Cynthia Oswald

Surface Design, Fine Art + Branding for Creatives

Branding

What is Illustrative Branding?

What is Illustrative Branding?
What is Illustrative Branding? Unveiling the Art that Connects

Just a few years back, amid the adventures of graduate school and the early days of motherhood, I embarked on a journey that would significantly shape my professional path. It was during this period of profound personal growth and exploration that I stumbled upon the magic of illustrative branding. As I delved into this realm, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to The Golden Age of Illustration—a time when artists thrived by bringing narratives to life through their art. Fast forward to today, and I find myself in a renaissance of sorts, thanks to the digital era and social media platforms. Brands like Dropbox and Mailchimp are embracing illustrations as a fundamental aspect of their identity.

So, what exactly is illustrative branding, and why does it matter to me—and potentially to you?

The Essence of Illustrative Branding

At its core, illustrative branding is about infusing brand identity with bespoke, handcrafted elements that go beyond typography to include detailed illustrations that tell a story or convey a brand’s essence. It’s a blend of art and identity, creating a unique, memorable brand experience.

  1. Illustrative Logotypes: Unlike traditional typographic logotypes, illustrative logotypes are handcrafted, infusing the brand’s name with unique character and personality. These are the heart of your brand’s visual identity, adaptable across platforms from web headers to print materials.
  2. Monograms & Emblems with a Twist: When infused with illustrative elements, monograms and emblems transcend their conventional boundaries, offering a more nuanced and personal brand symbol. Perfect for luxury packaging, institutional branding, and anywhere you wish to convey heritage and sophistication.
  3. Icons Reimagined: Beyond simple glyphs, illustrative icons are miniature narratives, distilling your brand’s essence into visual stories that enhance digital navigation and social media engagement.
  4. Secondary Illustrations: From enhancing packaging with custom patterns to adorning digital spaces with unique illustrations, secondary illustrations allow brands to express their uniqueness, engage audiences on a deeper level, and stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

Illustrative Branding: A Canvas for Storytelling

The magic of illustrative branding lies in its ability to tell a story, to imbue a brand with personality and depth that resonates on a personal level with its audience. Whether it’s through a meticulously designed logo that captures the essence of your brand’s mission or through patterns and icons that evoke a specific feeling, illustrative branding invites engagement and connection.

Why does this matter? Because in a digital age where humanity often feels diluted, illustrations serve as a bridge, reminding us of the people and stories behind the brands. They add a layer of warmth and authenticity, making your brand not just seen, but felt.

Practical Applications:

  • Packaging: Custom patterns and illustrations on packaging materials create unforgettable unboxing experiences. This includes the box itself, tissue paper, tape, stickers, and more.
  • Digital Spaces: Website backgrounds, app interfaces, and online advertisements enriched with illustrations offer a more engaging and relatable user experience. Used in combination with the brand to communicate a feeling and attract the right people.
  • Stationery and Business Collateral: Letterheads, business cards, and thank you notes featuring brand illustrations enhance brand consistency and presence. Subtle illustrative elements on stationery can elevate the way the brand feels.
  • Editorial Content: Illustrations in blogs, articles, and online publications draw readers in and reinforce the brand’s voice and message. Utilizing custom illustrations in articles or long form content can help to hold the reader longer and add depth to the story.
  • Social Media Content: Unique, brand-specific illustrations can significantly increase engagement and shareability on social media platforms. Creating something that is not only valuable but also interesting to look at, enables brands to go viral online. 

This trend of blending drawing with branding isn’t just exciting for its aesthetic appeal; it resonates with me on a deeper level. It marries my love for art with the joy of collaboration, allowing me to work hand in hand with visionaries to bring their dreams to visual reality. It’s where my passion for storytelling through art meets the strategic world of branding, creating something genuinely unique and impactful.

As we witness this resurgence of illustrative elements, I’m reminded of the power of art to connect, communicate, and transform. If you’re as excited about this trend as I am, I’d love to explore how we can bring the essence of your brand to life through illustrative branding.

