Branding Basics: What To Consider When Branding Your Business

Picture this: you're launching an eCommerce business from your kitchen table. You've got the product sorted, the website platform chosen, maybe even your first suppliers lined up. Then someone asks: "What about your branding?"

And suddenly, you're staring at a blank screen wondering whether you need a fancy logo, what colours to choose, and whether Comic Sans is really that bad. (Spoiler: yes, it is.)

Josh Catchpole, graphic designer at Aurion Digital, has spent years helping eCommerce businesses navigate this exact challenge. Starting his journey in a warehouse before discovering his design talents, Josh now heads up all graphics, design, and branding work. His path wasn't traditional—no university degree, just raw talent honed through real-world pressure and countless client projects.

What Branding Actually Means

Before diving into mood boards and colour palettes, we need to establish what branding actually is. Because here's the uncomfortable truth: most people get it completely wrong.

"Branding is the personality of your business or company," Josh explains. "A lot of people get sucked into the visual side of it—the logo and the fonts. That's branding at its very simplest form. But good branding is the feel that someone gets when they see anything to do with you."

Think about Red Bull for a moment. Yes, they sell an overpriced caffeinated drink that, let's be honest, doesn't taste particularly pleasant. But when you think of Red Bull, do you think about the drink? Probably not. You think about extreme sports, adrenaline, pushing boundaries, and high-octane energy.

"You could take away their one product and the business would still exist," Josh notes. "That's the power of good branding really. They could just stop selling their one product and do something else and it would still be the same—it's still the same feel and it's still the same company."

That's branding operating at the highest level. And whilst Red Bull has enormous budgets behind their brand building, the principles remain identical whether you're a global corporation or a solo founder working from home.

Why Branding Matters For Kitchen Table Startups

You might be thinking: "That's all well and good for Red Bull, but I'm just trying to shift some products online. Do I really need to worry about branding?"

The short answer: absolutely.

"It's probably more important when it's such a personal thing," Josh emphasises. "Having good branding gives you something that you're proud of. It makes you proud of everything you do and everything you create. And it gives someone from the outside something to latch onto—whether it's a look and a feel or an ethic behind the company."

Good branding serves two masters simultaneously. For you as the founder, it creates pride in your work and consistency in your output. For customers, it provides a touchpoint—something tangible they can connect with and remember.

And here's the critical bit: "Good branding needs consistency. You need to start well and then it can develop, but if it starts well, you're halfway there."

The Consistency Principle

Spotify changed their logo. So did Airbnb. Even the mighty Nike has tweaked theirs over the decades. So what does Josh mean by consistency?

"There's not a lot of point in doing something for a year and then completely changing the look, the feel, the wording—everything—a year later," he explains. "What was the point in the year before? It's almost like a new business again."

Consistency doesn't mean everything stays frozen in time. Logos evolve. Design trends shift. Colour palettes get refreshed. But underneath those surface changes, something fundamental remains constant—the brand's personality, its values, its story.

Look at Airbnb's logo evolution. Their current mark incorporates multiple meaningful elements: a heart representing belonging, a location pin for place, the letter A for Airbnb, and a person with arms raised for welcome. Compared to their previous logo, it's dramatically different visually. But the brand values—community, belonging, local experiences—remained absolutely consistent throughout the transition.

That's the consistency that matters. Not whether your exact shade of blue stays RGB 0-120-215 forever, but whether the emotional resonance and brand promise remains true.

Where Branding Actually Starts

Here's the bit where most people get stuck: how do you actually start branding your business?

The answer might surprise you. It doesn't start with a designer. It doesn't start with choosing fonts. It doesn't even start with sketching logo ideas.

It starts with defining your values and culture.

"If you can start with the things that are important to you, that helps even from a design point of view," Josh explains. "Someone says these are the core values and you instantly start thinking of images and icons that could reflect that."

This is work only you can do as the founder. No designer, however talented, can tell you what your business stands for. They can't articulate your mission or define your differentiators. That comes from you—from your place in the world, your experiences, your vision for what this business will become.

Start by asking yourself:

What do we stand for?
What do we want to be known for in 10 years?
What promise are we making to customers?
How do we want customers to feel when they interact with us?
What makes us fundamentally different from competitors?

But here's the critical bit: don't just write buzzwords. Everyone claims to be "authentic" and "sustainable" these days. Those words mean nothing without definition.

If you write "authentic," ask yourself: what does authentic actually mean to us? Does it mean speaking truth regardless of cost? Does it mean maintaining a specific identity? Does it mean transparency in our supply chain? Keep asking "why" until you reach genuine, specific answers rather than marketing-speak.

The Mood Board Method

Once you've defined your values—really defined them, not just listed buzzwords—the next step is translating those abstract concepts into visual inspiration.

This is where mood boards come in.

"Get your words out, line them up, and take let's say 'authentic' or whatever your word is," Josh advises. "Look at things that represent what that means. It can be any old image from the internet—it doesn't have to be a great piece of design, it just has to represent what it is."

This process serves multiple purposes. First, it's clarifying for you. Finding images that represent your values forces you to think concretely about abstract concepts. What does "premium" look like? What visual elements convey "trustworthy"? How do you show "innovative" in imagery?

Second, it creates a bridge between you and your designer. You might struggle to articulate exactly what you want, but when you present 20 images that capture different aspects of your brand vision, suddenly the designer has something tangible to work with.

"Then it's my job as a designer to take that away, simplify it, and find the right icons, logos, and fonts that represent that in a subtle way," Josh explains.

You don't need fancy software for this. Keynote works brilliantly. Pinterest boards serve the purpose perfectly. Even a Word document with images copy-pasted in will do the job. The tool doesn't matter—the thinking does.

Spend hours on this if needed. Gather images of:

Brands you admire and why
Colours that resonate with your values
Typography styles that feel right
Photography styles that capture your vibe
Textures, patterns, or design elements that appeal
Competitors' branding (to understand the landscape)

The more comprehensive your mood board, the clearer your brand vision becomes—both for yourself and anyone you work with.

Understanding Your Customer

Here's a mistake that's easy to make: designing branding you like rather than branding your customers will respond to.

