Jodi Toews shifted from a career in athletic therapy to graphic design as a course correction back to her original passion and training in fine arts. Since she took the leap into pursuing her passion full-time with Jodi Toews Design, she’s been helping professionals in the outdoor, health and wellness communities run thriving businesses doing what they love.
What I really appreciate about Jodi’s work is the energy she pours into her clients. Many of the people she works with have never worked with a designer before. She takes her work to heart and goes beyond just creating visuals. Jodi believes that what we create in the world should be in alignment with our highest values in order to make the world better and our businesses more enjoyable, which is reflected in the way she runs her own business and the lifestyle she has created for herself.
What does it mean to have a brand? It might not mean what you think it means. In this interview, Jodi and I discuss the difference between a brand and a brand identity, and how there’s so much more to creating a brand than picking your favorite colors. The question becomes: do you understand your business enough to create your brand?
“To get started with branding, do a little bit of soul searching in terms of what your business is about.”
– Jodi Toews
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Transcript of Our Interview:
Jess:
I want to start with this question: what does it even mean to have a brand? What is a brand and why is it important?
Jodi:
Well, there are a lot of different answers to that question. So if you Googled it, and I’m sure you have because everyone Googles everything, branding really is a broad topic. And so when I’m considering someone to have a brand, basically it’s like having a personality for your business. I actually don’t look at it as just a logo or colors or fonts or the actual kind of tangible things that you have for your business. I actually think that what a brand means is that you understand what your business does. So what services you offer, who you’re offering those services to, and then why they should care about you. What makes you stand out and in the marketplace. It actually is this whole back end of intangible ideas and concepts. And then when we talk about, you know, logos and fonts and colors and the branding, it means creating that the tangible parts of your brand. They’re really kind of two different things. Brand is hard to define, but it’s that experience of what your business does and how people interact with it and what you want it to become essentially.
Jess:
You maybe wouldn’t ever say that someone had a bad brand. But if you were to say someone had a bad brand, it wouldn’t necessarily be saying that their colors clashed, it would be saying that they don’t really have a cohesive feel of what they are and who they’re trying to reach?
Jodi:
Yeah, exactly. I would never call it a bad brand. I would probably call it an inconsistent brand where you are confused. Your clients look at your brand and they go, “what do you offer?” You look one way over here, but then you look a different way over here and they just can’t connect the dots or you haven’t connected the dots for them. So usually having a “bad brand” just means that you’re inconsistent or your messaging isn’t being clearly communicated to your audience.
Jess:
I feel like a lot of people that I talk to, and my experience as a business owner myself was that we need to have a brand. And the thing that comes to mind is that we need a logo, it has to be pretty, we need colors. I need to know which fonts work well together. And that’s kind of my primary focus. And what I find is that a lot of the time for myself, and other experiences that I’ve had with other entrepreneurs, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t come together. And it’s because all that other background stuff that actually makes up your brand is not there. I didn’t think about my ideal client. I thought about the colors. Do you get that a lot? That experience?
Jodi:
I do. That’s it. That’s exactly it. I do get clients that are coming to me and they can’t answer who do you want to serve, because “everyone” is not a good answer to that question. It doesn’t help you focus or filter your decision making. Once you know what your business is, what you want it to do and who you want it to serve, and if you’ve answered some of those deeper questions, then that’s the direction that you can use for the actual visual. I call that the brand identity. I make a difference between brand as being kind of that overall experience or the personality. And then when we talk about the brand identity, essentially it’s the outfit that matches the personality. You’ve got the over like that, the actual person and then you have, okay well what kind of clothes are we putting on this person to communicate the personality to everyone around them. So I think it’s a way that kind of helps maybe explain the difference between brand and brand identity. And then when we get into the brand identity that is the logo, the colors, the fonts, the images that you choose to share as well. Those are really the things that fall into place a lot easier when you know who the personality is cause then you can filter that decision making through the personality to come up with the outfit or what you want it to look like. Part of my brand process or when I’m creating a logo for someone is I actually take them through some of that process. I wouldn’t call myself like necessarily a brand strategist. But I definitely get people to answer those questions because it helps me, as the designer, actually create a logo and colors that actually match with what you’re trying to communicate and what your message is.
Jess:
That’s a lot of depth. That’s like coaching and branding, that’s a whole package. It is a lot of background and a lot of digging into your passion and figuring out what you’re even doing. That’s a lot of soul searching for just someone coming in and saying, I like blue, let’s do something with blue.
Jodi:
Yeah. It definitely is a deeper process than that for me because I want it to be meaningful and they’re going to spend money on those services, well it really should do something for your brand instead of just look pretty. I mean, looking pretty as good. I’m a designer. I love it when things look pretty, but I like it when there’s that meaning behind it or it’s not about your preferences, it’s actually about your audience’s preferences. Because if I’m creating a brand to match me, well, I might not be my target audience. And therefore you spend all this time and effort creating a brand, but that’s not for who you want it to be for. And really, it’s an asset.
