Get out of your way

-Tips on brand-

I’ve announced the app launch in my preferred social media outlets. I have changed my title on Linkedin to Founder and CEO and have the website ready to start blogging, connecting and encouraging people to get on the mailing list :). What now? Let’s clean the brand!

The Logo

I am a fan of effective simple names and logos. Typographic logos are in trend, and not because they are trendy, but because people remember words better than shapes. I just typed the company name with San Francisco font and voilà, looks pretty good. I’ll move on to the next thing.

Quick tip: Standard fonts like Futura, San Francisco, Avenir, Lato can make great quick typographic logos. just increase the spacing in between characters a bit and will make the fonts stand with more presence.

Start fast clean later

Most ideas and companies die at Logo. CEO’s and Directors get so caught up on the Logo and the brand name, that they can become paralysed, overthinking and lose perspective of what the company is about, sometimes getting into such a mindtwist (I didn’t say it lol) that they start questioning the whole company’s vision. My advise, don’t worry about it, start with something, with the idea that what you are picking is provisional.

If you are doing an app, because apps are visual, they become identities in themselves by design, so the app design will make the brand evolve as you go. Start fast, get most of the product designed and drafter, and then go back to polish, adjust and see how it all fits together.

Our dislike of change only lasts so little

A lot of startups can feel embarrassed about making changes to their brand, and think they will confuse their users. The reality is, users are very adaptable. Depending on the size of your startup, the chances are, that you also don’t have many users yet. So if you started something, thank soon after publishing you need to change, go for it, move fast and break things.

Know when to stop

And here is where I find myself, I have been tweaking and polishing the app quite a bit today. I tried the logo and colour palette in a few applicable uses:

• how does it look on the website,

• the app,

• the app logo,

• the app icon,

• the logo on social networks,

• how logo and palette relate to the app main screens and CTAs.

Now it’s time to STOP. You can become your own worse enemy if you become too emotionally attached to pixels. If you have reached a point where your brand works in most application, it is a good place to pause and move on with the product.