Do you have a logo in mind that embodies your business or vision, or are you looking to create one? I’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts or reach out for a consultation to bring your vision to life. And if you’re a designer, why not take these principles and apply them to your next project? Let’s create logos that don’t just exist but make a resonant and lasting impression.

Bring your logo to life

What Makes A Good Logo(type)?

What Makes A Good Logo(type)?
The Art and Science Behind a Memorable Logo
What Makes a Good Logo?

Imagine starting a garden. You carefully select the seeds, considering what will flourish in your space and climate. You plan the layout for visual appeal and growth potential. Every detail, from soil choice to watering schedule, affects the outcome—a beautiful garden with a fruitful harvest. Or you could just be winging it, hoping it’ll all work out. A little of this and a little of that. But your garden becomes overcrowded, your dog destroys the plants, and your left with a dismal harvest. 

Designing a logo is strikingly similar to these processes and their outcomes. It’s about selecting the right elements, arranging them for maximum impact, and nurturing the design until it bears a symbol that encapsulates a brand’s essence. In the world of design, creating a logo transcends basic aesthetics; it’s a blend of creative expression, scientific principles, and strategic thinking. 

Let’s explore what it takes to grow a logo from a seed of an idea into a flourishing brand emblem. 

Brand Alignment

At the very forefront of your logo design are the company’s mission and values, target audience, core messages, and the solutions your brand provides to the audience it serves. To kick off any brand project, you want to ensure that you’ve done a thorough analysis on the following:

  • Mission/Values: Ensure the mission and values are clearly defined and speak to the ‘why’ behind the business origin. Essentially it’s the driving force behind the brand.
  • Target Audience Analysis: Identify and understand your target audience’s needs and preferences to ensure your logo resonates and connects effectively.
  • Unique Selling Proposition: What makes the brand unique? How and why do they do what they do differently? Which brings us to …
  • Brand Positioning: Define the unique position your brand holds in the market, distinguishing it from competitors and clarifying its unique value to the audience.
  • Competitive Analysis: Assess the competition to ensure your logo uniquely stands out, reflecting a clear edge in your brand’s visual identity.
  • Understanding The Offers: Ultimately what is the customer journey? And how can the logo and brand assets speak to the customer journey quickly and succinctly? 
  • Personal Preferences: Know the likes and dislikes of the person or brand and how they relate to the visual aesthetics they are hoping to achieve in the branding process. 

Utilizing Basic Design Principles

Every well-designed logo starts with an understanding of the fundamental design principles. Much like building a successful garden, an awareness of what you actually need to make it thrive is at the very forefront. While you may not adhere to every gardening rule, having an awareness around what works and then applying it to your own garden empowers you to make informed decisions. This is the same for branding. You might even intentionally decide to be a little rebellious, but having an understanding gives you the edge:

  • Hierarchy: Consider the focal point of your logo. Which element should grab attention first? This isn’t just about size; it’s about understanding the visual importance of each component. 
  • Contrast: Contrast isn’t limited to colors; it encompasses a range of design elements. Contrasting textures, weights, lines, etc.
  • Repetition: Consistency in elements like style, colors, and forms not only makes a logo cohesive but also reinforces brand identity.
  • Proximity and Balance: These principles help create a logo that’s harmonious yet dynamic. A well-balanced logo provides visual comfort, while strategic use of space can bring an element of intrigue.
  • Color Psychology: Leverage the science of color psychology to evoke desired emotions and align with brand values. Strategic color choices can significantly impact perception, influencing how your audience feels about your brand.

