I spoke to a Yoga teacher recently who was so thrilled about her ‘next level’. She shared with me that she had finally made a significant financial investment in her business. She was finally taking herself and her biz seriously. She was going to finally uncover her brand!!
When she showed me the results my heart sank.
This teacher had spent almost $1000 having someone she’d never met compile a one-page document of design elements that she could easily have done herself. Not only was she more than capable of the work herself, her version would have been much more aligned to her own values and aesthetics AND would have been fun to create, too.
I believe it is critical to have a strong brand so people recognise you and relate to you. A strong brand also means people remember you and stick with you. Brand awareness means you won’t get ‘lost in the noise’ and your unique characteristics and offerings will be seen my people more likely to want to work with you.
But while an awesome brand is essential, creating your own simple brand is not difficult and it definitely doesn’t require any background training or specialist skill.
In this article I’m going to step you through my 60-minute brand creation process. You’ll need a journal, the internet and a commitment to ‘done is better than perfect’.
Ready?
Let’s go!
Establish the Feeling Tones for Your Brand
Feeling tones are the emotions, characteristics and qualities of your brand. They are how you feel about what you do and how your customers feel about working with you. They encompass your vision for your business, your ethics and quality standards and your desire for your students.
A great way to begin to list out the feeling tones for your business is to spend some time journaling on these two questions:
1. What are the important qualities for you of your brand?
2. How do you desire your customers to feel engaging with your brand?
Maybe it’s important that your business is accessible, professional and fun.
Maybe you desire your customers to feel empowered, uplifted and valued.
Spend 15 minutes journaling on these questions and create a list of the top six to eight feeling tones that you uncover.
Colour Palette
Colours are really important for brand recognition AND they can be fun to discover. Each colour conveys certain emotions and qualities. Generally,
· Red indicates passion, drama and power.
· Pink is more about vulnerability, love, tenderness and play.
· Orange is optimistic, creative and fun.
· Yellow is all about happiness, enthusiasm and energy.
· Green is calming. It conveys reliability and stability.
· Blue is all about prestige, loyalty and responsibility.
· Purple is a magic and spiritual colour, great for imagination and mystery.
Spend 15 minutes Googling the meanings of colours. Match the six to eight feeling tones to their corresponding colours. Choose three colours. (Yes, just three.)
Next, pull up Pinterest.com and type in the three colours into the search bar followed by the phrase ‘colour palette’. You’ll see hundreds of examples of combinations of these colours. Spend another 10 minutes looking at all of the options and then pick one. Take a screenshot of your choice.
Finally, Google ‘html colour code from image’ and choose a site that allows you to upload the screenshot you’ve taken from Pinterest. Hover your cursor over the three colours you’ve chosen and note down the HTML colour code for each.
(Online and in printing, all colours have their own unique code. These codes all start with # and then a combination of letters and numbers. This is a HTML colour code.)
Fonts
Now let’s choose your typography, the fonts you’re going to use whenever people are seeing your business in the written word (print or online).
I like to group fonts into 4 kinds:
· Serif fonts
· San serif fonts
· Script fonts
· Decorative fonts
To create a strong and consistent brand, I recommend you choose one serif (i.e. Times New Roman) or one sans serif font (i.e. Arial) and one script or one decorative font.
Serif fonts convey a sense of formality. They are classy, timeless and have a certain professional tone. Sans serif fonts are more modern. They are welcoming, adaptable and easily paired with decorative and script fonts.
Script fonts are the fonts that almost appear hand-written. They are cursive, informal and many of them convey more feminine-encoded traits. Decorative fonts are exactly that: decorative. Graffiti fonts, fonts that look like Sanskrit or fonts that look like they have been painted are all examples.
The first selection will be used for the majority of your body copy: website text, newsletters, paragraphs on printed material etc. The second selection will be used for accents: headings, subheadings etc.
Note: Some decorative and script fonts are more legible than others. Be discerning so your potential customers can actually read what you’ve written. Also, try to avoid anything that is going to date fast (think watercolour brushstrokes fonts popular five years ago!)
Use these two fonts (serif/sans serif and script/decorative) consistently in all of your online, print and social media content so people come to know them as ‘yours’.
Language
One of the key pieces of a strong brand that is too often overlooked is language. The words and phrases you use are one of the markers that make you you, and as such are a critical part of a strong brand.
We can infer so much about a Yoga teacher, her classes and her brand from the words she uses. Consider these four examples, all possible ways for a Yoga teacher to sign off on an email:
· Hari Om
· Namaste, Bitches!
· Sat Nam
· Stay awesome!
You’re probably going to personally resonate with one of these over the others. And that’s perfect because it is an indicator that it is the type of brand you want to engage with.
It’s time for a new journal page. Begin to list the phrases and terminology you commonly use. Here are a few journaling prompts to get you started:
1. If a student was imitating you, what would they say?
2. What are the names of your programs?
3. Which salutation do you use in your newsletters?
4. How do you start your Instagram lives?
5. Does your lineage or teaching style have certain phrases or jargon?
6. Where are you on the secular — spirituality spectrum in your teaching and what phrases or words can you find there?
If you feel really stuck, reread some of your old newsletters and play back some of your recorded classes (yes, it can feel a little cringy!) and journal down what you notice.
Now You’ve Got a Style Guide!
Finally, create a one-page document that contains your six to eight feeling tones, your three HTML colour codes, your two fonts and your 10 (max.) key phrases. This is your Style Guide and can be shared with your virtual assistant or business partners, as well as being your reference point for whenever you need to make a new piece of content that you want to be ‘on brand’.
By continuing to use these feeling tones, colours, fonts and signature phrases, you’re well on your way to having strong brand recognition.
One more thing before you go: don’t over think this!
If we want people to recognise our brands so they feel connected to us and are more likely to buy from us and recommend us, we need to settle on the four elements and stick with them.
Too many Yoga teachers I work with continue to fuss and fiddle with the elements after going through this process. Remember, the longer you spend changing things, the longer it will take for people to easily recognise your brand.
Unless you discover a competitor has the same — or very similar — brand elements, stick to your original choices.
And we’re done! You now have your very own brand and Style Guide all within an hour, without spending a cent and — hopefully — after having some fun!