Jess:
Yeah. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past creating something that I thought was really pretty, and then I realized afterward that it didn’t feel like me and it didn’t apply to my clients at all. You know you can really get sucked up in that. It’s important to kind of keep the focus of why you’re creating what you’re creating and who you’re creating it for, I think. So we’ve been kind of walking around this topic, but I’m talking about a brand. Let’s talk about the brand aspect first versus the brand identity. Why is it important to have this. What are some of the things you see when people don’t have it where it can be problematic and why is this important for a business to have.
Jodi:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So really where or what the brand does, and when I say brand, I’m going to talk about the whole thing. So the visuals and then the ideas behind the visuals as well, that basically they serve kind of three functions. One is they tell people who you are. So they actually are communicating to everyone that’s out there. Who, what is your business, what does it do? What are the values for that business? It helps people make a choice. There’s a ton of competition out there. I mean all the marketplaces tend to be quite saturated. It really allows you to stand out. It basically is kind of that little white flag, “Hey, come pick me”. And then also you can use it to create brand loyalty. So when your brand shows up consistently, whether that’s through the words that you choose to use, the visuals that you use along with those words, basically your customers trust you because they know you. So they know you, then they can trust you and then they can actually end up liking you. And all of a sudden you have these raving fans because you show up consistently all the time. So a brand really allows you to communicate why choose you and why to continue to choose you.
Jess:
I love that. That’s great. Yeah, that’s very cool. Okay, so let’s talk about some of the places and aspects where your brand comes into play. For example, websites, social media, like what all does a brand apply to and what kind of things should you be paying attention?
Jodi:
Yeah, that’s another good question. So the brand identity, so those visual pieces like the actual tangible, what your customers can see and feel really, you could just go through your business and look at every single, I call them touch points, where your customers interact with your business. So if you’re an online business that might be a website, your social media, your email newsletter, your email signature just anything, any communication with your clients that you’re sending that they actually see. Anything that they see that’s part of your brand identity, it’s pretty simple. You can just go through and make a list of every touch point that your business has. It’ll depend on what your business is, if you’re brick and mortar, that’s your physical space, your front desk. It could even be your staff uniforms or how they dress when they’re at work. All of those things are actually considered part of your brand or your brand identity.
Jess:
Because they’re all giving an impression of you, whether exactly you’re being intentional about it or not.
Jodi:
Basically every touch point serves as an opportunity for you to actually communicate with your customer and to actually tell them “why you”. It really is an opportunity to communicate.
Jess:
I love that. So looking at all those different touch points how can we evaluate whether all of them are getting consistent branding? Like what types of things should we look for?
Jodi:
Yeah. Well if you just want to break down into just visual pieces for simplicity’s sake, so we’re going to assume that you’ve already answered all the important questions. That you’re looking for things like your logos to match across all of your touch points. For some businesses they’ll actually go through a rebrand or they’ll have changed their logo at some point during the course of the business’s life cycle. Sometimes that old logo will still be kicking around, say on a letterhead or on the business card. It’s really important to actually make sure that all those logos match across every single touch point. Same thing with colors. If you don’t have a few standard colors that you use for your brand, you might want to look into doing something like that where you actually use the same colors and use them down to the letter. There are actually codes that you could have for them so you can make sure you’re really using the same shade of blue on everything that you create for your business.
And then fonts is another way too that’s probably the number one error I see when people are inconsistent, is there font usage. It seems like a simple thing, but it can be really important. You don’t want to be this classic modern luxury business and then be using these fonts that don’t match with that or you’re just using 12 different fonts. If you’re using more than six fonts you probably want to pair it down and stick with one to three.
Jess:
And again, just to kind of recap all of this, the reason for kind of paring down the fonts and having the same colors that you use again and again is to kind of create that identity and a certain feel that you have and not cause confusion about who you are, who you’re reaching, right?
Jodi:
Yeah, exactly. You create awareness and then they know what to expect every time they see something that’s your business. They’re not caught off guard, they’re not surprised.
Jess:
Okay. Great. And then so circling back to the brand before the brand identity, cause this is kind of, again, for a lot of people seeking to explore their brand and to get something started, they’re thinking mostly about colors. Thinking about fonts. They’re not thinking about these big questions. And so I just want to talk about some of these questions that you should answer in order to create your brand.
Jodi:
Yeah, there are a few different questions. Now, this is a nonexhaustive list here. I just had kind of the top ones. But the number one question I would ask is, who do you serve? So like we talked about before, if you answer “everyone”, you probably need to reevaluate the answer and truly think about who is your business serving, who do you want it to serve? Cause that is one of the filters for your decision making when it comes to the actual brand, like the logos, colors, fonts. Who do you serve is the question number one. And then question number two is what are three words that would describe your business or your service? That’s another question that I like asking cause it starts to get into that more creative kind of bigger picture answers. Like are you a business that’s really bold? Are you fun? Are you exciting or are you a spa and you want to be calm and serene? Those words can really serve as a filter for your decision making. You should answer what makes you unique as well. Knowing why they should pick you or pick you over your competition. That’s usually a good question to answer. And that’s a hard one. I know for myself personally even, that’s been a tricky question to answer. And then the last one is it’s really about the feeling of your brand. Again, it’s kind of like that three words to describe you, but it’s really about how do you want people to feel each time and they interact with your business. When they see your business and they interact with your business, those two things should go hand in hand. It’s the same thing if you want it to be a calming stream well you might play relaxing music and have this really pastel color palette. Cause again that filters your decision making.