Specific Logo Design Considerations 

Beyond the basics, there are specific attributes that make a logo stand out:

  • Kerning and Tracking: Attention to the spacing in letterforms is crucial for legibility and aesthetics. If there is an odd space the viewer will pick it up whether they realize it or not. 
  • Uniqueness: A one-of-a-kind logo sets a brand apart in a crowded marketplace. What does that mean? There is an element of customization—not simply clip art or swapping out the colors of a font. 
  • Scalability: From a tiny favicon to a billboard, a good logo maintains its integrity and impact. Often this means creating a logotype and multiple cohesive secondary logos and emblems that represent the logo.
  • One-Color Adaptability: Essential for various applications, a logo must look good even in monochrome. 
  • Meaningful Symbolism: The best logos are infused with meaning that emulate the story of the brand and resonate with the target audience.
  • Versatility: Understand the main applications that this mark will have for the brand. Think about how it will be represented throughout digital, print, merchandise, etc.
  • Accessibility: Your logo should be easily interpreted by a broad audience, considering factors like color blindness. 
  • Timelessness: A timeless design ensures that your logo doesn’t become obsolete as trends evolve. 
  • Memorability: A simple yet unique design, relevant to the brand’s essence, is likely to stick in people’s minds and become easily recognizable.

As with a garden, the true beauty of a logo is revealed through the process. Through care, refinement, and a deep understanding of the environment (or market), it matures into an emblem that’s not only recognized but also loved and admired. A great logo, like a flourishing garden, stands the test of time, evoking feelings of familiarity and trust. It becomes a landmark in the landscape of its industry, a testament to thoughtful design and enduring appeal.

Crafting a logo that strikes the perfect balance between form and function, creativity and clarity, uniqueness and understanding, is no small feat. It requires a deep understanding of design principles, the brand’s core values, and the audience it seeks to engage.

Do you have a logo in mind that embodies all these qualities, or are you looking to create one? I’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts or reach out for a consultation to bring your vision to life. And if you’re a designer, why not take these principles and apply them to your next project? Let’s create logos that don’t just exist but make a resonant and lasting impression.

Bring your logo to life

The Role of Empathy in Design

The Role of Empathy in Design

Embracing Empathy in Design

As I celebrate my 40th trip around the sun and reflect on a decade of creativity in my design business, I’ve come to realize the power of personal development in shaping my professional journey. Understanding both my strengths and weaknesses hasn’t just been an exercise in self-awareness, but a strategic asset in running a successful design business. This journey led me to discover that my top strength, according to the CliftonStrengths assessment, is Empathy. Initially, I didn’t recognize this as a professional strength. But over time, I realized that empathy is more than a personal trait—it’s a crucial element in design, especially in the realm of branding.

Empathy in design bridges the gap between the creative mind of the designer and the practical needs of clients. It’s about feeling the pulse of client aspirations and audience expectations, weaving them into a design narrative that resonates on a deeper level. Today, I want to explore what empathy truly means in design, its impact on both designers and clients, and how you can integrate empathy into your design process to enhance client relations and project outcomes.

Understanding Empathy

According to Webster’s, empathy is defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” This skill is invaluable in branding for numerous reasons. First, effective communication with a client requires understanding and interpreting their needs, often reading between the lines. Empathy helps in creating a safe space for clients to share their thoughts and feelings, essential for the success of their project. It’s crucial to understand that empathizing is not sympathizing. In branding, empathy involves putting yourself in the client’s shoes, feeling their fears and concerns, and helping them find a path forward.

Empathy with Clients: Relating to Needs and Goals

Developing empathy, whether it’s a natural strength or not, is crucial in understanding your client’s vision and objectives. It’s our job as designers to initiate these conversations during onboarding. Clients might be overwhelmed with the project while designers find excitement in the creative chaos. An effective onboarding process should facilitate clients to communicate their hopes, goals, and struggles. Active listening and open-minded discussion are key to ensuring you can relate to them and align the project with their objectives.

Empathy with End-Users: Understanding Audience Emotions

In addition to your client’s vision, understanding the end-user’s perspective is vital. Knowing how the client’s ideal customers will interact with the brand helps in making informed design decisions. Creating a fictitious persona representing the ideal client can guide the design process, ensuring the end product resonates with the intended audience, especially in projects where user experience is paramount. Give this person a name, describe what they look like, have a clear picture of them so that you can think of them when you’re designing. What do they need to believe in order to invest in the brand? This is one way you can connect with empathy to the target audience.

