The creative process can be painstaking, but there’s no better feeling than seeing your idea come to life. The same rules apply if you’re a rock star, artist, or an aspiring entrepreneur – you must develop your skillsets and discover your unique identity that draws people to your brand.

In order to discover your brand identity, you don’t always have to lose sleep or go soul searching in the Mojave desert. You can take a structured approach to the creative process.

When we get started on a new creative journey, our first step is to break down your needs into the simplest form. Here’s how our discovery process sometimes looks:

• Basic research
• Goal breakdown
• Creative briefing
• Brand identity questionnaire
• Interviews
• Comprehensive research
• Brand profile
• Brand Identity (Style) Guide

One consistent theme in each of these steps: we are looking for a comprehensive understanding of your brand identity. Once you have the items listed below, you are well on your way to getting your getting your creative project off the ground!

Brand identity
A complete brand should have a consistent look, feel, tone, voice, message, and an archetype (characterization of your brand). Having a developed brand identity is key in all stages of the creative process, and can save you countless hours when hiring designers, content writers, developers, and marketers. The visual identity of your brand is often expressed through a Brand Identity Guide (Visual Identity Guide). This guide characterizes your brand, and also  provides the technical design specs so you can easily collaborate with creatives.

A complete business plan
This may seem obvious, but in the early stages of business development, your ideas may be open to changes. Having changes or pivots in your business plan are a natural part of the process, but these changes are also likely to cause disturbances in your creative process. At minimum, we recommend you prepare a budget for design materials and well-practiced elevator pitch.

A collaborative mindset
Every creative project is a team effort, and if you are going to be working with other creatives, it’s essential that you each make your expectations clear, and keep consistent communication to keep a synergized vision.