Why You Need to Get Your Business Properly Branded

Not rare that a client smirked when finding out the cost of branding their business. They often asked why it is beyond their budget to just do a simple logo for them. If you are one of those who wondered, this will help you to understand why you might need to spend the extra penny in getting your branding right.

1. Your brand identity is the face of the business
When you meet people to introduce your brand, most of the time you will have to give them your business card, which makes your first touch point of your brand. People will be able to see what business you are doing, the way you work, the character of the business and your preferences from a mere business card. For example, if you use a sans serif font as a part of your logo, people might feel that you have a modern character rather than old school. The common perception will be susceptible around progressiveness and dynamic before even knowing how you really work. Therefore, the identity becomes the face of the business before everything else.

2. Long term investment
Imagine if your business grows from where it is right now. Your restaurant is now a chain, which opens in several cities, opening opportunities for franchising. People start to talk about your brand, how good it is to eat at your restaurant. They look you up on social media and they open your website. Imagine if you did not do your logo properly from the beginning, how the logo is not proportional and would not suit various backgrounds. It is too late to change your logo because people have started to notice the logo. As a long term investment, having the right brand identity allows your brand to grow and creates flexibilities in expanding the business.

3. Set the ground right
Like building a good house, you would need a proper foundation for your brand. Setting every elements of a brand right from the selection of fonts to the colour of your logo is a crucial step in initiating a brand identity. This range of selection will tell a lot about a brand. When you have set the ground right, you will be sure to have a strong building on top of it.

4. Soft power
The value of a brand is most of the time hard to valuate. Branding carries an intangible value that projects to the people you are targeting. If your market wants a cool brand, your cool identity will serve its purpose by creating attachment between your target market and your brand. This attachment is not something that you can pay people to have, rather it grows in them overtime when they have known your brand better and better. It is the soft power that counts.

5. Yours and yours only
When you are hiring the right designer to build your brand identity, they will do the process of doing a proper branding. From brainstorming, research to designing, this process allows designer to evaluate what your business really needs from the identity and how the brand identity should reflect the business. This carefully considered process will create a unique brand identity which will be yours and yours only.

Patience is Gold

One evening at communal street food area in Sunter. Mom was paying for the food, that was Sate Kuah Pontianak...

Mom: Berapa mas? Dua porsi.
Mas: 70 ceh.
Mom: Lho naik ya?
Mas: Iya ceh, harga BBM naik... Sabar ya ceh.

Patience, man, patience.

Insensitivity

To work in Indonesia, you need insensitivity, a dash of empathy and a big tolerance to accommodate people's way of working. The fact is that not everyone will have the same pace as you, the same working method as you, the same way of thinking like you

To lead is to accommodate these differences.

People will always question why they are told to do things in a certain way. The thing is, not everyone is ready to accept significant changes in the way of working. Sometimes you have to see the bigger picture first, experience more, then later on you will know why things are done in certain ways.

But, everyone is welcomed to have a say.

In the end we all grow from learning from our mistakes, not from being what we are right now. Everyone needs to change. Also, working means getting things done, without complaining too much, without asking too much. No one needs to know what troubles you have right? Especially in design, where a big part of it is about problem solving. So if you're in a deep shit, suck it up and solve it.

Life needs to go on, eh?

Kid,

Be tough.

Do not complaint too much.

Do not ask too much.

Just work.

We all
are
a bit weird
deep down
inside.

When small things bother you,
Think of the bigger things.

To Live Now

A walk in the park, Melbourne.

I can't remember being this touristy in Melbourne, perhaps this time has passed since I first arrived in Melbourne. But I suppose, I love that innocence when you first explore a new city, an eagerness to know everyone in town, a desire to dig deeper and the motivation to move forward.

That sense of innocence is rather important, to keep our inner child. Sometimes we feel that we have known enough, that we are too arrogant to ask, to dig or simply being not interested in things. I love mundane things. I think our everyday behaviour shapes us more than a one time hit wonder. Our everyday life shows if we are fully awake or simply just passing days without realising it. 

The more I think about it the more that I rethink if all this time I have actually paid attention to things, people and events around me. Whether I have been hurrying or delaying too much. There more we embrace the everyday life and make the most of it, the more we have a fulfilled sense that we are not wasting any of our times although we might only spend it with a humble dinner with our loved ones, a drive to the laundry or a night at home spending time on the laptop with someone doing the exact same thing across us. 

There is nothing fancy about life, really.