Take Jersey Beauty Company as an example. The first logo was created by someone who shall remain nameless (fine, it was Matt). It was terrible—just a fancy font with an outline of Jersey island stuck behind it. The second version, designed by a predominantly male team, looked sophisticated and masculine. It would have worked brilliantly for a men's grooming brand or clothing line.

There was just one problem: Jersey Beauty Company's customers are overwhelmingly female.

The breakthrough came when a female designer reimagined the branding through the lens of the actual customer base. The result was something quite different—softer, more elegant, more aligned with how female customers wanted to feel when buying beauty products.

"The design team weren't really thinking of the clientele of the company," Josh reflects. "They were thinking about what Matt liked, which is not the right way to do it for your company. You've got to think what does your customer like—what resonates with your customer."

This means another layer of research before you even talk to a designer. Create slides or documents answering:

Who is our target customer? (Be specific—not just "women aged 25-45")
What do they look like?
Where do they shop?
What brands do they already love?
How do they dress?
What do they do to relax?
What social media platforms do they use?
What matters to them?

Find photographs of your ideal customers. Study the brands they already engage with. Look at the colour palettes, fonts, and design styles those brands use. You're not copying—you're understanding the visual language that already resonates with your target audience.

"If you're doing something aiming at people in their mid-40s to mid-60s, there's no point in using lots and lots of different colours and shapes on the screen because that just does not resonate at all," Josh notes. "Whereas simple colours and simple shapes do."

You only start to understand these nuances when you deeply study your customer—not just demographics, but psychographics and lifestyle.

What Makes A Good Logo

Right, let's address the elephant in the room: the logo itself.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: logos are important, but they're not everything. In fact, putting too much pressure on your logo to encapsulate your entire brand story is a recipe for disappointment.

"Great logos help, but they're not the be-all and end-all," Josh explains. "There's quite a lot of people that put a lot of pressure on the logo to be everything, and it's really hard to do."

Consider Nike. Their swoosh represents the wing of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. It's elegant, memorable, and packed with meaning. It's genuinely brilliant design.

Now consider Apple. It's... an apple. With a bite taken out of it. That's it. No hidden meaning about innovation or thinking differently. Just an apple. Yet it's one of the most recognisable logos on the planet.

The difference? Everything that comes after the logo—the consistent application, the brand experience, the products, the marketing, the customer service. The logo provides a mark of identification, but the brand lives in everything else.

"A designer is not an artist," Josh emphasises, quoting his school teacher. "You've got to play by some rules, and a good designer knows what rules to break."

This means your logo needs to be:

Simple - If people can't remember it or sketch it roughly from memory, it's too complex
Scalable - It must work tiny on a business card and huge on a billboard
Versatile - It should function in colour, black and white, reversed out, on different backgrounds
Appropriate - It should suit your industry and customer expectations
Timeless - Avoid trendy design tricks that will date quickly

But here's the liberating bit: your first logo doesn't have to be perfect. Jersey Beauty Company launched with a terrible logo (sorry, Matt). It didn't stop the business from succeeding. The branding evolved as the business grew.

Start with something you're proud of that represents your values. Make sure it's professionally executed enough not to embarrass you. Then move forward. You can refine and evolve as you go.

Beyond The Logo

Once you have your logo, the real work begins: applying your brand consistently across every touchpoint.

This is where brand guidelines become essential. These documents—which good designers should provide—specify exactly how to use your brand elements:

Which fonts to use and when
Your colour palette with exact specifications
Logo placement and sizing rules
Photography style and tone
Voice and messaging guidelines
Spacing and layout principles
What NOT to do (often the most useful bit)

"What I found really useful has been the guidelines," Josh shares, discussing a recent rebrand project. "She's clearly designed with everything in mind. She's not just designed a logo that looks good on a bottle of supplements—she's designed a logo that will look really strong on a website, on Instagram, across all the places you want it to look strong."

This comprehensive thinking separates adequate branding from excellent branding. Your brand needs to work on:

Your website (desktop and mobile)
Social media platforms (each with different dimensions and contexts)
Email marketing
Product packaging
Business cards and stationery
Advertising (digital and potentially print)
Physical locations if applicable
Marketing materials

A logo that looks stunning on Instagram might completely fail when printed on packaging. Typography that works beautifully on desktop might be illegible on mobile. Good designers anticipate these challenges and create systems that work everywhere.

Finding The Right Designer

So you've done the groundwork. You've defined your values, created mood boards, studied your customers, and you're ready to work with a designer. How do you find the right one?

"Find a designer that spends a lot of time listening to you and understanding," Josh advises. "You get what you pay for a little bit. If you're finding someone online making you a logo for £50, it's probably not going to be worth £50."

Here's what to look for:

They Listen More Than They Talk
Great designers ask questions. Lots of questions. About your business, your customers, your values, your vision. They're detective work before pencil hits paper (or cursor hits screen). If someone's pitching you ideas in the first meeting, run away.

They Push Back Appropriately
"Good designers will take criticism and don't take it personally," Josh explains. "But they'll also push back a little bit. They'll know what to hold onto and what isn't a hill worth dying on."

You want someone with opinions and expertise who can guide you, not just execute your instructions. If you knew exactly what you wanted, you wouldn't need a designer. Their job includes challenging your assumptions when necessary.

They Provide Guidelines
Ask to see brand guidelines they've created for previous clients. This shows they think beyond the initial design to long-term application and consistency.

They Understand Your Industry
"Looking at your competitors in the same field is a good thing," Josh notes. "All sports logos, if you put them all in black and white, you know they're sports logos. They all have the same sort of feel."

Your designer should understand visual conventions in your industry—not to copy them, but to know when to follow them for instant recognition and when to break them for differentiation.

You Actually Like Them
This matters more than you might think. "It helps if you like them," Josh says. "You're going to have conversations where you have to say 'I don't like this,' and if they're difficult, that's not going to work."

Branding projects involve multiple rounds of feedback and revision. You need someone you can communicate honestly with, who won't take criticism personally, and who you don't dread emailing.

The Budget Reality

Let's talk money, because this is where a lot of kitchen table startups get stuck.

Professional branding isn't cheap. A comprehensive brand identity—logo, colour palette, typography system, brand guidelines, and applications—can easily run into thousands of pounds, even from mid-tier designers. Top-tier brand agencies charge tens of thousands or more.

