Katie Proctor: The 3 Branding Elements Behind Every Good Design
If you started your company 10 years ago, then having good design was one of the needle-movers for your business. However, today things are different: while having a pretty website, social pages and logo is still important, it’s not enough. Looking “pretty” isn’t going to make you stand out from your competition. So, what’s the solution? How can you use design to stand out, and convey a strong message to your audience?
Here to answer that for you is Katie Proctor. Katie is a brand designer and founder of Wildflower Design Co., a UK-based branding and design studio, where she helps lifestyle businesses all over the world scale their brands with the power of visual storytelling. Today, just two short years after launching her agency, she’s already worked with over 50 clients, built a social empire with a combined following of 40k people across all platform, and is now expanding internationally. And more than that, Katie is also a leader and an educator. In fact, she helps other female entrepreneurs and designers achieve their dreams.
As she explains, branding is so much more than aesthetics, and if you really want to stand out. To fully understand, here are Wildflower’s 3 pillars of brand strategy that can make or break your design.
The first element is your brand’s personality. See, a brand without a personality is just a product. And people don’t relate to products, they relate to stories. So, what’s your story? What are your core values? Once you can answer those two questions, then it’s time to move on to the second pillar: Your target audience.
Understanding who your audience is is crucial to creating any great design, because even if you spend your resources on a logo, a website and social media posts that look absolutely stunning, none of it will matter if it doesn’t resonate with the people you’re speaking with. That’s why you should understand the market. You can do so by studying your competition and keeping an eye out for anything that attracts your ideal customers.
The last pillar that Katie and her team consider when they work with a client is the industry. You can imagine that a brand that sells cookies and another that sells electric cars will have very different designs. So whenever you think of an idea, ask yourself: Is this relevant to the industry I operate in?
All in all, before you start working on your brand’s design, make sure you understand your company’s personality, your target audience and your industry. If you want to learn more about Katie, what she does and how she could potentially help you find your “voice” and bring your ideas to life, then check out her Instagram profile by clicking here, or visit her website wildflowerdesignco.co.uk
