Chapter 13
Get a Visual Identity

As a key part of Step 3: Exude—Manage Your Brand Environment, you need to develop and use a customized brand-identity system. Think of your brand-identity system as the visual vocabulary touting your brand. You build the system by selecting on-brand typography, artwork, logos, taglines, and layout standards for all your printed and online career-marketing tools. To consistently send the same message about your unique promise of value, you apply your brand-identity system across all of your communications vehicles (stationery, website, and so forth). This is another area where few people make this kind of effort, which gives you even more opportunities to grab your target audience’s attention.

If you work for a company, you will need to follow that organization’s corporate-identity guidelines in some of your communications. However, your overall identity is not defined solely by your current job. Thus, we suggest creating a separate brand identity system for your personal brand that you’ll use for activities such as networking, volunteering, attending professional association events, publishing articles, and creating your website. Your brand identity system enables you to express your brand visually so that you can convey your brand attributes and ensure you are memorable.

Developing Your Identity System

If you are not a graphic designer, work with one who can translate your unique qualities into an on-brand design that will resonate with your target audience. To facilitate the process with your designer, we recommend that you write a design brief similar to this one for a Web portfolio:

  • Project Title: Web Portfolio for Dawn Little
  • Background: For over 20 years, within Fortune 500 companies and the Big Four, Dawn has transcended the numbers to orchestrate profitable integrated strategies, turnarounds, and systems conversions. Dawn is currently seeking a senior role in a forward-thinking company with a mission requiring enlightened and strategic leadership complemented by a practical focus on productivity and profit.
  • Objectives: Create a website that communicates Dawn’s brand as a “holistic business strategist” in a way that will be relevant to her target audience: decision makers in print/broadcast media or management consulting. Demonstrate that she is an unconventional CPA.
  • Scope: Website home page and subpage design. It’s likely that the design will be translated into stationery upon approval.
  • Usage: This website will be used to establish Dawn Little’s online identity and provide more information about her unique value. It will include proof of performance to reinforce Dawn’s credibility and methods for contacting her.
  • Format: Navigation is preferred across the top of the page and it will be:
    • Intro
    • About Dawn
    • Career Highlights
    • Experience
    • Credentials
    • Contact
    Content that is common to all pages:
    • Dawn Little
    • Holistic Business Strategist
    Include this brand descriptor as a graphical element on home page: Transforming the traditional CPA “bean counter” mentality into a vital business strategist role that serves the whole organization.
  • Brand Attributes (from 360°Reach analysis): Vision, creativity, pragmatism, execution, analysis, passion, ethics, humanity, tenacity, communication, flexibility, experience, standards, poise, wisdom, dependability, intelligence.

    Not all of these attributes can be communicated in the design. Focus on flexibility, creativity, execution, passion (use of color?).

  • Style: Dawn enjoys color and her favorite is purple (blue shade). She doesn’t have font preferences and is open to your expert recommendations.
  • Imagery: Dawn is getting a professional headshot taken for her About page. She doesn’t want her photo to be a major element in the overall design. She prefers photography to illustration.
  • Legacy elements: There is no preexisting brand identity system.
  • Timing: Deadline to present first design round is October 11, 2006.

To see the outcome of this design brief, visit www.dawnlittle.com.

In your design brief, you might also include your budget and information about your competition (e.g., URLs of their websites). You can also point to websites of any kind that seem to you to have desirable attributes. Your designer may already have a process for gathering this type of information from you. If so, follow his or her lead. If you’ve managed design projects in your professional life, you’ll simply apply that experience to managing the development of your brand-identity system. If you haven’t, we provide an overview of the primary design elements later. You’ll want to determine the deliverables you will require from your designer, as well as the order in which he or she will create them. For example, sometimes a logo design dictates the design of your website and stationery. In other cases, your website will be designed first, then your designer can adapt it for use in your blog and stationery. Find out from your designer how many design options and rounds of review and revision will be included in his or her fee.

An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan, or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product, or service.

—Daniel J. Boorstin, American historian, professor, attorney, and writer

Now, let’s take a closer look at the elements of good brand-identity design.

Color

Talk with your graphic designer to determine colors that are appropriate to your brand. Color evokes emotion and strong brand recognition. Consider UPS’s tagline “What can brown do for you?” as well as its ubiquitous brown trucks and the brown uniforms its drivers wear. According to color expert Jacci Howard Bear, brown connotes steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, and dependability—perfect attributes for a logistics company. Through its use of color, UPS closely connects these attributes with its brand promise. Brown is also a highly differentiated color. Can you think of another organization that uses brown as much as UPS does?