If you genuinely have zero budget at launch, you have options:

Do The Groundwork Yourself
Everything discussed so far—defining values, creating mood boards, studying customers, researching competitors—costs nothing but time. Do this work thoroughly, and you're halfway to a strong brand before you spend a penny.

Use The £50 Logo As A Placeholder
Yes, Josh warned against cheap logos. But if it's genuinely that or nothing, a cheap logo that's professionally executed (even if uninspired) beats Comic Sans or clip art. Just plan to upgrade it when you can.

Learn The Basics
Canva and similar tools have made basic design more accessible. You won't create Nike-level branding, but you can create something clean and professional-looking if you study good design principles and take your time.

Start With One Element
Maybe you can only afford a logo initially. That's fine. Get a good logo, then build out the rest of your brand system gradually as revenue allows.

Trade Services
Got skills a designer might need? Perhaps you could trade web development, copywriting, photography, or products for design work. Many freelance designers are open to creative arrangements when starting their own businesses.

But—and this is crucial—plan to invest properly in branding as soon as you can. Jersey Beauty Company launched with a terrible logo but upgraded fairly quickly. That investment in better branding contributed directly to the business's growth.

The Application Challenge

You've got your brand identity. Guidelines in hand, logo files delivered, colour codes documented. Now what?

This is where many businesses stumble: applying branding consistently across everything they do.

"On a practical note, getting everything down in writing so you can see the process is hugely important," Josh emphasises. "Every designer hates going back and making a million refinements. Getting clear goals and aims out there first with everyone involved just makes the process so much easier."

Create systems for consistency:

Template Everything
Build templates for social media posts, email newsletters, presentations, documents—anything you create regularly. This ensures consistency and saves time.

Create A Brand Asset Library
Keep all your logo files, fonts, colour codes, and approved images in one accessible location. Make sure everyone who needs access has it.

Document Decisions
Why did you choose that shade of blue? Why does your photography style emphasise natural light? Write it down. This helps maintain consistency as your team grows.

Audit Regularly
Set a calendar reminder to review all your brand touchpoints quarterly. Has anything drifted off-brand? Is everything still consistent?

Onboard Carefully
When new team members join, include brand training in their onboarding. Show them the guidelines, explain the reasoning, and give them access to assets.

The Rebrand Question

At some point, you might face a decision: should we rebrand?

This came up with Vegetology, a vegan supplement business going through a major rebrand. "There's a lot of voices within Vegetology, a lot of people's opinions flying around," Josh reflects. "Complete sympathy for any designer that has to deal with that—you're never going to get everyone to agree on anything."

Rebrands are risky. You're potentially confusing existing customers and losing the brand equity you've built. But sometimes they're necessary:

Your original branding was done cheaply and looks amateurish
You've pivoted significantly and your brand no longer reflects your business
You're targeting a different customer segment than originally planned
Your visual identity has become badly dated
You're expanding into markets where your brand doesn't translate well
Legal issues force changes

If you do rebrand, remember Josh's point about consistency: "There's not a lot of point in doing something for a year and then completely changing everything." Make sure the rebrand is genuinely necessary and that you're committed to the new direction long-term.

Common Branding Mistakes

Let's round up the pitfalls Josh sees businesses fall into repeatedly:

Designing For Yourself Instead Of Customers
Your personal taste matters far less than what resonates with your target market. Jersey Beauty Company learned this the hard way.

Treating Logos As Everything
Your logo is one small part of your brand. Don't neglect the personality, values, and consistent application that bring brands to life.

Inconsistency Across Touchpoints
Your Instagram looks nothing like your website which looks nothing like your packaging. This confusion weakens brand recognition and trust.

Following Trends Blindly
That gradient effect everyone's using this year will look horribly dated in three years. Good branding trends towards timeless rather than trendy.

Too Many Voices In The Process
Design by committee produces bland, compromised results that please no one. Have stakeholders, but give one person final decision-making authority.

Skipping The Strategy Work
Jumping straight to design without defining values, understanding customers, and creating mood boards leads to unfocused branding that doesn't resonate.

Changing Everything Constantly
Tweaking your logo every few months because you're bored with it destroys brand recognition. Consistency compounds over time.

Cheap For The Sake Of Cheap
"You get what you pay for," as Josh notes. Sometimes that £50 logo is all you can afford, but plan to upgrade it. Don't treat it as your permanent solution.

Your Brand In Five Years

Here's a useful exercise: imagine your business in five years. You've succeeded beyond your initial hopes. What do people say about your brand?

Do they talk about your incredible customer service? Your innovation? Your unbeatable value? Your commitment to sustainability? Your quirky personality?

Whatever you want them saying in five years needs to be embedded in your branding from day one. Not the visual identity necessarily—that can evolve. But the personality, the values, the story you're telling.

Red Bull didn't start with Formula 1 teams and space jumps. They started with a core brand idea: giving people wings, enabling extraordinary achievements, pushing boundaries. Everything they've done since, from their early extreme sports sponsorships to their current entertainment empire, flowed from that consistent brand foundation.

Your kitchen table business won't have Red Bull's budget. But you can have the same clarity of brand purpose and consistency of application. That's what turns startups into recognised brands.

Taking Action

Right, you've read all this. You understand that branding is personality, not just logos. You know it starts with values and customer understanding. You've learned about mood boards and brand guidelines and finding good designers.

Now what?

Start with the work only you can do:

This Week
Spend two hours defining your brand values. Not buzzwords—real, specific values with clear definitions. Write down what you want your business to be known for in 10 years.

Next Week
Create your customer profile. Who are they really? Find photographs, research brands they love, understand their lifestyle and preferences.

Week Three
Build your mood board. Spend hours on Pinterest, Google Images, and competitor websites. Gather everything that represents what your brand should feel like.

Week Four
If you have budget, start interviewing designers. If not, begin learning basic design principles and creating your own initial identity using the groundwork you've laid.

The key is starting. Your first attempt won't be perfect—Josh started in a warehouse and gradually developed his skills through real projects under pressure. Jersey Beauty Company launched with a terrible logo but didn't let that stop them.

Start where you are, with what you have. Do the strategic thinking that costs nothing but time. Create the clarity that will guide every future decision. Build something you're proud of, that gives customers something to latch onto.