Developing an Empathy Reflection System for Designers

If integrating empathy into your workflow is new, consider examining areas in your current process that could be improved. Reflect on past projects to identify moments where empathy could have made a difference. Building a thorough onboarding questionnaire, creating visual mood boards, and incorporating reflection steps can help align the project with both the client’s and end-user’s emotional needs.

Enhancing Client Communication with Empathy: A Checklist

  1. Validate client concerns and ensure mutual understanding.
  2. Maintain a client-focused approach throughout the project.
  3. Ensure feedback loop steps are built in and understood at the start.
  4. Regularly reflect on and adapt to the client’s needs.

Empathy in design is more than a soft skill; it’s an essential aspect of creating meaningful, resonant work. As designers, actively integrating empathy into our practice fosters deeper connections with clients and leads to more successful projects. I encourage you to reflect on how empathy can play a more significant role in your design journey. Let’s embrace empathy in our creative endeavors together.

If you’re a designer or creative looking for insights on how to position yourself and understand the strengths that set you apart I encourage you to take the Designer Archetype Quiz here.

“empathy.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2023. https://www.merriam-webster.com (13 Dec 2023).

Rath, Tom. StrengthsFinder 2.0. Gallup Press, 2007.

Curate Your Brand In Really Meaningful Ways

Curating your brand in meaningful ways by using the 80/20 rule

In today’s world, it is easy to get caught up in trying to do all the things, do them perfectly, or make them more complex than they need to be. What is hard to do, and something I have been really intentional about focusing on is to do less.  Something I have found to be really beneficial for me to truly curate my brand in meaningful ways is by taking the time to reflect and figure out how to pare down my efforts and focus on the things that make the most impact. 

I learned this strategy from one of my favorite books: Do Less by Kate Northrup. In this book, she explores the Pareto Principle — otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. In the exercise, she asks you to list out all of your biggest wins. Then next to it, she has you list out all of your biggest efforts — for business this could be marketing efforts, sales efforts, or any way you have put yourself out there to grow your business and move the needle forward. Once you have the lists side-by-side, draw a line from your biggest win to the effort that you put forth in order to make that win a possibility. By the end of the exercise, you should be able to see that out of all of your efforts, 20% of your efforts brought 80% of your results. 

This exercise should help you see what is working best for you and what you can potentially eliminate or pare down on to give you some more time back in your business. How does this work with curating your brand? Instead of spending time doing all the things, spend time doing the things that are going to bring you the biggest impact with the time you have. 

My top two were writing and relationship-building through in-person events.

In my business, this looks like writing blog posts, and most recently, being intentional about showing up on video as a form of a blog — vlogging. When I do a video, it is quick to transcribe and a lot faster to create blog content if I can get good at it.

In person events are something I absolutely love! It doesn’t feel like it requires as much effort to build key relationships when at in-person events. What stinks is I figured this out right at the beginning of the pandemic, so I had to start brainstorming how I could still authentically show up to build relationships without being in the same room as someone — the solution for me was the use of video.

What efforts are your biggest business wins connected to? As you’re gearing up to do impactful work with curating your brand you want to be thinking about how you can do it with less so you aren’t spending more time. Take a minute to do the exercise Kate Northrup suggests — jot down your biggest wins, line them up with the effort that you put forth in order to get that win & see where you should put most of your effort going forward. 

Do you have a logo in mind that embodies your business or vision, or are you looking to create one? I’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts or reach out for a consultation to bring your vision to life. And if you’re a designer, why not take these principles and apply them to your next project? Let’s create logos that don’t just exist but make a resonant and lasting impression.

