How to Create a Brand that Best Represents Your Art

You may have noticed things look a little different around here. This week, I gave my brand and website a little facelift.

I try to revisit my branding at least once a year, but it’d been much longer since I’d made any updates. Well, suddenly the holy spirit moved me. It felt like a good time to update everything, especially since I’m illustrating full-time now.

Since I recently ended client design work, I had a lot of graphic design-oriented content on here that I wanted to change. For the longest time, I was catering to both illustration and design work. I found my website confusing, like I wasn’t quite clear on what I did for a living. And I guess in reality, I wasn’t :) It felt good to finally center my site around illustration. Since I’m now doing what I love, my brand feels more like me.

While I was making these updates, it left me thinking - how do you create a brand that best represents you and your art?

Well, one of the first things I thought about is - what other brands would I want to partner with in the future? Who has a similar voice to my art? I collected these brand’s logos and looked at their websites, and you know what? They all looked pretty similar. They had a distinct look and a feel that represented my style too. Suddenly, I had an “aha” moment that my brand should look like it fits within this group. This realization helped me rebrand my logo and make design changes to my website.

So what makes a good logo? A logo should consist of a visual, your business name and title. I feel every artist should have at least one illustrated element to their logo - whether it’s the font, the visual or both. This is a way of saying “I’m an artist” upon first glance. It alway conveys your personal style very quickly.

I’ve always found the visual to be most daunting part of a logo. Of all the things, how do you choose something that represents your work in a nutshell? For me, it helped to revisit my art, and make notes of repeating elements. I found many recurring themes, but balloons stood out as my signature element. They’re playful, colorful, and elegant. I love working them into the background of my pieces. Same with taxis. To me, the balloon/taxi combo felt like my perfect brand recipe.

Besides your name, it helps to include your title in your logo - at least on your website. If you can label yourself as an artist, illustrator, or designer, it provides clarity to people who visit your site. You can even have two titles, like illustrator and designer. More than that might be too busy. For me, simpler is better for this, which is why I landed on “illustrator,” even though I specialize in many things. I’m relying on my website navigation to communicate all the things I do under that umbrella.

My logo color palette has always matched the colors I use in my work, because those are the colors I’m drawn to. This is a good rule of thumb, because your art will look at home with your branding materials. It’s a great way to further communicate your style.

When I focused on my website redesign, I thought a lot about what makes a compelling site. First off, your work should be front and center - one of the first things people see. When it comes to the navigation, and site content, I like to think of my website as a reflection of my business model. It should show all the ways I share my art and make money from my art. When I restructured my website, this is how I did it. I even have inactive pages for future income streams I intend to explore. It gives me mental placeholders for future projects. This exercise gave me a lot of clarity on where I want to take my brand in the future.

Surprisingly, my brand refresh didn’t take more than a day. I love branding, so I was totally in the zone while I worked on it. I appreciate the fresh take this redesign gave me on my business. It felt like the equivalent of spring cleaning my house - like I have it together and am ready to take my business to the next level.

Are you happy with your website and brand? Are you planning a refresh? Let me know in the comments below. And share your site, if you can! I’d love to check out your work. Maybe we can all give each other some tips on how to improve our brands. If you have any feedback for me, I’d love to hear it as well!