Because branding isn't about having the cleverest logo or the trendiest colour palette. It's about creating a personality for your business that resonates with the right people and remains consistent over time.

Get that right, and the visual stuff—the logos and fonts and colour codes—will follow. Get it wrong, and even the most beautiful design won't save you.

Your brand is the personality of your business. So what personality are you building?

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music] well hello and welcome to the ecommerce
podcast with me your host matt edmondson it's great to see you it's great that you're here with us i'm just going to
adjust the microphone there we go uh now whether you are just starting out or if you are like me and have been around for
a while in the world of e-commerce the goal of this show is simple just to help you
grow online to thrive online to give you the tips the tricks the strategies the ideas that you need to take your
e-commerce business to the next level and to do that every week
i get to talk to amazing people from the world of e-commerce i get to ask some all kinds of questions about what they
know and how it's going to help us i often say in fact i say every week
they're kind of like coffee shop conversations you know the conversation that you would have if you go to sit
down with these people for an hour and just ask them some questions dig into their story
dig into their insights and figure out how it's going to help us grow online and today is no exception to that
not at all it's going to be a little bit different this week this week we are talking about branding
okay so picture it you're starting a business and you want to make it look like a million bucks but where do you
start you can't just throw up some graphics or slap on your logo and call it a day oh no knowing the right things
to consider when branding your ecommerce business is essential for your success
and i have to tell you there are a bunch of companies that i've worked with that have rebranded and in fact
we're going through a bit of a rebrand with one of our e-commerce sites at the moment so i know the pain i know the aggravation
of rebranding and so i thought today would be great to talk about branding and
what i wanted to do because he's such a cool guys i want to talk to a chat called josh catpoll and
discuss the basics of branding and the ideas behind branding and things that
you need to consider when branding your ecommerce business how do you go about it even if you've not got any design
skills whatsoever what can you do to help yourself now the reason i wanted to talk to josh about these questions is
josh is our in-house graphic designer he works with us at orion digital which is
my company and in fact josh started working with us years ago he's going to tell you the story himself i've no doubt but he
started working with us years ago in our warehouse and then after a while uh we
discovered well that he basically had magical graphic powers uh and you know and video powers
and so eventually he got to the place where he now has the biggest and most powerful mac in the
office with the biggest monitor by far so uh he's a he's a really cool guy top
blake you'll love him uh and you'll understand why he works for us uh or works with us actually uh is such a cool
guy so definitely stay tuned if you want to know more about let's start that sentence again stay
tuned uh as i'm gonna bring on josh now my conversation with josh uh as we talk
about all things branding here we go josh
Meet Josh
welcome to the show great to have you uh this is quite a surreal experience because obviously you
and i work together uh and here we are talking together on the podcast so uh
thanks for doing this because uh we know you you enjoy these kind of things yeah no problem thanks for having me
so let's talk about um branding and that whole thing cause i think it's obviously
quite an important thing to talk about and people ask about this the whole time uh about business how did you
let's take a little bit of backstory how did you get involved in design and and starting to work on brandon and things
like that um so it's always been an interest i've i
loved art and graphics at school and i was going to go to uni and do graphic
design um at i got a place i got offered a place at a couple of uni i can't remember
which one's in london but then one in norwich and i had a place all ready to go and i
was going to go and then i didn't go because i was in a band and that took up a few years of
my life as a music band as in a music band yeah okay um
so you followed the music dream yeah i had two dreams one was graphic designer one was being a band and at the
time being a band was more fun than being a graphic designer so uh that that took priority
um but then uh i ended up actually working i did a little bit of you know graphic
design throughout my time of being in a band so i did a lot of graphics for the band and things like that but
um i ended up working a lot of part-time jobs um one part-time job i had was in
your warehouse matt and so yeah i remember long story short someone was ill
um who was a graphic designer and i covered and then five years later i'm still here
but you're not in the warehouse anymore i have a computer now
Where have you learned it all
i see i remember this i remember um because you came from uh umu which was a
coffee shop that you know most of us frequented and um
and i remember that closing down and you and you were starting to work in the warehouse with a guy called tom he came over as
well didn't he the same time and tom went off to do welding and um i remember we had a conversation
and you were talking about graphic design and how you enjoyed it and we're like oh okay that's interesting because we just didn't know
and then i remember you starting to do something we thought oh goodness me you know so why is this guy in the warehouse let's let's give
him a computer and like you say the rest is history so where have you learned it all from i
mean you did a bit at college um you know i mean you're married with a dog now uh you know uh you're married to
a dog not married to a dog but you're married you have a wife and a dog so obviously life has moved on a little bit
since college um so what do you where do you go to learn
um so i mean i was always
i mean i do think back to my school teachers my school teachers were so good um i learned so much
before my time really like i i was i'm not saying i was better than
uh everyone else but like i was i think all of the kids in our school were much more prepared for
working as in design because of the teachers at my school they were brilliant
um so i did learn a lot as as a youngster and then
i just i've always had an interest i've always you know loved good designer i read a lot i
you know things like pinterest are great um you know seconds you've learned something new
on some pinterest video and things like that it's just good to just keep your eyes open and you just
i think uh i mean we'll talk about some bigger brands but you know big brands
that capture you and you just sort of learn through osmosis don't you just see what they do and you um you just like it
and you know a lot of good design is basically just copying something successful so
plagiarism is plagiarism yeah yeah i mean you know you learn from
everyone don't you like it's i think it's um yeah it's just been a gradual thing and
over the last few years especially i've just had more time to develop it a little bit and um
yeah i mean you're never the finished article so you just got to keep keep watching and learning i think yeah yeah
no i like that i like i do the same thing i look at stuff which i like from a design point of view or from a web
point of view and i just ask myself the question why do i like this what is it about this that i like
um i don't always know the answer but i do try and dissect what it what it is what how does this
make me feel why do i like it what what's going on here because when you can start to articulate the answer to
those questions it helps you i think when you're going you know when you're working on websites and design and all that sort of stuff to be able to
bring that because you know how to verbalize things right um but i have to admit i don't watch the
pinterest videos uh maybe i should maybe i should
Do you regret not doing uni
so you you sort of you've come through um i want to call it an old school route
jeremy because you it's definitely not traditional the way you you sort of got to where you are
and you know you you you sort of you did college you didn't do university because you
followed the band dream um and then you know you did a load of part-time jobs one of which was in our
