Peek into our process: Magnetic Maven
Have you ever wondered what exactly goes into the making of a brand identity design?
Today is a special day—we’re giving you the exclusive, behind-the-scenes peek into our brand design process for our latest project: Magnetic Maven!
Magnetic Maven is an imagined visibility coaching brand which exists to empower ambitious female entrepreneurs to scale their businesses through increased visibility in their digital marketing.
We felt Magnetic Maven would be the perfect first project to peek inside the process because this was entirely a conceptual project instead of a paying client brand. Personal projects, or conceptual designs, are one of our favorite ways to stretch our creative muscles and explore new styles or industries we’re curious to design for. A personal project allowing for full creative freedom in the strategy and design process is ideal for taking readers like you behind the scenes to explore the what, why, and how of brand design!
Curious to learn how a brand like Magnetic Maven is designed? Keep reading for a peek into our brand design process!
Brand concept ideation
While not a part of our client brand design process (since, of course, our clients have real-life businesses!), the brand concept ideation is where all our conceptual branding projects begin.
I’d been eager to lean into a vivid brand identity design style that lines up with our studio’s transition to a similarly bold aesthetic for our own brand identity. When working on client projects, we feel it’s important to adapt our own aesthetic to whatever best aligns with our clients’ brand identities, and we were excited to add a completely unique style to our repertoire of design skills. So in this instance, aesthetic came first, and the next step was to ideate a brand concept that would fit it.
(Side note: this is an approach we never take with client projects. We always encourage our client’s brand identity designs to start with strategy first, aesthetic second. But in this case, since the business didn’t actually exist, we had full liberty to then create an imagined business for which this aesthetic would be natural and strategic.)
What’s critical to understand here is that a brand’s visual look and feel must always be reflective of its foundational strategy.
This means that look and feel isn’t up to personal preference but must be inclusive of the overall strategy of your brand and more specifically, of your brand’s target audience.
Behind the brand strategy
The concept behind the Magnetic Maven brand was a bold, unapologetic approach to marketing and visibility. Imagine if the wild and zany childhood best friend from every ‘90s- and ‘00s movie grew up to become a high-earning “girl boss” who’s now teaching others to follow in her footsteps: that’s who the Magnetic Maven is.
The challenge of the strategy was to dig deep enough into the real need the brand would solve for its audience, which at the core is a self-confidence issue. Female entrepreneurs are often carrying over narratives they heard in their professional career before launching their new ventures: “Don’t be too loud; just do your job quietly; don’t make a ruckus”. Further, earnings can be a self-worth issue (and while it shouldn’t be, it still is)—the less you earn, the less confident you feel, and the less likely you are to feel inspired and empowered to put yourself and your business out there.
The inspiration behind the brand strategy, then, was to dig our heels into the topics of self-confidence and giving the audience permission to be loud, to raise their voice, and be visible. You can’t earn more money if you’re not visible; you can’t be visible if you’re not raising your voice; and you can’t raise your voice if you don’t have the confidence to shout.
So much like a loud, wacky best friend (who’s also a high-earning professional), Magnetic Maven is here to embolden and inspire female entrepreneurs to scale their businesses through increased visibility in their digital marketing—starting from the inside out by tackling their self-confidence first.
Target audience
The target audience for Magnetic Maven is high-earning female entrepreneurs (most likely leading personal brands, such as coaches, speakers, authors, etc.) in their 30s-40s who are ready to take the next step to increase their visibility. While they’re already relatively successful in their careers, they are ready, able, and interested in investing in professional guidance to skyrocket their success.
Our aim was to create a brand that would resonate with a target audience that’s beyond the starting phase of their personal brands yet still needs the visibility coaching that Magnetic Maven has to offer.
What’s more important than audience demographics is psychographics (as we outlined in a recent blog post)—getting into the head of your target audience and really understanding what they want, how they feel about their problems, and why your brand should be important to them.
A critical step of our brand strategy development process is to deeply understand the role your brand will play in the hearts and minds of your clients or customers—what deeper meaning, impact, or benefit your product or service will offer them.
Without this critical step, a brand will remain a business: simply exchanging one item of value for something else of value, and not making that deep personal and emotional connection with the people they serve.
2. Brand visual identity design
From our strategy, we decided that the brand’s core descriptors (the brand attributes) should be BOLD, UNAPOLOGETIC, ELECTRIC, MAGNETIZING, and ENERGIZING.
The brand visual identity design is all of those words (and then some!). We settled on a strong color palette of electric neons, solid black, and a supercharged purple (the direct inverse of the neon green) for warmth and contrast. The pairing of black with neon evokes imagery of lightning and electricity—elements which directly carry over into the logo design.
Primary logo design
For the primary logo design, we wanted a strong feel that spoke to the brand strategy of evoking confidence. The aim was to create a logo that took up space and wasn’t apologetic about it. We played around with customizing the type further but ended up keeping a few minor adjustments for the sake of simplicity, instead rounding out the visual identity design with the “electric horseshoe” icon.
This “electric horseshoe” icon was concepted to allude to the brand name—Magnetic Maven—yet also introduce the concept of electricity and sparks, or in other words, metaphorical synonyms for magnetism. (Think of a successful first date: the words “sparks”, “chemistry”, and “magnetism” are all somewhat interchangeable for a meet-cute, aren’t they?)
How does an icon design like this come about? Lots of sketches, preliminary digital designs, rounds of reviews and feedback, and settling on the final design.
Brand message and tagline
Part of the brand’s visual identity includes the tagline—an abbreviated version of the brand message.
Echoing the theme of luck evoked by the “electric horseshoe magnet” icon and the concept of career success, we developed the tagline: “Fortune favors the magnetic.”
This tagline plays upon the well-known saying that “fortune favors the brave”, customizing it for our brand to let the target audience know that fortune will find them if they develop their brand’s magnetism.
Putting it all together
Application of a brand design is so much more than using the same colors and fonts. To flesh out the brand’s visual identity design and creative direction, we utilized high-contrast, custom-edited imagery that evokes that feeling of electricity, magnetism, and—dare we say it?—a bit of sensual allure that hearkens back to femme fatale icons of classic film noir.
Further marketing and branding will utilize high-contrast imagery to evoke strength, power, and confidence, showing women in stances of strength and self-confidence.
The brand’s social media and website design are likewise bold, unapologetic, and engaging, utilizing the brand’s creative direction and visual identity for a cohesive brand experience across all platforms.
While (for now!) this is the end of Magnetic Maven’s conceptual story, it can be just the beginning of your brand’s story.
Our proven process has helped clients become respected brands in their respective industries, double their revenue within months, and grow brands beyond their wildest dreams. It’s an honor to see our clients reach new heights and build emotionally-engaging brands that resonate and connect with their audience yet are also built for sustainable, long-term strategic growth.
