Complete your brand one-pager

We’ve just worked through six phases of brand development. You tested your readiness, developed a purpose and mission, dreamt up a vision, narrowed your positioning, and found words to describe both your personality and your voice. 

You’ve completed all of the pieces necessary to build your brand.

Put it all together

For the final exercise, you’ll ‌ organize everything you’ve written, developed, and built into a succinct one-sheet brand page that you can reference whenever and add to over time. 

Here is Maya's one pager:

What I do: Freelance Graphic Design

My brand purpose: My business exists as a beacon for other creators or companies that want to communicate complex topics in a visual and digestible way. My brand will transform the world of visual communications, one client at a time, by simplifying complex concepts into familiar symbols and usable visual cues.

My brand vision: I will make the world a more visually communicative place. The future of my brand is more socially responsible, bold, and vocal, and I’m doing more work with the media.

My brand positioning statement: I am a meticulous and thoughtful California-based graphic designer serving up visual communications for socially-purposed brands and artists.

My brand archetypal triad: Artist/Outlaw/Everyman (Banksy)

My brand voice and tone:  Bold. Wild. Boisterous. Communal. 

Consider outcomes and next steps 

However, brand work is even more complex than what we’ve completed today. This is a great jumping off point and you now have the pieces you need to:

• Build and demonstrate your authority and build trust with clients.

• Differentiate yourself from the competition.

• Remove decision-fatigue and analysis-paralysis.

• Hire subcontractors or virtual assistants.

• Validate your ideas.

Some other elements you could look into are:

Content and messaging

One of the central ways that a brand expresses itself is through copy. You’ll want to set some time aside to comb through your website, social bios and captions, old articles, future video scripts, and anything else you’ve ever written and update the language to reflect your new voice and personality. You can update old content that doesn’t align or straight up delete it. Whatever makes the most sense for you.

Design and visuals

You may want to move on to improving or updating your logo, color palette, graphics, photos, or other visual choices connected to your business. The information you’ve put together will be extremely helpful to any designer you hire to help refine your visual brand, and any photographer you work with for headshots or other photos. The stronger your understanding of your brand, the easier it'll become to make decisions that support and display these qualities. 

Offerings and logistics

Brand strategy work might also motivate you to re-price your offerings, structure a new service or product, research new industries or verticals, or change your processes. 

Throughout this experience, you'll likely have taken dozens of notes for things you’d like to change, add, or improve about your brand and business. Gather those into one list you can prioritize later. As you move through these improvements, you’ll see the benefits begin to roll in. 

Remember your mission and keep going

One of the greatest benefits of doing brand strategy work is you’ve a set of characteristics you can use to guide all future choices. Now that you’ve built a brand, you can anchor your decisions, communications, and the direction you choose for your business. It’s easy to determine if something is on brand. 

Recap 

In Step 7, we rounded up all of the work we’ve done together. In this book and the accompanying workbook, you’ll have built a strong foundation for your freelance brand. 

You now have:

• A picture of your purpose and mission that will help you make consistent decisions.

• A vision that can motivate your efforts and help you light your own path.

• A positioning statement that makes your value clearer than ever, to everyone.

• Your personality is sorted out, with a voice and tone to match. 

• A one-page brand resource you can reference and share with others.