Very kindly, Stephanie has allowed me to re-post her blog that she’s written about her experience of work with me to create her branding.
Stephanie is an American voice artist living in France. It was essential that her new branding, logo and strapline worked equally well in both English and French. She mainly works with corporate clients.
A huge thank you to Stephanie – you can read her original post here. I’ve added a few additional images below.
My experience using a professional branding and logo designer!
Two things were driving me crazy with my website and logo!
1st, my logo looked like every other voice over actor’s logo. My name plus a microphone with no real identity or authenticity.
2nd, my website was getting good traffic, but I knew it was missing something. I was playing it safe.
Basically, I had a black and white website, and it didn’t feel right with my vibrant personality. I wanted to grab people’s attention (in the best way possible) for them to want to get to know me and want to collaborate with me!
Here is an idea of my old website and branding…
Then I did things completely wrong!
I contacted a web designer, sent him about 50 different websites I liked and I expected something magical to happen… IT DID NOT!
I had no direction. I was like a sailboat without a sail, like a marathon runner without sneakers, or like a voice over actor without a microphone. I realised that I needed to start from the ground up and build the foundation. I needed some branding and logo design magic.
Luckily I am a member of Gravy for the Brain! It’s a professional voice over association that hosts the OneVoice Awards each year. While I was reading an article and I happened to see that B Double E were the winners of the One Voice Award for Best voice over service provider of the year in 2020! Rob and Helen Bee’s company B Double E specialises in helping voice overs to be seen and heard, with Rob as an audio engineer and Helen as a branding and website designer.
I reached out to Rob first for some audio assistance and I was so impressed that I asked if he could introduce me to Helen because I needed her design expertise.
Then the magic happened!
Helen and I had a zoom meeting so that she could explain her process and during this meeting, I knew straight away that I wanted to work with her!
Helen works in 9 stages:
- Brand Exploration
- Creative Direction
- Mood Board
- Style Board
- Logo concepts
- Refined logo concepts
- Brand pattern and website style guide
- Final brand style guide
- Delivery of files and materials
This process ensures that every stage is just right before moving on to the next.
I never felt that I couldn’t be 100% honest or share ideas with Helen throughout the stages.
She even explained that giving negative feedback was just as helpful as positive feedback because she knew where not to go!
Once we arrived at the final stage where Helen delivered the brand elements, I also received a brand style guide in a PDF format. The brand style guide is a reference tool for your fonts, colours, logo, and entire brand identity. I found this to be so useful that I actually had one printed and made into a booklet to have it physically on my desk!
The other amazing thing about the brand style guide is that when you’re updating your website, you have all the elements of your brand already established. This will save tons of time and also allow for quick decision-making.
Pages from Stephanie’s brand guidelines
So, to sum up, this process is extremely personal, and I believe it is done in a fashion that lets Helen create an authentic brand for each person she works with. Thank you Helen!
B Double E has a great newsletter and even regular online social meetups in order to get to know others in the industry.
Thank you again Stephanie. To see her full branding project click here.
To find out more about Helen’s branding packages click here.
To find out about Helen’s website packages click here.
