To Brand or not to Brand

Please welcome Cari Quinn, graphic artist. Hi, Cari!

Hello, Dayana. Thank you for having me today, Dayana!

While my first love is writing, my day job is as a graphic designer and proofreader at a community newspaper. Having worked in graphic design for almost a decade, I'm used to seeing what works - and what doesn't - on the page. Clarity and brevity are essential, and most importantly, a design piece is only as good as it reproduces.

But this doesn't apply to writers, right? Not so. Your brand is a visual interpretation of you and your product.

What color scheme have you chosen for your webpage and/or blog? Is it mirrored in your bookmarks, business cards and any other promotional materials? Perhaps not, but if you carry through your theme, the more recognizable your name becomes. Preferably, this theme works with your tagline and with your product. Maybe you write all over the map (as I do) or maybe you have two main genres in which you write. In those cases, generic is best, but perhaps there are design elements you can pick up that apply to both and would work well on your webpage and bookmarks, for example. An easy one...do you write paranormal romance featuring werewolves and vampires? A three-quarter moon in the night sky might be the perfect element to evoke the reaction you're hoping to create in your reader. In my opinion, simpler is best. You're trying to create a feeling, not bombard the senses. Just as a lipstick imprint on an envelope is sexy and romantic, it's also clean and basic. That's what you're looking for. That snap of instant recognition that, if you're lucky, will become something your readers instantly associate with you.

That's also where your tagline comes in. Do you have one? A tagline encapsulates your work in one or two sentences and lets your reader know what to expect when they pick up your story. When I started writing a few years ago, my tagline was "Because love - and sex - can be funny." I chose this because everything I write seems to have a thread of humor running through it. As I went along, I realized that tagline didn't work for me anymore, because I was branching out. Yes, my stories still usually have a humorous element (or so I hope!) but I'm also writing darker pieces now, such as Urban Fantasy. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with "What's more dangerous than falling in love?" I'm a romance writer, and by putting that word "dangerous" in my tagline, hopefully the reader gets the impression that there may be darker aspects to my writing. Even when I write straight contemporary, that tagline works.

Being succinct is key. Think what you would want someone to say about your work, and see if you can tie that into your tagline. If you're really creative (and we all are, or we wouldn't be writers), look for ways to tie your tagline into the branding of your website and promotional materials. You write paranormal and cozy mysteries? Have that slice of moon on the top of your webpage? Maybe add a gleaming silver knife with one drop of blood to represent the mysterious side of your writing persona. And perhaps your tagline is, "Sexy romance filled with things that go bump in the night." Okay, not great, but it's just an example for you to use as a springboard for your own ideas.

I also think having a logo is important. YOU are your own company. And the more places that people see your specific logo and tagline, always represented in the same way, the more often that becomes imprinted on a reader's mind. Recognition is your best friend as an author. If Sally Jane is sitting home looking for a spicy book to download and she remembers seeing your splashy, unique logo on a blog somewhere, you may just be the one whose books she searches out to read. In this time of self-promotion, it's vital you give yourself every opportunity to succeed. In case any of you stop by my blog, I don't have a new logo up yet. ;) But I will soon!

One last word about branding and creating a mood with your promotional materials. As I mentioned earlier, a design is only as good as it reproduces, which is why blogs that are dark in color with red or white type rarely work well. Anything that is hard to read gives your potential reader a reason to bypass your page - something you do not want. True, there are sites like Readability, http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ which can translate most blogs/webpages into something easy on the eyes, but most people don't want to go through that extra step. Keep your design elements to the tops and sides of your pages and leave the areas where you type as clean as possible. And be brief, as brief as you can while still getting your message across. I love to read, but when I see a blog that's a page long or more, I cruise on by. At best, I hit the highlights. Which brings me to another point. Try to break long passages into sections, with bullets that make it easy to skim. Anything that encourages your reader to stay a while is a very good thing!

Thank you for reading! I'll be around to answer any questions or comments. I'm considering doing a series of posts on this subject on my own blog, so please stay tuned!

Cari Quinn
www.cariquinn.blogspot.com
Wow! Great information isn't it? Thanks for sharing all this, Cari. Please stop by again any time you like. I really enjoyed this.

Also, for those of you who haven't checked out my blog post yesterday, I talk about additional exposure ideas and thoughts. Thanks for dropping by today.