Some organizations and even people are so steadfast in their use of color that they seem to own that color. Think about Home Depot’s big, blocky orange letters, the Breast Cancer Awareness movement’s use of pink, and performance artist Prince’s use of purple. Some companies actually do own their colors. Tiffany, for example, has registered its trademark robin’s-egg blue as a brand asset. Most people, upon being handed one of those small blue ribbontied boxes, would instantly recognize they were receiving a gift from the renowned jewelry company.

Other organizations and products have colorful names. Take Orange (the European telecommunications company), jetBlue, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the Red Cross, the Yellow Pages, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They all benefit from the power of color to communicate brand attributes and ensure memorability.

Choosing a color to represent your personal brand can be challenging. Table 13.1 shows the attributes associated with specific colors and provides examples of organizations or products that have used those colors. To get ideas for selecting your own colors, review the list and think about which brand attributes you want to emphasize.

When we build a website for an executive, one of the key decisions has to do with color. What color or palette of colors will support the client’s personal brand attributes and set an appropriate emotional tone—in the way that music colors movie titles?

—Brian Wu, Brandego founding partner and design director

When William worked for the software company Lotus, the firm’s hallmark color was not just any yellow, but a custom color called Lotus Yellow. This unique shade was so important to Lotus that the Creative Director, Vartus (a strong brand herself), went to tremendous lengths to ensure that it was used properly on everything associated with Lotus—from brochures to signage to coffee mugs.

Lotus’s marketing department also used the color to express the brand internally. From accounting to product development, employees considered how to include some yellow in their day-to-day activities. For example, human resources painted the entire conference room in which orientation was held Lotus Yellow, thus using the color as a powerful and unifying force among all members of the company’s brand community.

To generate additional ideas for how you might make the most of color, complete the associated exercise in the Career Distinction Workbook (www.careerdistinction.com/workbook).

Table 13.1 The Meaning of Color

Color Associated
Attributes		 Organization/Product
Logo Examples
Yellow Bright, positive, warm, visionary, future oriented DHL, Lotus Software, Hertz, McDonald’s
Blue Credibility, trust, authority, loyalty IBM, Wal-Mart, Nokia, Ford
Red Power, risk, excitement, aggressiveness, desire, courage Coke, Adobe, Target, HSBC
Green Environmentally friendly, fresh, natural, calming, healing Starbucks, The Body Shop, British Petroleum, Garnier Fructis
Purple Luxury, mystery, royalty, wealth, spirituality Federal Express, Sofitel Hotels, The Church of England
Orange Determination, energy, vitality, strength, productivity Hugo Boss, Orange, Home Depot

Typography

If you already have one or two fonts (typefaces) that you like and use consistently, ask your designer if these are appropriate for your target audience. Your designer can guide you in the various personalities and connotations of different fonts. Most fonts fall into two major categories, serif and sans serif. Serif fonts, which have small decorative lines at the ends of the strokes of the letters, are generally viewed as classic. Times New Roman is one example. Sans serif fonts, such as Helvetica, are seen as more modern and clean. Figure 13.1 shows examples of serif and sans serif fonts.

Many people use creative, display fonts for prominent elements in their brand-identity system, such as their logos or website banners. Serif fonts are typically used for body copy in printed materials, while sans serif typefaces are often used for online copy because these fonts are easier to read on a computer monitor. To learn more about the principles and practices of font selection, see The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams (Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2003).

Figure

Figure 13.1 Sans Serif versus Serif Fonts

Images

The strategic and consistent use of images can help you connect with your target audience on a visceral level. For example, the Reach websites always use photographs of people to reinforce the message that we are all about personal branding. Depending on what you are trying to communicate and to whom, you and your designer can select photos or illustrations in color, black and white, or decide on some other treatment for images (such as sepia-toned illustrations or photos treated to lend a granular texture or pixelated effect).

In personal branding, you are the brand. So, also consider incorporating a photo of yourself in your design. If you have friends who are professional photographers, ask them to take photos of you in your various brand environments to showcase your personality and relevant interests. Or hire a photographer to create the photos. If you’re not comfortable with including a photo of yourself in your brand-identity system, by all means don’t do it. In fact, one female freelance writer we’ve worked with was advised by her website designer not to include a photo of herself on her site. Why? Her appearance wasn’t relevant to her work, the designer explained. Moreover, as an unfortunate sign of the times, some photos have attracted unwanted comments or attention from site visitors.

