Understand My Brand

I’ve decided to take some steps forward with my face painting and party planning business. I need a logo, I need a professional website and blog design, and I need an advertisement for publications. This led me to the Austin Design Group, a yahoo group of freelance graphic designers who are somewhat more affordable than the larger scale operations out there. And Austin Design Group introduced me to Barbara Austin of Sweet Dreamz Designs, a local Austin company. Barbara has the most delightful personality – her blog is lovely. Looking over her design packages I started thinking about my brand identity.

What is a brand? This is a complex question. To the entrepreneur explaining brand identity is like asking you to explain who you are as a person. Depending on your business the answer may obvious, but for me the answer is complicated.

My company is Woo Who! The name Woo Who was inspired by my children whose names begin with a W an H and an O. Sometimes we need an injection of enthusiasm around here, something a shout of Woo Who! can do. Woo Who is the perfect name for a business whose business is to facilitate creativity and fun.

The name is Woo Who, the byline is “Something to get excited about!”

I have three kids, as I mentioned, and my youngest was born with a rare genetic disease that completely turned our lives upside down. Originally sewing for my Etsy shop was my creative outlet, but sewing requires a lot of time, a luxury I no longer have. SO I turned to face painting and party planning/character appearances. Face painting and dressing up as a character for parties meets several needs: first,  it is fun. It fits into a small package and doesn’t take up an entire room of my house, lol. It gets me out of the house and into the community, breaking down the walls of isolation that comes with parenting any type of child whether your children are typical or not. Its a creative outlet that pushes me to think on a higher level as I interact with large groups of people of varying ages and desires. And the satisfaction that comes with  having made twenty or thirty people over-the-moon happy is infectious! I leave every job on cloud nine. This impacts me as a parent – I am a better mother for what I do.

So I think I understand my brand. I understand who I am as an entrepreneur and the needs my business must satisfy – both financial and personal. The big question is how do you decide on an image to represent your brand??? I am fickle and frequently change things up because I get tired of looking at the same blog background, and the same website layout. How do I decide on an image I can remain loyal to?

One of my goals for my blog was to explore my journey as an entrepreneur and work through the issues of business development in hopes that another scattered person out there might benefit from my experience. That goal was written months ago – better late than never! Hopefully I will continue to be able to find the time to write about my journey. I would sincerely love any feedback you would care to leave in the comments section!