The Art of Branding Yourself and Your Freelancing Business

Just as it is for big corporations, successful branding is essential to the success of a freelancing business and to just one self-employed web worker. It is often times overlooked, most likely because many don’t realize the large benefits that can come from it.

3. The Business Name

Is it your own name, or a more formal and creative name?

This is often times a step overlooked, but it is incredibly relevant to the final goals of the website. If you plan to be the owner of a firm someday, or develop a team of web professionals in any other way, your given name as a brand may not be appropriate.

However, many freelancers chose to grow their business by always freelancing solo, while still outsourcing some of their work. There is a difference in each situation, and a personal name would thrive on this type of business.

Also, bigger names may attract bigger projects, while a personal name would attract many smaller clients. Depending on what you’d like to do in terms of work greatly depends on the brand’s name.

So, in the plainest sense: an alternative name would be more versatile, but your own name as a brand would be more personable and each would lead to a different type of client.

4. The Logo

The logo is the first step into the design process of the brand. It is the one graphic that your business will survive upon.

Your website, content, and all other design elements must compliment a brand’s logo, as well as work with it towards the ultimate goal of making the sale to the client.

Whether designing it yourself or hiring someone else to do it for you — you’ll need to be the one that decides how it will look.

Many times I get clients that let me have too much creative control when it comes to their brand design. While creative control is always appreciated, when it comes to a brand — that’s a bad choice.

Be sure to research and create a plan for the brand of your freelancing business so you can take control.

Everything mentioned so far in this article will come into play for the initial design phase of the brand.

The name is an obvious factor, but the target audience and business’s goals will also come into play. Keep a few questions in mind concerning all of this when beginning the logo design phase:

• What does the overall style of the logo need to be to attract the right audience?
• What type of colors should be used? As different types of colors provoke different emotions, this ties in greatly to the target audience.
• How versatile does it need to be? How will it grow with your freelancing as a business?
• Does it need to be formatted well with print material as well as web material?
• What shape does it need to be, generally (more rounded/square, or rectangular)? This has a lot to do with what materials you’ll be using it on and the format it will need to take when combined with content.

Some Examples

The above logo says “professional, fun, and personable”. Notice how the varying colors in the web design turn into a more playful approach, which in turn makes it more personable.

The smooth curves in both the font and the image portion of the logo also take the strict factor away, making him as a business person approachable.

This freelancer runs as a single freelancer, branding his business as him — most likely returning to him one-on-one clients with great communication and many smaller, more creative projects.

This brand is a group of designers working together under one website. The brand has a more generalized name, and even a more professional, company-like feel.

Furthermore, looking more into their portfolio, one can see that the image compliment on the logo highlights their design style: clean and sleek with a hint of outside-the-box creativity.

The abstraction of this logo tells the viewer right away about the style of this designer. Also, a bright color also plays into it. It is simple, effective, and portrays the designer’s intentions well.

Playful, light and super creative is what this brand is all about. The logo complimenting this brand is incredibly creative, and lacks a more formal look. That’s not to say it isn’t effective though. Its overall look is still professional while being quirky and original.

This is a single freelancer with a portfolio full of Web 2.0 material. The logo quickly reflects that, and the nature theme provides a calm, cool, and collected tone. The brand says professional and high-tech, but not rigid or boring.

This brand is the most classical of all the logos above. Along with it comes a business that is more traditional and formal. This likely creates more credibility for them as a team, rather than a single freelancer, allowing them to take on bigger clients.

5. Your Website Design, Business Card Design, and Everything Else

Now that you have a logo, you’ve gone through much of the design process for nearly everything else that will require design. It only takes a bit more planning to complete the design process.

If your brand is very personal, a hand-drawn website design may work well to compliment the logo and brand as a whole. If the brand is Web 2.0, you’ll want a sleek web design, sleek business card design, and sleek, high-end stationary and other printed material.

Because the rest of your design needs can be based primarily off of the logo design, most of the target audience and business goals implementation will come into place naturally.

Still, keep them in mind as you develop the brand further. Don’t lose sight of the goals, and always pertain to the original message you’ve planned for.

Examples Continued

This group keeps to their image with the rest of their design as professional yet creative.

The colors, wireframe, and work featured on this portfolio are all abstract, just as the logo is. It is also very clean, to the point, and has a lot of whitespace — again mimicking the logo and brand design.

The web design of this brand is the primary focus, and it is playful, personable, and approachable. It mixes very well with the logo and highlights the brand very well.

The web design is super clean and web 2.0, just as the logo is. Furthermore the design is laid out in a way that is systematized, letting visitors in on all the information necessary, which is a very professional, company-like approach.

This web design is very traditional, attracting clients that would like a straight approach to their web services. Like the logo and appeal to the brand, it is “gimmick-free” and professional. A high level of credibility is present in the web design as it is in the entire brand.