business strategy, or if a business is looking to elevate and go deeper with their brand messaging.
Our brand analysis involves an in-depth questionnaire that extracts the necessary information needed to connect the needs of the company to the look of the brand. Questions around the overall look and feel, the company culture, the future goals and what the business is passionate about. Helping us to envision the new direction for your brand, taking you from where you are currently, to where you want to be. We will go over and re-establish your company vision and mission statements, your elevator pitch and the key points to your brand before starting on developing the visual. Amanda noted to focus on, “how your brand will be applied throughout your business, how are you going to go about embracing your brand through your company culture, you really want to go deep with your branding, make your business branding impactful and memorable.”
The first question you may be asking is, what is a style scape???
A style scape is a space is the go-between for design thinking and design visuals. It is an internal communication tool used to gather feedback to build rapid high-quality prototypes. Picture style scapes as the grandfather to a mood board – style scapes help to align the client to the proposed branding direction. A style scape is simply a tool for expressing what you are wanting to tell your ideal client about your business, who you are visually, and what impact you want your branding to have.
We started with the logo, we decided that our new logo was going to be outstanding – mainly typographical, and representative of our three keywords; High End, Quality, and Growth. Edward’s comment on the importance of a solid logo, “Setting a good brand message and connecting it with the new look and feel – How you dress the brand to show the creative messaging.”
Our mission statement is that we are “A Modern Partner to Progressive Brands.” Creating a strategic, in-depth plan resulting in the growth of organizations. We strive for growth at The Art of Business, our desire is to become your strategic marketing partner, to become an extension of your business and to contribute to, and share in your successes and achievements.
Our translation of the word growth focuses on the process of increasing in size, amount, value, or importance. Our founder, Amanda Nelson has a huge variety of plants in her home, she is truly a nature lover and among her favourites are the Pink Princesses Philodendron and the Monstera Deliciosa, which you will see reflected throughout The Art of Business’s brand. Amanda’s take on the new branding: “I am extremely confident in what we are offering and feel like with this brand we are able to take the business to a whole other level, a level that we would not have been able to achieve with our previous branding.”
Since growth is one of our core focus words, it is revealed in the typography of our logo. We choose a bold art deco font with strong-bold strokes. The typographic ascending and descending elements reflect movement upwards and downwards.
Ascenders: Represent reaching skyward; Growth.
Descenders: Representing deep foundations; Roots.
A general rule when it comes to logo design is that a business logo should first work in a black and white medium. Once this is accomplished, then the designer is able to take the logo a step further, adding in colour to uplift the logo’s purpose and emotional impact. Here are our results, we applied pantone colours that enhanced femininity and growth. With a focus on The Art of Businesses as a whole, the brand direction and the logo mark are now being used to build The Art of Business’s new identity.
Making sure the results reflect our core brand focus of Quality, High End and Growth. This is where you can start seeing the impact of our rebranding in action.
Business cards – even though we aren’t handing out our business cards as often as we used to, we wanted to make sure that when they were handed out they made a statement and were memorable. The quality of the cards is noticeable with a soft touch feel, the cards are printed on a premium high quality paper stock, we took special care in choosing HOW we wanted our business cards look and feel when printed.
Email signatures also leave a lasting impression, if you LOVE what you do and your gorgeous new branding, you want to plaster it EVERYWHERE! 😉
We also wanted to take it a step further to show our past and current clients how much they mean to us and that we are in this journey growing alongside of them. So we decided to create Happy Birthday and Just Because cards to send out as an added reminder that we have their back, on the marketing field and at home.
With the visuals complete and the rebranding coming to life, a solid path has been developed so that we can move forward to tell the world about our fresh new look. Our branding now fully depicts who we are as a business, and connects in a deeper way emotionally with our current, and future clients.
With our website, we wanted something that was very visual and impactful. We wanted to reduce the amount of text and place more focus on our work. We chose to use Squarespace intentionally to show how it can be adapted and customized to “not look like a common Squarespace website”. The Art of Business website is, (as all websites should be) a work in progress – right now we are in the process of planning a complete overhaul once again (We ARE suckers for punishment, but man, the payoff is WORTH IT) So expect to see a new release in 10 months or so as we are in the process of planning some crazy development features and are bringing in some of our heavy hitters to knock our website even further out of the park.
We have also changed the focus of our Social Media to speak on the marketing climate, the trends, our desire to be more educational and to share more of our knowledge. Our objective is to position ourselves as the experts we are and we are, and to continue being a go-to source for all of your marketing tips, tricks and help, reaching out in a more professional way with fact based information and marketing strategy.
Products do solve a problem, but the way we speak about why we are inspired to do what we do, along with how we show up, is the key.
In the words of Amanda, “We are trendy, we look like we have our shit together, we have a bad ass logo that is thoughtful, has meaning, and a direction for taking things further.” In other words, mission accomplished.