It’s new, but is it a rebrand?

I’ve just launched my new website, and I’m so happy with it. I was lucky enough to receive a match-funded grant from Nottingham City Council earlier this year, so that I could improve my website - with the aim to not only look fresher and improve the customer journey, but to also make my processes more streamlined and efficient, and ultimately help grow my business.

This project was about sustainable growth, not world domination. I am still a company of one, creating stand-out brand identities for aspirational humans, as well as selling beautiful, functional stationery for visual people.

So what’s changed?

As with a lot of my clients - I wanted a fresher-looking website - my original website was a bit of a rush job, to get my business up and running, and I saw it as a holding page of confirmation that I was ‘real’ for my social media network who might want to get in touch. Certainly not as a first point of contact and never in a million years did I think anyone would seek me out on the GOOGLE, let alone FIND ME👀! But actually, this IS the case, and to my shock, I now regularly get new business through my website - bonkers, right?

I’ve been in business since 2019 - coming up to 6 years. I have honed my skills and my clients have grown, I now take on larger projects collaboratively with other freelancers, but still with my passion for perfection, with the same active listening, unwavering patience, and intuitive aesthetics as I ever.

So it was a delicate balance of refining my site, ensuring my expertise are clear, and competitive, without losing my personality - I am very, much an ‘I’, not an agency, or ambiguous ‘we’.

But, was it a re-positision, a rebrand or a refresh?

✨NEWSFLASH ✨ the one thing I DIDN’T change was my brandmark! Which perhaps is a surprise to anyone who believes what I do is design logos! I did explore it, but with objective eyes - there was nothing wrong with it, and I didn’t feel like it was a stumbling block to my success, and I am a believer in ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

This is why I you will hear me repeatedly remark that branding is NOT your logo. It’s SO much more...

COLOUR AND FONTS

Although my logo was fine, my colours and fonts DID need an update - I wanted to reflect a more vibrant, confident feel, which in turn I think reflects me as a more experienced business owner - I am so much clearer on my skills and services than when I started out, and confident to accept that I am not for everyone, and that’s OK.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I also had the most wonderful brand photography session with Magda from Fabula Images, who’s images from taken my website to a whole new level. She has such a skill in capturing peoples personalities, whilst creating such beautiful images, she is my absolute go-to for brand photography, and a solid part of my Archipelago of freelancers. I invited the other 5 freelancers I work with regularly, along on the day so that she could capture us all together, which was a really special moment. It was really important for me to be really transparent on my new website about how I work, and who with.

COPY

I took part in one of Sarah Matthews excellent website copy workshops - a valuable morning spent exploring and refining headline copy to grab attention, and succinctly tell my story to a new potential audience. It really helped me to refine my messaging, and make sure I was telling the story I needed to, in language that would resonate.

WEBSITE DESIGN

And then, working with picturethis.studio to design and build a comprehensive website that brought all of these elements together, elevating it with fun, engaging graphics and layouts, to create a beautiful, accessible home for my business that I wanted to proudly show off. And

It really was a comprehensive project - a re-telling of my story, of communicating who I am, what I do, and how I do it.

So, for me this was a re-positioning project with a visual refresh to ensure the brand identity I had honed elsewhere was reflected on my website. I have the consistency to give my audience full confidence in my skills, services and messaging, and the confidence to unapologetically use my website to grown my business.

It was so wonderful to be able to personally commission the skills of some of the incredible freelancers I recommend, and collaborate with on client work, and see for myself the value they bring.

If your business needs a little creative kick-start, check out the awesome skills of our Archipelago of freelances here, or get in touch for a informal chat.