How to fix branding mistakes in 4 steps. A case study.
Borbala In the previous post I discussed what is the healthy mindset around making mistakes. I promised that I would share a mistake that I made when I was working on the Sapiego® brand design, and how I fixed it. So, here it is, condensed into 4 steps that I have learnt during the process:
Step 1. Realise that you have made a mistake
When we worked on the first batch of designs with my amazing graphic designer, I insisted on a certain colour palette, despite her warning against it, and stating that was a quite unusual colour palette. But I was stubborn. I wanted to use certain colours because of their meaning:
- Turquoise, to make the logo stand out of the crowd.
- Purple, because it represents spirituality and royalty.
- Gold, because it represents affluence, and exclusiveness.
This was all nice, until I started to develop the first Sapiego® guide about goal setting, and used the colours in real life. I quickly realised, that my graphic designer was right, and I cannot effectively use the colours:
- They did not work well together when I wanted to create presentation slides. Gold was literally unusable, and this reduced me to turquoise, and purple. But most of the time I ended up only using turquoise. And this made the slides boring.
- It was extremely hard to find stock photos which matched with this colour palette.
- In the meantime, I consulted with a stylist, and I learnt about the colours that suit my complexion. I completely changed my wardrobe, and the Sapiego® brand colours did not work with my personal colours anymore.
Step 2. Don’t beat yourself up
As we discussed in the previous post, when you step into new fields where you have no experience, you will make mistakes. Sapiego® is my very first endeavour to create a proper brand. So, it was almost natural for me to make a mistake. Therefore I just accepted it, embraced it and started to take action to solve the problem.
Step 3. Think through the real branding needs
I know that you are emotionally attached to your brand, and you want to do it from your heart. But you also need to develop some entrepreneurial mindset as well. So, be ruthless, and think through what you want to do from a branding perspective as well. If we stick to the colour palette example, choose colours that:
- stand out of the crowd,
- work well together both for digital and print materials,
- work well with stock photos,
- work well with your colour complexion, if you are the face of your brand,
- have a balance of calmness and dynamics to put people at ease, but also inspire.
Step 4. Refine and improve
I reached out to my graphic designer to have a second design round. She helped slightly shifting and finalizing the Sapiego® brand colours:
- turquoise shifted towards a bluer hue,
- changed purple to magenta,
- introduced dark blue as a tertiary colour.
The new colours work very well for all areas I mentioned in Step 3. And because of the ease of use of the new colours, now I can work on the Sapiego® guide about goal setting with confidence, and I make good progress with the slides every day. I can hardly wait to show you the finished guide, so keep an eye on the Academy. I hope it will be helpful for you, and I can introduce a new perspective on goal setting. 🙂
What is your opinion on the previous and the new brand colours? Do you think that we made a good decision, or do you prefer the old version?
Have you ever made a mistake? What was that, and how did you overcome it? What did you learn in the process? I would love to read about your experience in the comments.