warehouse and here you are a few years later um heading up all the graphics and
design and branding and all that sort of stuff um so it's kind of like you you've done
more of an old school route rather than the the new way of thinking which is go get a degree and try and lend a big job
do you think that's a good thing do you regret not doing the uni thing
that's a good question um so uh
i think for me no i don't regret it um but there are things that i wish
i'd learned earlier um i think i definitely you know i'm not in any way
knocking people that went to uni there's some things that i think have benefited me because i've
i've had to learn under pressure um and so i've had to learn
how how it works in reality i mean so i look at some designers that you know have um
you know they do all these great projects at university and things but they're not real and they're not real because they're not
having to deal with clients they're not having to like they've got they've got no pressure at all they can basically just do what they
want and of course it isn't um so in that respect i
i definitely think that you know working under pressure and working in some real
offices and with real people has helped me but on the flip side i think there's
techniques and especially when i first started i was i was playing catch up quite a lot because
software's moved on software moves on every year do you know what i mean so yeah you do
you lose and it's like any skill you you have to practice it and
um yeah i was definitely out of practice when i started and i it took me a while to catch up and learn
new things um and get back in the habit of learning new things as well so i think
it's pros and cons definitely um but you know i know some
brilliant designers that went to union did the traditional uh you know uni student group
um but i don't know if that's what makes them good designers either so
yeah yeah so that's a very good question actually um i just find it fascinating i mean there's there's so many different
ways to get into doing something that you love to do and i think um you don't you don't always have to go
down the traditional route to get there i think is probably the takeaway here so you've let's talk about branding
What is branding
um so the first question on my list here because
i think so many people uh understand branding in so many different ways right so let's
let's define what we mean by branding at the start so in your mind josh how would you define branding what is
branding so i think i saw a quote i can't remember who it
was by but i think branding is the personality of your business or company so your
branding is your is the personality of it i think a lot of people get sucked into the visual
side of it the visual side of it like the logo and the fonts
that's you know that's branding at its very simplest form but good branding i think is is a bit more
than that i think it's um i think it's the the feel that someone gets when they see anything
to do with you yeah yeah i think i think it's you know and i
think that's told through imagery and icons and logos and all that kind of stuff but it's
this real good branding is way more than that um i think
i'm trying to think like a good example like red bull for example yeah
um you know they're all over the place in terms of like a strategy aren't they really like
yeah clever company yeah yeah they're sponsoring football clubs they're
they've got like little cartoon um tv adverts and then they
you know sponsor people to like push themselves off cliffs and stuff like that for charity and stuff like that but it's
all over the place but you get the same sort of feel from it whatever it is and i think that's really clever um
and red bull has become way more than just an energy energy drink yeah you don't you don't energy drinks not the
first thing you think of with red bull probably um so i think that's you know that's clever branding in a way um
yeah it is because like you say i mean red bull at the heart of it is an overpriced caffeinated drink which
tastes nasty right and i mean that with all due respect you you you wouldn't start
starting a new business you wouldn't go i know what let's let's what let's make a carbonated caffeinated drink um that's
going to get people wired that taste just rank let joe mean it you can imagine those initial conversations
but what they've done i think through because of their branding they are now associated with
uh high-energy high-octane sports it's what they it's what they do so um you
know they've become a lifestyle brand as opposed to just a carbonated drink
yeah um and i i don't think if i'm honest i don't i don't think pepsi and coke have pulled that off to
the degree that red bull have done no i mean if you took away their one product the business would still exist
yeah that's that's quite that's the power of like good branding really
they could just they could just stop selling their one product and do something else and it would still be the same it's still the same feel and it's
still the same company yeah and i mean obviously that's a very big scale
high budget piece of branding but i think the principles are the same
Is branding important
so do you think um it's a bit of a leading question i appreciate i mean obviously branding is
important to red bull is branding important for the guy or gal who sat around the kitchen table
thinking i'm going to start an online business do you think yeah definitely i think um
i think it's more probably more important when it's such a personal thing as well like
i think on both sides i think having good branding
gives you something that you're proud of it makes it makes you proud of everything you do and everything you
create and also it just gives someone you know from the outside something to latch on to whether it's
you know a look and a feel or a sort of ethic behind the company or and it's something like i think
yeah it's massively important must be important i think for smaller companies
um you know it's worth spending the time getting it right because you know
good branding also needs consistency you need to you know start well and then it can develop but it's got you
know if it starts well you you're halfway there i think what do you mean when you say
uh consistency in branding i think you know um
if you wild i'm not saying logos specifically because logos do change you know spotify and airbnb for example
they've like they changed they've changed their logos to sort of fit with the times a little bit but then
there's a lot of these brands there their branding has remained consistent in
terms of i don't know it could be the colors or just something for people to latch onto
and know instantly that that's that's what it is because there's no point doing
in my mind anyway there's not a lot of point in doing something for a year and then completely changing the look the feel
the wording everything a year later because what was the point in the year before
john it's almost like a new business again yeah and so i think it's worth getting it
right at the start for that reason i'm not saying nothing can change and you know change should
should happen but i think you know if you can build something at the start that you want to run with i think that's
much better yeah yeah i think you're right i think um invest in that time at the start to
think about not just the logo but the actual look and feel of your company what does
it stand for what what's the story behind it what do what do people think about when they think about your company
that whole brand side of things i think is actually is can be done
How to start with branding
you know anytime during the journey but at the start makes an awful lot of sense for me
and i think i think it's interesting you talk about this word consistency and being
consistent but things do change along the way but somehow there's still a consistent story
or feel behind the brand as you go along yeah and nailing that i think at the start
is quite important i think one of the ways you could do that i suppose is to define the values and the culture of
what it is you're trying to create because um do you is is that a good starting point for branding is that how you start
to understand what your brand's going to be yeah i think so i mean i think if you
can start with you know the things that are important to you that also helps even from a design point
of view from you know someone says you know these are the core values and you start think you instantly
start thinking of like images and icons that you think could could sort of reflect that
um you know i think some of the best logos that i you know i look at they have
this subtly incorporating some of the values of the brand um
and so i think yeah that's where it all comes from from from
my point of view i think it helps any designer to know all that stuff first
