In a sea of sameness, channel your client at all costs. It’s not uncommon to default to what feels comfortable, familiar or look to what others are doing. But one of the essential aspects of designing a desirable brand, is staying true to your difference – and styling that into what the clients you want to work with are attracted to. So sounds great right, but how do you go about this? I’ll share a few tried and true discovery questions to help you get to the bottom of finding your brand style.

1) Discovery
In order to design a brand that gets attention, builds connection and feels valuable, you need to know who you are, what you do different and what your clients are drawn to in a brand experience. You need to get specific, and not lean into the generalizations of “we design seamless events that showcase who you are as a couple”. Guess what, everyone says that, and most do it well. Instead, talk to your past clients, get to the heart of why they hired you. When you find that out, find the nuances that can highlight that

2) Brand Style
Create a mood board of your brand personality, think in fonts, colors, graphics. A trick is to incorporate both graphic inspiration and real photography to get the overall vibe and approach down. Once you’re done, edit, refine and ask yourself if this reflects your business and if your ideal client would be drawn to the aesthetic.

3) Competitive Analysis
Find your top 3 competitors or other brands that you feel you go up against for business. Don’t get weirded out by doing this. It’s a business after all, you need to know what they are doing, what they look like, because branding is also about standing out. And if you’ve completed your mood board , you can now see if anything you’ve included feels too similar. If it does, redo it until it’s perfect.