Still, many people appreciate being able to connect a face with a name. If you decide to use your photo in your brand-identity system—particularly your website—you can create a deeper connection with members of your target audience if you provide the right professional photo. Your headshot can inspire confidence and trust and gives you yet another opportunity to exude your brand.

Of course, your photo should be taken by a professional. Resist any temptation to use the snapshot your mother took of you at last year’s family picnic. And talk with your photographer about the brand attributes you want your photo to communicate. Make sure he or she takes a range of images you can evaluate before selecting the best one. Show the most promising ones to trusted colleagues, friends, and family members, and ask for their input. And consider something other than the usual headshot (e.g., a full body shot) if it supports your brand and/or the way the photo will be used in layouts.

As Brian Wu says, “The perfect photo is made up of a good pose, good subject styling, good lighting, thoughtful background, good composition, and good cropping.” To find a photographer who can provide you with this level of quality, view work samples from potential candidates and consider asking colleagues to recommend photographers they’ve found to be highly competent.

Once you have your headshot, consider posting it in these career-marketing tools:

  • Your website.
  • Your virtual network profiles (Ryze, ecademy, and so forth).
  • Your articles, ebooks, white papers, or reports.
  • Your instant messaging and Skype profiles.
  • Your e-mail signature.

Figure 13.2 is an example of good use of professional photos.

Background Patterns and Textures

Many printed and online designs contain layers of elements. Our colleague Myriam-Rose Kohn, who can deliver her international career services in five languages, understands this. The background texture of her website design features meaningful words in each of the languages in which she is fluent. For Patricia Moriarty, a specialist in technology for education, Brandego designed a circuit-board texture on a chalkboard specifically for her (see Figure 13.3). You can imagine this same pattern on the back of Patricia’s business card, printed as a border on a correspondence card, and so forth.

Figure

Figure 13.2 Using a Professional Photo on a Website

Tagline

Your tagline is a short, often catchy phrase that communicates your unique promise of value. Examples of product taglines include L’Oreal’s “Because I’m Worth It” and Pepsi’s “Generation Next.” You can think of your tagline as a more marketing-oriented version of your brand statement. Taglines are often represented graphically in website designs, stationery, and other career-marketing tools.

Figure

Figure 13.3 Using Background Texture to Communicate Your Brand

When William was working as a brand manager at Lotus, he expressed his passion for branding, and in particular for the Lotus brand, with a tagline in his e-mail signature, “What have you done for the brand today?” When he founded Reach, that same tagline evolved—becoming “What have you done for YOUR brand today?”

Logo

If you have, or are planning to have, your own business or consulting practice, you will need a logo—an icon, graphic device, or type treatment expressing your brand. Not all logos consist of graphics. Indeed, many corporate logos—such as those for IBM, Google, and Jell-O—consist solely of stylized type. Figure 13.4 shows examples of graphical and stylized type logos.

Other Brand-Identity Elements

If appropriate for your brand, also consider using special effects— such as Flash animation, embossing, or metallics—in your online or printed career-marketing materials to convey one or more of your attributes. For example, the boxes shown on Jell-O’s home page jiggle when site visitors move their cursor over the images.

Music or sound can constitute another effective element in your brand-identity system. Your presentations, podcasts, and website greeting could always begin and end with the same music, for example. What sound comes to mind when you think of Intel? William makes good use of audio in his monthly personal branding quick tips (http://www.reachcc.com/link/WilliamArrudaQuickTip) by adding a refined, produced quality to them. He has also selected some snappy music to convey the notion of “quick.”

Figure

Figure 13.4 Logo Types

How do you decide which elements to include in your brand-identity system? Complete the exercise in the Career Distinction Workbook to begin generating ideas.

Implementing Your Brand-Identity System

All of your career-marketing communications should be stamped with your brand identity (see Figure 13.5). These communications may include:

Figure Figure

Figure 13.5 Andy Waterman’s Personal Brand-Identity System

Creating your brand-identity system is just one part of Step 3: Exude—Managing Your Brand Environment. You must also strengthen your relationships with members of your brand community. The next chapter turns to this subject.