Brand Personality Guide
Joining a tech startup as the fourth team member, before the company even had a name, was one of the best design experiences I could have asked for. My primary focus when I joined was to design the product, a dashboard to help brands see how their visual media was performing on Pinterest. Shortly after, this dashboard expanded to other visual social media platforms and new features and tools were added to the arsenal. When the team was small, I wore all of the design hats. As we grew (eventually to over 160), I was able to focus my time on the brand and marketing.
One of my projects during this time was a brand refresh and personality guide.
Creating the plan
The project began with a plan. In addition to defining the brand, we also wanted to give it a bit of a refresh from the original brand I had designed. Fresher, more vibrant colors, a simplification of the logo, a new illustration style. During this time, I also interviewed numerous stakeholders to get their thoughts on the current state of the brand and where they would like to go.
The Summary
Let’s say your brand is a friend of yours and you are introducing them to another friend. What would you say? How would you describe them? Using the details from the interviews, I created this summary.
Characteristics
Of course, we want to be every great adjective out there, but what we were at our core? We defined ourselves as smart, charismatic, and trustworthy.
Execution
From there, I gave specific instruction for how this personality would be executed across different mediums like campaigns, events, and web.