Bring your logo to life

3 Simple Steps to Bring Awareness to Your Preferences & Brand Cohesion

Bring awareness to your preferences and establish brand cohesion

Step 1: Define what is holding you back

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve toiled over and worked on something all day long and it still just doesn’t feel right or as good as it could be? Then you go to sleep, and wake up the next day with this sudden clarity and you just know exactly how to move forward or what to tweak to complete that task or project? This happens to me quite often. Oftentimes, it takes a tiny little shift in perspective, taking a step back or removing something — giving yourself the space to reflect on what is working and what is not that helps you move forward. 

So take a few moments to define what’s holding you back within your brand materials. What brand materials am I referring to? These would be your visuals, your voice, and your communication platforms. Think about what is not feeling right? What is disjointed? Define it so that you can take it off the table and move forward without it for the time being.

Step 2: Collect the brand assets you like

It’s really important to acknowledge what’s currently working and collect it. Put it all together in one spot —create a brand assets folder on your computer to house these items. Add any colors and/or images that you like or that are working well across your branding platforms and any copy that is really speaking to you or your audience. Keeping it altogether makes it easier to see and visualize how it all can work together for your brand.

Step 3: List what is currently working

Write down what about your branding is working? Why is it working? What is it that isn’t working and why you think that is? This is an exercise in awareness. Knowing this things is going to help you in every decision that you make going forward relating to your brand and it’s going to help you be more cohesive automatically. 

I’ve written about this topic in a prior blog article, but I wanted to dig in a little bit deeper in this latest video. If you want to take a look at the prior post, click here.

Need someone to bounce ideas off of? Or need someone to help you figure out your next steps?

Schedule a Brainstorm Session and we will collaborate together!

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Creating a Style Guide

Website Success Tips

Creating your brand cheat sheet

I am excited to share some important things you want to be considering when it comes to the visuals you have on your website and something I always create for my clients is a brand cheat sheet (also known as a brand board). 

A style guide is a comprehensive set of parameters that clearly articulates how your brand should come across in terms of spacing, color, size, fonts, and more. I like to create a mini version of this or a brand board/cheat sheet for yourself that helps you stay consistent and cohesive throughout your website and your communication platforms. Examples of this would be when building an email template, building or editing different aspects of your website, or when creating social media graphics. In addition to creating brand cohesion, having a brand cheat sheet allows you to work so much faster! You aren’t wasting time trying to figure out what color you used last time, what font did I use as my body font, etc. 

Brand boards are pretty simple to make, I would suggest using Canva or Adobe Express to make one for your business if you don’t have one already. Listed below are some things to include in your brand cheat sheet if you are creating your own.

What to include on your website brand cheat sheet

Hex Colors

What are hex colors? They are color codes that have a hashtag followed by a combination of six digits (can be letters or numbers or both!). For example, one of my hex codes is #3C462D — the super secret code for the dark green in my branding. 

How do I find out what the hex codes are for my brand colors? If you have the color makeup for your brand colors in CMYK or RBG you can convert to HEX here: https://convertacolor.com/

I would suggest having 3-5 hex colors for your brand. You should be able to use these hex codes throughout your email marketing, social media, and website seamlessly.

Fonts

It is always nice to outline the fonts you are going to come across throughout your branding. Having two to four font treatments gives you some great variation to make your brand stand out while also remaining consistent. At the very least the two types of fonts you want to make sure you include are a headline font and body copy font.

Logos

All variations of your logo—horizontal, vertical, square, emblems, one-color, full-color, etc. and any specific parameters that you need to adhere by. This could include spacing around the logo or colorways available.

Brand Imagery

Here you’ll include main brand images you want to show alongside your logo. You want these to be cohesive with your brand and serve as examples of what type of imagery you want to use and want people to associate with your brand.

I hope the tips above help you create a quick brand board that serves as a catalyst for brand cohesion in your business going forward! 

Are you in need of brand support? I’d love to hear from you. Reach out for a consultation to bring your vision to life. Are you looking for more logo inspiration and direction? Learn more about what makes a logo great here.

Bring your logo to life