As a designer, branding a business can be one of the most challenging projects to come across. Attempting to encapsulate an aesthetic into a single color palette and font can be a struggle, but is something we live for and is incredibly satisfying when we succeed. And if you can imagine the weeks and months it can take a professional designer to brand a business, than you could be rightfully intimidated to try and brand your practice on your own.
Luckily the Internet has tons of tutorials to not only help you understand a designer's process, but also how you can do it yourself to help boost your optical marketing. It can be overwhelming when searching for guides online, especially when you're not familiar with the terms used or the software and tools needed. We've put together a branding guide using one of my favorite tutorial sites, Skillshare.
Skillshare offers weekly classes that range from photography, design, gaming, culinary, writing, and more. If you're looking to educate yourself on these different areas that could help improve your practice I'd recommend becoming a member. Membership is only $8/month when you sign up for a yearly plan and you get unlimited access to over 1,800 classes on all subjects.
Today, we'd like to share a few of our favorite classes on branding your eyecare practice. We're planning on putting a series together of our favorite videos across a wide variety of marketing and business topics, so stay tuned for more posts like this one!
Whether you're just opening your own practice, or you're well established but wanted to update your brand, these videos will be a great asset to help guide you along the way.
3 Skillshare Videos to Help Boost Your Optical Marketing and Strengthen Your Brand
Branding Your Creative Business: Define Your Brand, by Faye Brown
This is part one in a continuing series of videos, and you should definitely continue on and watch the rest of her videos. She goes through the steps to defining your brand, designing your logo, and launching the new look. Although this series was intended for small businesses in the creative field like designers, artists, photographers, etc. she still covers the essentials of branding that can be applied to any type of business. She does a great job detailing every step of the way, in simple terms, and provides insightful questions to ask yourself when establishing your desired aesthetic, which is often the hardest part for most clients.
Logo Design Fundamentals: Simple and Solid Brand Marks, by George Bokhua
This video walks you through the creative process of drawing and the iterations a logo goes through as it is created. Although the process is more complex than I would suggest a non-designer to work on, it's great to watch the details of the process.
George uses an animal as an example with this video and explores all of the different possibilities when creating a logo with a simple idea. He also includes tips when working with software, which can help teach the user the work that is involved with an end product that non-designers might consider easy or simple. Hopefully by the end of the video you'll gain a new appreciation for design which will help you understand how to best work with a designer, should you choose to hire one.
Beyond the Logo: Crafting a Brand Identity, by Courtney Eliseo
Courtney makes a great point in the introduction of this video, as she explains the difference between a brand and a brand identity. She interprets the brand on a much larger scale that includes many factors, and chooses to focus on the brand identity instead which is more of the visual aspect. Again, this video is geared more for teaching designers, but is great for decision makers in your practice to understand this process from another perspective. She includes the vital importance of starting any project with a creative brief, which outlines all expectations of the project and breaks down into detail each step moving foward.
Looking forward to more tutorial recommendations on Skillshare, subscribe to the blog!
