One way I like to think of branding is as a relationship between your business and your customers. So if we take on this model of a relationship, then a brand is about more than a logo. More than a “cool” business card. More than the bells and whistles of a website. A brand done well elicits an emotion… hopefully a positive emotion like loyalty, love, happiness.

It’s easy to see this with a well-established brand like Coca Cola, for example. Over the years, Coke has gotten us to feel warm and fuzzy using cute polar bears, great music, whimsical bubbles, etc. Every commercial, print ad, billboard, bottle and can is somehow about good times, being social and just plain fun. This commercial from 1971, is congruent with the Coca Cola we know today.

Great, so how do you do accomplish this when you’re starting your brand from scratch? Well, the same way you accomplish trust when you meet some one new. The same way you go from a passing glance to falling in love, moving in together, getting married, and staying in love. It happens in every little communication, and interaction. It happens with every choice you make. It happens when you, a business owner, meet some one for the first time. When you hand her your business card. When he visits your website. When she sees your ad in the program for her kids’ high school play.

Certainly your logo and website play a role in your branding, and they do not equal your branding. Branding is about consistency across everything to do with your business. Your graphics, your marketing materials, your language, your customers’ buying experience. If you’re a solo-prenuer, you are a part of your brand too. The way you dress and speak count.

The goal is for all these pieces, and the space between them, to have a consistent message that ellicits positive emotions in the people who you like to work with. That is what a brand is for.

It’s such a nice font
How ’bout we use Papyrus?
Actually, it’s not.

From a typography standpoint, it’s gimmick-y, poorly kerned, and the letterforms are un-impressive.  From a branding standpoint, Papyrus is so overused that it appears in print and online in everything from restaurant menus and homemade tri-fold brochures to travel websites and yoga dvds.

I think that maybe when it first came out, it may have been intended to have a middle-eastern/Egyptian feel to it. But since it’s been a standard font on every Mac and Windows computer since the mid-1980′s, it’s become the go-to typeface for someone who is trying to be creative. And I don’t mean to be harsh – recently Papyrus was used in the movie title and subtitles in Avatar – so I’m poking at professional designers and bootstrapping entrepreneurs equally. If you’d like to see more, check out Papyrus Watch.

And while Papyrus is probably the most recognizably over-used, abused and misused typeface, it’s not alone. Another one to avoid like the plague is Comic Sans. Originally intended for things like cartoon speech bubbles, it’s also now used in everything from medical services to “wet paint” signs. My point with all this is to steer anyone who makes any type decisions ever, away from those default fonts on your computer to the vast array of type available on the internet… much of it for free. Dafont is an excellent source of free fonts. Also try Urban Fonts and Acid Fonts.  Always check the fine print if you’re using it commercially.

Images from www.papyruswatch.com and the Flickr Comic Sans Pool

Almost everyone understands the effects of branding done well. We’ve all bought something without really knowing why, or have become loyal to a company for some reason or another. A brand done well almost goes unnoticed, because it just plain works and makes sense. It quietly becomes a household name, a part of your life you might take for granted.

I grew up with brands like Kraft, K-Mart, Schwinn, Atari, and Buick. They were characters in my childhood, as much as my dog or my friend down the street. I interacted with them daily, I depended on them to meet my expectations.

Those have been replaced with Whole Foods, The Gap, Honda, Apple Computer… still, I interact with them daily and depend on them to meet my expectations. The hows and whys of these relationships is what this blog is designed to explore. While I create and build brands for small business, I constantly study how other brands are created and built; what works, what doesn’t, and what blows us away.