Jess:
Those are great questions. And it’s funny because you hear them and you’re like, “that’s a really obvious, simple question” but I have no idea how to answer it. You can ask someone who has been in business for a really long time those questions and they’ve never thought about it. And it’s just really easy to just run when you’re in a business and when you stop and think about those little questions like that, it can be so impacting and really just shift your business in such a way that makes success so much easier. It just makes every aspect easier.
Jodi:
Yeah, I definitely think the “who do you serve?” question is probably the number one question that you should have an answer to before you begin anything. Because that’s what all the rest of your identity, you’re trying to serve those people. Therefore your identity should serve those people as well. Yeah. And if you’re putting stuff out before you know that, then maybe people aren’t buying and you don’t know why and you get frustrated and maybe it’s just because you don’t know how you’re selling to everyone in the beginning. And it takes some time and that those answers will shift over time as well. And that’s sometimes when people choose to rebrand or they, they actually change the visuals of their business to match. And sometimes you just need to adjust what you’ve already created to, you know, to kind of fall in line with your new answers. But definitely it’s a good starting point.
Jess:
Yeah. That’s great. All right. The last thing I wanted to talk about is I encounter a lot of small businesses, startups and solo entrepreneurs who are trying to chase their dreams, but they’re on a very tight budget. They can’t afford necessarily to work with a graphic designer yet. I wanted to talk about kind of some actionable tips, which I feel like we already packed a lot into this, but it could just be a summary but some actual tips that you would suggest people kind of go out on their own do right now and be able to work on their brand on their own, what is something they could do right now?
Jodi:
Yeah. Well, I would actually say there are probably three different starting points. Depending on where you are in your business and with answering those questions, that’s what I would use as a starting point. Starting point number one is that you already have some brand identity elements. You know what your brand personality is. So you already have that foundation set. If that’s case you’re just going through listing out your touch points, and then making sure that your fonts, colors and your logo are already being used across all of those touch points. That would be starting point number one. You’re established, you already have those elements and you just get to go check off, like a checklist. I actually have a checklist on my website as well.
If you’re wanting to revisit your branding, you can get Jodi’s branding checklist on her website here.
Then starting point number two is that if you can actually describe the personality of your brand but you don’t have the elements, then there are some really good free resources out there to create some of those elements yourself. Like Canva, I always send clients to canva.com, a really good free design resource. You can create everything from logos to presentations there. You can color code so you can set up your whole brand everything on Canva so you can be consistent. It’s just a great resource. And again, that’s starting point number one, if you don’t have a Canva account but you have all the elements, go make a canva account and put all your elements into that account because it’s so helpful. That being said, tho, there’s a ton of options on Canva. So my only word of caution is to make sure you have those questions answered because you are going to get all the tools and all the colors and all the templates in Canva and you need something to filter out. Makes sure you have the questions answered and then Canva.com is your best friend. You don’t have the questions answered, it’s like a vortex of decision making.
That brings me to step or to starting point number three, which is if you don’t know what the personality of your brand is and you can’t answer those questions that we just talked about, that would be the best starting point. Start there. Answer those questions, do a little bit of soul searching in terms of what your business is about, who you’re serving and then proceed to that starting point number two.
Jess:
Yeah. And there were some great questions in this interview, but also if you Google what should I think about before I start a business? Anything like that, you get some awesome questions that pop up. They get the wheels turning. And bounce ideas off of other people, you know it’s also helpful just to get those questions out.
Jodi:
Yeah, yeah. If you Google a brand strategy you can get questions, you could get a much more comprehensive list of questions and even worksheets. There are so many people out there sharing that information.
Jess:
Yeah, for sure. I love it. I did think of one more question I want to throw out there cause I get this a lot with with people, businesses that I encounter, especially if the business is the person’s name, you know, like just first last name LLC or something like that. People ask me if they need a logo. And so like if you have consistent colors consistent fonts, who your people are, do you feel like people need a logo? How would you answer that?
Jodi:
Oh, that’s a great question. I mean a logo is really a small piece in the puzzle. And if you’re using your name as your business title, I probably would still have something small. Logos can be different styles. Some of them have icons, some of them have word marks. I would say maybe in that scenario a word mark would be fine, which just means that you always use the same font to type out your name. That’s kind of the big thing. That way it’s almost like your signature. So that would be my suggestion in that scenario is maybe you don’t need a big full blown logo and you don’t need an image or an icon to go with it, but you should be very, very picky in what font you use and then consistently use those fonts. And usually imagery too, is really important in that scenario to where you’re always choosing similar style images.
Jess:
Yeah. Which again, represent what your clients would like to see and what resonates with them. Well, thank you so much. I think that’s fantastic and very helpful. Thanks for sharing with me.
Jodi:
You are welcome. Thanks for having me.