yeah and build from that rather than you know realizing you know six months down the
line that you need to incorporate this into the feel or and it just doesn't work design-wise that's
when you end up with a bit of a mismatch of of design really and that's that's where
consistency sort of drops off so yeah yeah yeah so if you are sat at home
sort of around the dinner table thinking i want to start my own online business the a good place to start with branding
then is defining the cultures defining the values of your business what is it you stand for
and what is it you want to be known for what's your what's your legacy going to be in
years time you know and understanding that so there are a lot of buzz words on there at the moment people like to use like
authentic and sustainable and and these are great words but i think
for me values has to be much more than that there has to be a real kind of what does authentic mean to you do you
mean does it mean to speak the truth regardless of cost does it mean to um be true to a specific identity that
you want to you know be connected to what does authentic actually mean and and don't just write buzz words out but
start to ask your question ask questions around that well why have i written this what about this makes sense to me what
is and the more you can define it i think the clearer your brand starts to become like you say right it
um and it all starts with culture and you don't even need to be a graphic designer to do that do you definitely not it
probably helps if you're not [Laughter] yeah you're probably right
but that actually you do have to be the founder i think though to do that well because it comes from
you it comes from you know your place in life doesn't it your your your place in the world sort of thing and and um
i think that's super super important so how do you how do you translate
How to translate values into branding
values i'm i'm just trying to think if i'm stuck if i'm starting my business around the kitchen table how do i translate
values into branding what are some of the steps that i need to take to do that
so i i think um you know you you get your
your words out and you you know line them up and you go what are the ones that are most important to me and say let's let's take like
authentic or whatever is your word i would then i think look at things that represent
what authentic means so you know a lot of the designs we've done together now we've done like these
um mood boards of you know what just anything that sort of represents what that means and
you know we've it can be any old image from the internet it doesn't have to be a great piece of design it just has to represent
what what it is and then it's my job as a designer or whoever job as a designer to then simplify that
in my mind and take it away simplify it right down and find the
right icons logos fonts that represent that in a subtle way
and yeah and you know like great logos
help but they're not the be all and end-all and i think
yeah it's a tough one the all these words that you know you're going to come up with you want one thing to encapsulate
it brilliantly is really hard to do it's really hard and so there's quite a lot of people
that put a lot of pressure on the logo to be everything and i think it's only a few companies that really managed to
nail that like i think yeah you know what i mean like nike their logo is unbelievable like
the tick the it represents the wings of some like greek god called nike or something like something like that
and it's just it's brilliant such a classy piece of design but you know apple
in reality it's a great logo like it looks cool it's just an apple it doesn't really tell you everything there is to
do about the brand but yeah all the stuff that comes after that yeah you know give off the look and the feel of
it um airbnb isn't actually a really interesting logo because i think
it i can't think of it off top of my head but it's got like a few different icons that represent their
like their key values like we've been talking about i think there's like a heart in there
there's um i can't i can't i can't really think off the top of my head but there's lots of
little icons in there which are meant to represent the the sort of main values of it and it's like
an a isn't it as well um but if you compare that to what they used to have as their logos it's uh it's
incredible yeah and it's simple isn't it i think that's the
yeah i'm looking at the things that have made it up here so they've got the yeah they've got like a geo locator
they've got a heart they've got the a and they've got a few other things in there haven't they in the a and i think
the simplicity of their logo um is what makes it totally memorable isn't
it but i think if it's i mean one of the things that you mentioned is probably important to say because i
i sit here right i'm not a designer i don't claim to be a designer like any well like anyone like a lot of
people i can open up illustrator and photoshop and i can have a little play um
but that's about the limits of my technical uh design capabilities as we all know
um and just to a test actually your logo doesn't have to be great when we first started jersey beauty company i designed
the logo and it was awful i just want to be totally clear but that didn't stop the business taking off
um but i do think that one of the things that we've started that we do well
and one of the jobs certainly i have to do as the as the guy may be driving that brand or driving that idea
is i sit down with keynote or whatever software you like i like apple keynote
it's easy to use and i just drag and drop lots of different images onto lots of different
slides um so i think about values and what do we want to not be known for where you know
what how do we differentiate ourselves what's the story we want to tell and then i go and find images that in my
mind tell that story um so when i sit down with
people like you josh i can sit down and i can explain the image and you can pick up stuff from the image that maybe i
wouldn't have been able to explain before and i find the whole mood board thing the whole gathering of
images whether you do it on pinterest whether you do it with keynote or word or whatever software you like to use
not only is it quite cathartic but it's actually quite clarifying uh
you know finding these images to sort of explain what it is that you're
feeling and i think the first time i i did this um the first time i sort of realized the
power of it was when somebody uh one a a good friend of mine who we were doing some coaching he was actually coaching
me he was like right i want you to find some photographs that describe you
jeremy and i was like well what what does that mean and i found it quite a complex exercise to do it first
but it after a few hours it's i started to find different images and i could use those images to explain
different bits about me that i never would have been able to do beforehand do you see what i mean
and um i think there's a there's some power in that in just gathering images around
words and ideas about your company in something like keynote and you'll see
different things so is that a good place to start i mean we've got the values and you you talked
A good place to start
about creating the mood boards and throwing lots of inspirat i mean i spent hours gathering these images in that seems to me to be like a good place to
start yeah i think so that that's how i would always choose to start anybody it's
just on a practical note as well like especially when there's lots of people involved getting everything down in
writing so you can see the process i think is also hugely important because
every designer hates going back and making a million refinements
everyone hates that you know people just want to move on don't they yes getting it all in writing first and
getting the the clear goals and the aims out there first with everyone involved just makes the process so much easier in
my mind but yeah that's my own preference as well that's just how i like to work but i think
i'm probably um like most designers in that respect yeah i think i think it's a fair point
Branding and logo design
and i think you know if you're listening to the show and you're thinking you know i need to i'm obviously
i want to start this brand up and i i would venture to say that actually branding and logo design is probably
something you don't want to get into unless you really know what you're doing i mean you could i had a
saying that i did the first jersey logo we quickly changed it but i did do the first jersey logo um
and that was a really let me tell you actually that's a really interesting story so the first jersey logo i did it was just a crazy font i had no bearing
