Branding

One of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received came from a client after we launched our new Polka Dot Beaver website: “It feels like you.”

At first, I took it as a compliment on the design. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize it was something else. They weren’t commenting on the colours, typography, or layout – it was about alignment. The new visual identity and website felt like a natural extension of how I think, how I work, and how I approach design.

Every founder leaves fingerprints on their business

In small- and mid-sized businesses, the founder’s influence is often very visible.

The way a founder sees the world inevitably shapes the business they build. Their standards become the company’s standards. Their curiosity shapes the direction of the work. Their communication sets the brand’s tone. Their values influence who they hire, the projects they take on, and the decisions they make.

Over time, these patterns accumulate into something larger: culture.
Culture shapes experience. Experience becomes reputation.
And reputation is what people ultimately call a brand.

In other words, a brand is not what a business says about itself, it’s what people consistently experience through it.

The founder’s influence is strongest in the beginning

Not every brand permanently reflects its founder’s personality. Large, established companies often evolve far beyond the individual who started them. But in early- and mid-stage founder-led businesses, particularly in creative industries, the founder’s worldview is often the dominant shaping force. And even when companies scale, what often remains is not the personality itself, but principles, systems, or a cultural imprint originating with the founder.

Brand archetypes changed the way I think about branding

The one book that changed how I see people and brands is The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson.

It explains how brands can resonate deeply by aligning with one or two of twelve universal Jungian archetypes. By tapping into these recurring psychological patterns, brands create stronger emotional recognition and connection.

Once I learned about archetypes, I started noticing them everywhere in people. These patterns become even more visible when someone starts a business. This is why I don’t see archetypes as something you choose for a brand, I see them as something you recognize.

Founder-led brands make this visible

Some companies intentionally build their brand around the founder’s persona.

For example, in an interview on the FINIEN podcast, the co-founder of LIV Watches described how the brand was built around the founder’s persona because he embodied the values and attitude the company wanted to express. Instead of inventing a fictional identity, they expressed a real one.

To be clear, this is not a universal rule for every brand.

It applies most directly to:

• founder-led businesses
• independent or early-stage companies
• creative studios and design practices

It becomes less direct in large, multi-generational or heavily institutionalized organizations such as global corporations, where branding is shaped by systems, leadership layers, and long-term market evolution.

In those cases, brands often function less like expressions of a single personality and more like cultural systems built over time.

The strongest brands don’t feel manufactured

Before I think about colours, typography, or layouts, I try to understand:

• Who is the founder?
• What do they value?
• What do they refuse to compromise on?
• What kind of work feels meaningful to them?
• How do clients experience them?
  

These questions point to the underlying character that already exists. Once that character is understood, design becomes much simpler, because it isn’t about inventing an identity, but expressing one.

The strongest brands feel coherent because the inside and outside tell the same story. People don’t always articulate that coherence, but they feel it immediately – just like my client did.

A few years ago, our visual identity and website looked very different.

Our logo was a simple logotype with coloured circles embedded in the round letters to form a polka dot pattern. Our website was a clean, white, generic template with our work presented as a gallery. It wasn’t bad – but it wasn’t memorable either. There was no story, no clear point of view, and I struggled with marketing because I didn’t know what made us different.

Everything changed when I dug deeper and created a new visual identity. I wasn’t just designing a new logo; I was redefining how the company would be perceived. And the website became more than a portfolio; it became an experience that communicated our thinking, values, and approach.

After that, conversations with clients felt different. The business felt more established, more intentional, and more distinctive. The design work hadn’t suddenly changed. What changed was the alignment between our internal world and its external expression. The perception shifted, and we started attracting more aligned clients.

That’s when I realized, as a designer, that branding isn’t about making a business look different. It’s about making its true identity visible.

Branding doesn’t change who you are. It amplifies who you are and communicates it with clarity.

Before we talk about design, strategy, or websites, it’s important to define a few terms clearly. A lot of confusion in branding doesn’t come from a lack of talent or effort, but from people using the same words to mean completely different things. This is how I define them when I work with clients.

What is a brand?

Everyone has a brand.

Yes – you read that correctly. Allow me to explain.

A brand is the impression someone is left with after interacting with you (as a person) or your business. Some may call this reputation. I tend to think of it as the sum of emotional and cognitive impressions formed over time. So when a number of people consistently describe a similar feeling about you, you have a brand, whether you’ve intentionally shaped it or not. You may not think of it this way because you haven’t designed it consciously, but it still exists in every interaction.

In short, a brand is perception. And perception is always happening, whether we design it or not.

What is branding, then?

Branding is the intentional process of shaping that perception through design, communication, and experience.

It is how we translate internal structure into something external and recognizable. The goal of branding is to express who you are, what you believe, and how you work in a way that people can consistently understand and trust.

Branding doesn’t create a brand. It reveals one. Or at least, it should. The strongest branding isn’t invented, but it uncovers what is already true and gives it a language people can understand.

Simply, branding is the act of shaping perception with intention. And importantly: branding doesn’t change who you are. It clarifies and amplifies it.

The layers behind branding

When I work with clients, I think about four connected layers:

Vision – Where are we going?
Values – What principles guide our decisions?
Voice – How do we communicate those ideas?
Visuals – How do we make that story immediately recognizable?

Most branding work starts with visuals. I believe it should end there. Because visuals are not the foundation of a brand – they are its expression. Without clarity in Vision, Values, and Voice, visuals become decoration instead of communication.

What does good branding actually do?

When internal structure and external expression are aligned, perception shifts.

People begin to trust you more quickly because what they see, read, and experience is consistent. It feels coherent. It feels like you.

Marketing becomes less of a push and more of a continuation of something already understood. Your brand becomes a point of recognition, not because it is louder, but because it is clearer. And clarity is what people remember.

Closing thought

Your visual identity creates an image.
Every interaction leaves an impression.
Over time, those impressions form perception.
That perception is your brand.

If your current brand feels disconnected from your business, it usually isn’t a visual problem – it’s a clarity problem.

And this is where we begin, with a simple question: Who are you, really?