Personal branding: a recipe for success

[ Today we decided to publish material from Speider Schneider, a designer who designed products for such giants as Disney / Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics. In his article, he decided to share the secrets of creating a personal brand - things that are equally important for both the “free artist” and for any new business, and in particular - a business operating on the Web - approx. transl.]

When I speak with students of the latest courses of art academies, I always try to instill in them one important thought: to work for yourself is to create my own small business, and creating a business associated with a design requires no less effort and expense than opening a bakery, pizzeria or even a hangout. Although what I’m talking about, the den mainly requires a constant supply of goods and even more so he doesn’t need any advertising, or, God forbid, bookkeeping, just as he doesn’t need furniture, and the ways of doing business there are fundamentally different from any other business methods .
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You know, as it usually happens: several students in tears turn to the director of the academy with a demand to return their tuition fees to them, because no one ever told them that being a designer is such a hard work. Well, welcome to the harsh world of business.

An important part of this business is all that the competent designer will have to find out in order to safely offer their services to customers who want to order a logo for their start-up company, so underneath it steadily and cheerfully strides towards success. There is a lot of controversy around such concepts as logo and brand. I can say with confidence that these are two closely intertwined, but still different phenomena. And if you still decided to open your own business, then you will need both of them.

Where to start?

A logo is, to put it simply, your signature, your name, a symbol by which people will recognize you at first sight, or not at first, who are as lucky. Now, if you were a sweater, then the logo would be your label, embroidered emblem. And your logo, of course, must reflect the brand itself.

And a brand is already what you are as a person or a company. Do you have a cheerful and frivolous character? Or are you a service-oriented company with a thousand-year service history? And again, if you were a sweater, then the brand is what sensations arise if you put on. Are you hard and scratchy? Or vice versa - soft and warm? As for me, I would be a sweater, which can very easily be thrown off.

So you need to decide who you really are and who you want to appear different. When you finally decide - it is best to be honest with yourself and in developing a brand. But, of course, the main thing here is not to go to extremes - if you call the design studio “Sad paranoia”, then when you contrast with the design studio “Inexperienced beginners” it will definitely look preferable.

What to say is not accepted

In all the articles about branding that I read, no one has ever said a word about the mysterious part of this process — brand promotion — if you like. Nobody makes a secret out of it, just as no one condemns it, there are just a lot of unprincipled people, some of whom do not support their own image. The type of television preachers who everywhere condemn sin, but themselves find themselves caught in a motel surrounded by prostitutes. You must correctly and honestly display the image of your brand, as if it were a natural continuation of yourself, than, subsequently, he, in fact, should become, otherwise you will lose the face and reputation of your company.

Throughout my life, I have admired some people with very vivid images. One famous multiplier I ever knew always wore a sporty tweed jacket over a T-shirt, plain white cotton pants and navy topsiders barefoot. Every single day. And in the spring slush, and in the hot summer, and in the dank autumn wind, and in the snowy winter. Always in this outfit, and always without socks! But then, when he walked down the street, everyone recognized him.

I also met a lady who wore only red, was wearing only red lipstick and was always wearing a red hat. Many years have passed, and I don’t remember what she did, but I’m sure that I would have remembered her at once if I had seen, and certainly would have wanted to know what she was doing.

And now, outfits and eccentric accessories conquer and attract attention. The famous illustrator whom I knew many years ago always wore a band-aid on his face. Every day at the same place. People were whispering and making many guesses: maybe he has a melanoma, or a hole, or does he glue a plaster to hide a miniature Siamese twin under it? Humming, this detail became his personal highlight.

For many years, I was faced with a huge number of random images. And the most that you can count on is that your image will accentuate your virtues or become a sensation at a cocktail party.



Among those for whom successful branding is important, there are those who customize the whole lifestyle to their image - as a rule, they are high-class artists and iconic personalities from the world of fashion who are in their image 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And their image includes not only their actions, but also their friends, the circles in which they rotate, the places where they were seen, their photographs on the pages of a business or gossip in a local newspaper.

Hunter Thompson is a vivid example of a person who, in order to attract attention, has combined real life and image — an addict who at the same time combines complete madness and rationality.

Or another example: Andy Warhol, who attended all the best parties, opening galleries, noteworthy, exclusive nightclubs, etc. Warhol was as much a part of his personal brand as he was a part of his direct creativity. Some say that most of it was still an image.

But a similar way to build relationships is extreme. No doubt dating is a huge part of business. If you decide to break with all connections in useful places because of your image, then prepare yourself for loneliness, for the absence of real friends, because now you, as already noted, are a public figure, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, playing a role. And there is nothing bad in it - it is just very difficult to maintain this image around the clock, and the exhaustion of physical and spiritual strength is a common phenomenon among particularly zealous secular careerists.

How long do you need to keep up the image?

Sometimes we need to change, but our image will also change with us. In the logos of the skull and snake will give way to kids and kittens, the once free artists will grow to turn their small business into a serious design agency, and sometimes our image just stops working. Huge corporations are rebranding (for example, Yahoo has changed its logo in due time and is still waiting for the formation of a new image). So, there is no reason why you couldn’t change something that is already outdated, what doesn’t reflect you anymore, or something that simply doesn’t work, for example, the logo on which skulls, snakes, babies, and kittens at the same time.