on anything and i drew an outline of the island of jersey and stuck it behind the font right that says that was as much as
i could think about it um we then had a second design team redo
the logo we redid the branding um in
and they came up with this logo they had quite i don't know if you remember it it was kind of like a flowery j with the
the sort of the squirrels coming off of it um but i always and i really liked it
but i liked it because i've always felt that logo certainly the way they wrote jersey was quite masculine
and it always it would have the way that logo was designed would have worked well i think with like a
male clothing brand or a sort of like a male shaving brand
and it wasn't until i don't know when was it a few years later we had a bit of a brain fart which
said you know what of our people our customers are female it might make sense to get a female
designer to have a have a think about the logo the colors the way the
website's laid out because up until that point it was all designed by men
and what they came back with was something quite different and distinct
to what um the the the design team which was
predominantly male beforehand came with does that make sense and i thought actually that's that's
that for me was also really insightful that if you've got a brand which is skewed to
a heaven a sort of heavy female clientele you don't necessarily need a female
designer but you do need females in that process right to help you understand
how how that's reacting how that sort of resonating with that group
yeah yeah definitely does that make sense yeah i mean
i think you know just that i mean that that's i was completely
removed from this process but it sounds like at the time the design team weren't really thinking of the
the client the clientele of the company basically now they were thinking about me they
were thinking what does matt like which i think is was actually when it comes to branding and design is not the
right way to do it for your company you've got to think what does your customer like what resonates with your
customer like what resonates with the ceo right yeah it's a link between your customer and your
company that's what it is it's not a link between a person and you know
everyone else is the other way around i'll be the client or the customer to the company
um and so yeah that just you know that sounds like
uh a bit of market research at the start could have come up with something completely different
and and not evidently it did yeah it was it's just true it was interesting
Understanding your customer
the whole process and it got me to rethink how we do so when we do branding now um
and josh you know this you made me do it whenever we set something up
we're like right part of the image you know we talked about putting images together in keynote one of the questions i write on top of
the keynote slide is who is our customer and i go and find photographs of who i think up my main target customers are
on the slide i want to know what it is they look like i want to know how they dress i want to know where they shop i want to know
what kind of things they do to relax jeremy and i i want to try and understand that customer an awful lot
more um what kind of shops do they go to because once i start we start to understand that
we can start to see similarities in the in the branding of stuff which they use what kind of colors resonate with them
what kind of fonts resonate with them um you know if you're doing something
uh aiming at people in their sort of mid s to you know mid s early s
there's no point in using lots and lots of different colors and shapes on the screen because that just does not
resonate at all whereas simple um colors and simple shapes do and so but
you you only start to understand this when you throw i think all of these images on a piece of paper about your customer
and i think lifestyle i'd add as well like looking at your competitor in the same field is also a
good thing like because they're often doing something right and it's worth like looking at what they're
doing and i'm not saying you have to like copy them or anything like that you know you
should aim to do something that's you know standalone and original but at the same time like all
for example all sports logos you know if you put them all in black and white on the page
you know that they're sports logos generally yeah like they they all have a same the same
sort of field as some sort of dimension to them um and things like that you know you don't
want originality is great but you also want someone to be instantly able to tell
what that represents so it's getting that balance really yeah that's a really good point that's a
really good point now we've been working our way through it we've been rebranding um
one of the websites that we're involved with uh called vegetology which does um
vegan food supplements um although let me rephrase that it does food supplements that happen to be vegan
it doesn't just reach out to the vegan market but we all the products are made to to vegan standards
um and that that brand has gone through a massive rebrand
i think it's probably fair to say the last few months um you know i you'll
see in a in a few weeks time unless you follow us on insta you'll have seen already but um
some of the new stuff that's coming out is very different isn't it to the old stuff um
it seems to have shifted quite dramatically as we've clarified values and understood things what sort of
Lessons learned
things have stood out in that process to you as we as we have rebranded what sort of lessons can we take away and that are worth
sharing do you think that's a good question so i should clarify this by saying i
didn't come up with the branding that is uh the vegetables you're using so it's been quite interesting
being a designer who's going to be taking another designer's bit of branding and
looking at the application of it and and so
there's there's a lot of there's a lot of voices within vegetology so there's a lot of people's
opinions flying around and complete sympathy for any designer that has that where
they're never gonna get everyone to agree on anything yeah and so i think the
uh being able to being able to
you don't want to end up with a design that is just to appease everyone and just be like you know
this and and just that that i don't think works and i don't think she's done that by the way
but i think the designs are really strong at the end um and i think but maybe
maybe the you know few voices needed to be heard earlier i'm not sure um
just to make that transition a bit smoother i don't i don't know but i think um
you know what i found really useful from um from the designer has been
the guidelines she made have been really easy to apply
across lots of different platforms yeah she's clearly designed in mind
for everything so she's not just designed a logo that looks good on a bottle of supplements
she's designed a logo that will look really strong on a website it will look really strong on
instagram and same with a lot of the imagery and the icons she's done everything's
very easily transferable across all the places that you want it to look strong
and i think that's been that's been really um
eye opening for me that she's clearly designed with that in mind i think that's you know something i'm going to take on board
because it's very easy to get wrapped up in something that looks instantly good on an instagram page but then you blow
up big in it to put on a i don't know a banner or a billboard whatever it
would look completely different it wouldn't it would lose a lot of his power so i think what she's done is is really
strong um yeah it's hard i had to say because you
know i've not been proven to every conversation but i think um the
the real strength of the branding is that yeah it's been you can see i i mean for me
easily i can see what was intended at the start and i can see how it's intended to be used from then on
um because it's fair to say that i mean and this is a valid point right and
Brand guidelines
something to take note of when you're working with designers so if i'm working with you or when
you're working with lindsay who's been working on the virginology stuff um
they take information which you give them they distill it down and they come back with some designs which then get
approved and they give you or should give you a series of guidelines in terms of how to take that brand and apply it
to the the website to social media to print to tone of voice to jeremy and all kinds
it needs to be applied and they call those things a brand guideline so it tells you how to use a font what colors to use what fonts to use
um you know where to put the logo and all that sort of stuff so you get this consistent look it's kind of like a
