How I want my Personal Brand to be Perceived

Hey fam, how are you today?

Recently I’ve been getting serious about creating a personal brand for myself. I feel having a strong brand will help me be successful as a freelance graphic designer. It will help me to market to clients better and get more eyes on my designs, when I upload them online.  The first step in creating my personal brand is to decide how I want to be perceived. So, to start, I had to come up with some attributes I want my brand to be described as. These are the attributes I came up with:

Modern

Sleek

Minimal

Cool yet professional

Relaxed

 

Next, I  need to figure out my niche*. In order to find my niche, I needed to ask myself what I wanted  to focus on. I had already thought about this in my last year of college and decided that I wanted to work in the entertainment field.  I have my attributes and my niche, now it’s time to answer some questions

What is the main thing I’m offering to my consumers?

I’m offering to do digital art and graphic design work in the entertainment field.

What is something unique I have to offer that others don’t?

My personality, Free promotion, being their friend, gifts, and lastly my time and attention.

What are my strengths?

My work ethic, persistence, my drive to succeed in life, headstrong, and I’m loyal.

Do I have a distinct style?

No? At least not yet I don’t.

 

So in summary, I chose attributes that would help to describe my personal brand, I found my Niche, and I answered some questions that helped me learn a little more about myself as a person. I hope you enjoyed this post and look forward to the next one. All my Social media links are down below.

Question time: What do you think about personal brands? Do you think they work or should branding be left to companies?

Portfolio Website:  SabrinaSummersdesigns.com

Social media links:

Instagram: See my art here

Twitter: Get real time updates here

Twitch: Art Streams

Youtube: Sabrina Summers Graphic Designer

Donate & Support:

Buy me a coffee, please

Redbubble: Buy my art, please

Sources:

How to design your brand image in 10 steps

*Niche (Adj.)

denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

“other companies in this space had to adapt to being niche players”

Creating Print Ads

So my teacher gave the class a challenge to create 3 print ads about something we carry around with us every day . We had to create one positive , negative, and  metaphorical ad.  First I started the brainstorming process with a moodboard.

The item I chose was a smartphone. For the positive ad I wanted to use light effects , maybe have icons popping out of the screen , and have text on ribbons. The negative ad I wanted to do a “Don’t text and drive” ad using emojis . Lastly for the metaphorical ad I was thinking of saying something like “your new player 2” or something like that . Down below are my 3 original print ads before I got feedback from my teacher .

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At the last minute, before I went up for feedback , I realized that I put Google Assistant instead of Siri  XD. I quickly changed it before I went up . Feedback went well , the teacher didn’t understand my “Don’t text and Drive ” ad but she said I had the best Metaphorical ad.  So here are my print ads after feedback. I’m currently still working on the negative ad.

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Please tell me your thoughts on my new print ads. Do you like them? Do you hate them? What can I do better? Comment below your answers and opinions.

 

Journey to create a personal logo

Designing a personal logo for myself is like doing some soul searching. You have to know who you are and where you’re going in life in order to get an idea of the type of logo you want to create.  When I first sat down and started doodling concepts , I was just drawing random ideas that came into my head. After a while the ideas slowed down and so I turned to the internet for inspiration .  There were some cool logos but nothing sparked my heart or creative gears….until I came across a fun and colorful logo.

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My eyes widen with delight and my heart fluttered with excitement. This logo that I was looking at was how I wanted my logo to be, colorful and fun, but of course I have to make it my own. So I go and draw more concepts and I think I’m on to something. Wrong!? Apparently this new concept was too amateur like. *Bottom of the picture*

However there was another concept , that I did , that my teacher liked. This concept was of my initials intertwining with each other. *far left on the page* So it’s back to the drawing board with me , except this time on the computer screen. By this time I was feeling very uninspired and rushed for time , so the concepts that came out were very lackluster.  I had a chance to look at the other student’s logos and they were far better than whatever I came up with.  *One marked with pink is the one other students like. The one marked with blue is the idea I used for my final logo*

A spark returned to my heart and soon enough I was back on the internet searching for ideas, something , anything to give me a hint as to how to transform the initials of my name into something unique and creative.  Boom! I found it , the answer I was looking for . It was a logo with two dolphins in the form of an S. Yes this is what I needed to see and soon I was back in my sketchbook drawing concepts , thinking back on the old concept my teacher liked with the letters intertwining .

 

After a while I came up with two crescent moons interlocking with one another.  I took this concept into illustrator and created a logo.  It didn’t turn out as nicely as I wanted it to be , so I quickly created 2 other logos.  The last logo I created , I believe  and hope , is along the lines of what my teacher was looking for.  Looking at myself as a graphic designer , how I am now and where I want to be in the future . My logo is a representation of my journey as graphic designer.  So it took a lot of trial and error , ups and downs , and a bit of soul searching to come up with my final logo concept. Now I’ll get feedback from my teacher and keep on tweaking my logo until it’s perfect.

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TeenShop

Hello and thanks for reading the first post on this blog. I will start off by talking about a non-profit organization that I’ll be working with when it’s time for me to take Senior project. Teenshop is a Philadelphia non-profit organization that helps young girls become productive citizens in their careers and in their community.  They have be around for 30yrs so far and grown to have 5 different chapters in 3 states. If you would like to know more , then click the link below.

Teenshop

Currently I’m in Senior design studio which is a class that helps students to pick out the non-profits they want to work with. Once that was done, I had to create a moodboard about the non-profit . It was really fun creating a moodboard because it’s a fun way to process information and get inspired . Here’s the moodboard I created for Teenshop.

In my next post I’ll be talking about: The journey to find my personal logo.

I hope you’ll join me again on my journey.