Brand Elements: Change is OK!

I have always been a bit fickle, creatively. I find myself at one point latching onto a topic, style, or aesthetic, only to find something “new” or “better” within a period of time (usually a few days). This can be troublesome when you need to nail down your brand elements for a creative brief, as defining yourself creatively can be challenging and complex. For me, it was (and is still) a worrying part of my journey to complete my CB, but I have come to terms with many of the challenges I found both in the brand elements and the brief as a whole.

A creative brief can be a bit like a torch or lantern to light your way, as I’ve written before. But defining yourself in such an exhaustive manner can be challenging to do, both because it is difficult to know yourself so intimately, and also because it can feel suffocating to define elements of your personality and being in a way that seems so concrete. I struggled with the concept, as freedom to change and grow and be myself is something I place massive value on. I didn’t want to give a part of that freedom up, and this reflected itself most of all in one of the most challenging segments to develop- my brand elements. Things like color, the associations of the senses, tones, shapes, everything having to do with the creative perception I set for myself, named and labeled in a portion of a document- it seemed wrong to me, to limit myself by writing a seeming code of conduct for how I expressed myself creatively.

However, as I went on to understand both the brand elements section and the creative brief as a whole, I discovered that the point of a CB is not to define or limit yourself personally, as the document itself is as fluid and dynamic as you are. You aren’t setting yourself rules, your applying inspiration and self-determinism in a way that is not only tangible, but actually quantifiable. You can define goals and methods of achieving them in ways that are descriptive of who, what, when, how, and why, in ways that you can refer back to or think of in times of uncertainty- and that level of assistance is rare.

The brand elements section is no different in this aspect. You aren’t limiting yourself creatively or cutting off your freedom of expression, you’re simply defining it for reference later- and you can always change the definition, just as your definitions will change as you grow and learn as a human being. I started off with light creams, pastel blues and browns, and a love of clouds- and while most of that is unchanged, I honestly love deep navies, greys, and other colors that are cooler and less temperamental than what I would have picked when I first made my brief. I have changed my color swatch to reflect how I think and act, and that is quite alright with me.

The moral of the story isn’t really about the fact that I discovered it’s OK to change one document- but rather, it’s okay to change aspects of yourself while you work toward a goal. Maybe that goal changes, too. Maybe it all changes completely, and your perspective shifts entirely. And that’s quite alright! Human nature is change, and I came to terms with recognizing the fact that I was not static- ironically, the protest I initially had of not wanting to relinquish freedom over my creative expression made me realize I was afraid of it changing at all. This, like many other lessons I’ve learned in my IMC journey, was a different and harder kind of lesson I had to learn about myself, but hey- I changed from learning it, and as we’ve seen above, change is absolutely fine.