playbook isn't it for yeah for the simpleton like me to understand how not to screw up your brand basically
uh so it all looks so you should in theory from a good designer get these guidelines and you've
taken um those guidelines it's fair to say we're talking about this before we hit the record button and you've taken
those guidelines and you've you've reimagined for example the website uh following those guidelines how did you
find that process um i actually well one i really enjoyed it um
and two i i don't think i found it difficult to
see what she clearly had in her mind at the start um
and so you know i think um
yeah and i think that's probably the strength of the design really like it's all very clear to me how it should be
used and you know passing things from designer to designer is also part of like that's a big part of the industry
because you know a good designer will won't just design whatever they want to design
like my old school teacher used to tell me a designer is not an artist and so
it's a very different thing an artist you know you do what you want and you create new a designer is not that
um you've got to you've got to play by some rules and a good designer then knows what
rules to break um but i think with lindsay's stuff it's been really easy to
to see what she wanted to pass on and it's just been i found it really
really fun to do actually um because visually it looks good and it's really hard to make it look bad i think
[Laughter] i'm sure i'd find a way josh i'm sorry
but no you're right i think it's been it's been a fascinating project working with lindsay and if you do want to know more about
the vegetology brand follow us on instagram and you'll see
um you'll see it as it is but you'll see the evolution over the next few weeks and months into the new brand as the
social media changes as the website starts to change you'll see that whole moving you'll see some of the things that josh's is
talking about josh listen it's um i guess i mean like we could talk about
this and we have talked about this for hours one of the questions i think people have is if they're sat at home
going yes i can do mood boards yes i can declare the values and i can start to do things like that
um how do i how do i find a good designer what kind of thing should people look for if they're going to go
Finding a good designer
find a designer to help them with some of this stuff i would say
find a designer that i mean i i often think you know
especially when you come to freelancers you get what you pay for yeah a little bit
so if you're finding someone online making you a logo for quid i'd say it's probably not going to be even worth
quid and you know a good a good designer will spend a lot of time
listening to you um and understanding yeah and you know
there's also the thing where you just got to get on with someone i think it helps if you if you if you like them
yeah yeah and a good designer as well will you know you're going to have conversations and you're going to have
to say to them oh i don't like this and if they're
if they're a dick then they're not gonna like that are they so but you know good designers will take criticism
and they don't take it personally um because i also think good designers will push back a little bit
yeah they'll they'll hold they'll know what to hold on to and what isn't working
a hill not worth dying on um so yeah i mean it you know every design
ends up being a little bit of a compromise probably but that you know a good designer will
listen and find the things that he thinks or who she thinks that are important but also
be willing to adapt the things that are not worth holding on to you know and yeah things that are
you know it's got to be at the end of the day it's you know it's your design it's not it's not mine i've as a
designer i give it to you and it's that's it you know i mean like i've got to let go of a lot of my
personal feelings about it because you know i've got to pass it on to you and it's up to you then to use it
um and so you know having something as a designer it's always nice when someone has something that
they're really proud of because of something you've made that's that's the best feeling and so
yeah i mean just find a designer that listens and you know pushes back a little bit but
you know you have honest conversations that are you know a bit give and take
yeah that's what i think conversations throughout throughout the whole process start to finish
Conclusion
no i think you're right and i think for me um you know i'm very fortunate in the sense that we have
you know you and we have the team at the office and it's great and it works wonderful and occasionally we do go out
and get outside help and um a lot of it comes through recommendation but again i think about
the people that have worked with us like lindsay she has listened and listened and listened and she
pushes back and she will tell you what she thinks which is great she does create these guidelines these
documents which you can use across the board and maybe if you're looking for a designer looking at their past work
has to look at the brand guidelines which they've created um so you know what kind of document you're going to get at the end which is
going to help you uh drive this thing forward is it just a one-off are they going to be with you on
an ongoing basis how's that going to work there's a few things you do need to think about and i think
again if you're starting off with scratch or starting off from scratch and you have zero budget
you can still do the work you can still start to think about your brand you can start to create the image banks
maybe you can't go and afford the best designer but at least you can start to put some things together and you can start to build your brand story and
voice um like josh said logos and colors can change but the fundamentals of who you
are that should be consistent and that you can do at the time that's just going to require your time
searching google or pinterest for images and putting them in keynote or whatever that is to help you identify that whole
thing um josh listen i'm aware of time uh i i really enjoy
these kind of conversations um it helps me think again just about how
we approach things and how we do things and and you don't just assume or sit still do you kind of grow with the whole
thing so i appreciate you being on bud um like i said i appreciate it's not in your wheelhouse
but it's always great having you on and um how do people reach you if people want to get hold of you connect with you
what's the best way to do that i mean i get through us get to us through orion um
um i'm sure matt would always pass on a message as well um i also have my own instagram um josh
catbold designs and if you want to get in touch with me there that'd be great
and there's a website coming soon but it's not here yet so yeah it's like the builder isn't it it's too
busy doing everybody else's houses to be before fixing his own exactly it's our websites are always the last
ones to get done i get that
but yeah you can reach josh through the orion uh or even through the ecommerce podcast website just get get a get in
touch with us that way and i'm sure we can put you in touch with josh we will of course put all the links and stuff in the show notes uh but josh really
appreciate you being on here uh thanks again for joining us thanks buddy thank you very much
cheers so what did you make of that my conversation with mr catchpole uh he's
Outro
such a cool guy is d josh and um yeah i really enjoy these conversations like i said about branding really really
useful stuff now if you would like a copy of the transcript if you would like the show notes if you would like the
links to josh so you can reach out to him uh everything will be available on the
website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
which is what is also on the screen now if you're watching this by video you can head over to that link ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
and get a hold of all the transcripts uh the the notes and so on and so forth so you can deep dive back into that go over
notes again and create a strategy uh for your branding project if it's a new project or if you're rebranding how
you're gonna approach that hope you got something useful out of that today even if you're not a designer
that's me basically i'm not a designer i can dabble but i'm definitely not a designer but i do have a part to play
in the process and like i said when i was talking to josh spend hours working on those
image documents so um very very helpful do get into them uh you'll you'll find
it really really useful so a big thanks again to josh if you have had
that sentence again if you have enjoyed this week's podcast why not leave us a
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