Becoming a Brand

What makes a brand?

What makes a brand a brand? A Brand is more than just a logo…

A brand is the lasting impression from all you see, hear or experience when you come into contact with a company and its products or services. In creating a brand, you are managing the effect that your product will have on the end user.

What does your brand say, what do you want people to feel when they look at your brand? A brand has a personality and fits into a lifestyle, beliefs and the culture of the tribe it’s trying to attract. It’s constant, feels authentic and calls people with a personal message.

It’s something you see, something that resonates with you. An emotion, an experience, a memory. It might just be the brand of tomato sauce you love and have used since you were a kid. You’ll never replace it with another flavour as the memory of having your hotdog on a summer’s day, laughing with your siblings, your feet dangling in the swimming pool is what floods back when you smell and taste it. It’s the memory that binds that initial loyalty with a brand. I remember how Saturday lunches were always burgers and hotdogs. Homemade ”slap” chips (for non-South African’s it’s the best kind of hot chips or fries that you will ever eat. Kind of crispy, kind of soft and best served with lots of salt and a massive splash of vinegar) with lots of All Gold Tomato sauce (tomato sauce is the same thing as ketchup). It brings back a memory of family and togetherness which has left a lasting impression on me. My Mom would have a bunch of sulky kids should she decide that this Saturday we were having chicken salad. I mean who has salad on a Saturday. That’s burger and hotdog day!!!!!

My personal brand

I have been working on this process for what feels like forever. I stop. I start. I stop. I start. Not really knowing what I wanted to focus on. Desperately wanting to do something in the creative space and grow it into something tangible. I work full time in learning and development so this space is a place that I have only dipped my toes into. I now have this beautiful new logo staring back at me. I opened my mail at 4:15am the other morning and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the final rendition of what Nick at Hartley Digital had created. There she was, perfectly me. 

The story within the logo and what it means to me

The circle is what holds it all together. The dashes and dots in the circle are my initials in Morse Code. When I was growing up, my dad tinkered about in the garage. He also had a hobby where he was a HAM Radio¹ Operator and part of what he had to do for his HAM license was to learn to communicate in Morse Code. The flower is a daisy, my absolute favourite flower. My mom loved flowers and gardening and she had this beautiful wildflower garden. Amongst that, lots of daisy bushes. She once told me these things… When I was a baby, my mom’s dad would visit me and always bring me flowers, mostly daisy’s. When I was a little girl, it would be the flower I picked in the garden and brought to her as a gift. To this day it is still my absolute favourite flower. I love the white and the yellow ones, but any colour will do. 

I have always done photography, but my interests go way beyond that. I am a serial crafter. What I really love to do is create. It brings about a wonderful form of peace when I just sit at my desk and make something new. So here within this brand I will be doing so much more of that.

Change, the only constant in the world. The journey on how I become who I am right now. Well part of it was creating my personal brand and a place and space for me to share this joy and my path with the world…This has been such an exciting process. The building of all my thoughts and ideas on this platform. Working with the team from Hartley Digital and the patience they have had with me as I navigate a world I knew nothing about. Understanding the steps to bring the idea into something I hope will bring you as much joy as it has brought me.

¹ “A little station called HAM”An amateur station that Hyman supposedly shared with Bob Almy and Reggie Murray, which was said to be using the self-assigned call sign HAM (short for Hyman-Almy-Murray), thus came to represent all of amateur radio. (Source Wikipedia)