Build Your Brand On Facts Not Fads

Autumn Evans was a guest on Marta the Minimalists Podcast. She discusses her psychology-driven process to build brands that are built on facts, not fads so that you can create a brand that connects with your heart and soul and to your ideal clients. You can watch the clip above to learn more about her signature 3-step process or you can read the transcript below. You can also listen to the full version of the podcast.

TRANSCRIPT OF CLIP FROM PODCAST:

Autumn: So I got into the design world through web design. And then I started doing some branding and I got into brand psychology because as a designer, I had all these strategies in my head and I wanted some way to sort of communicating that to my clients clearly, because as a designer, you know, you have all of these thoughts, like running through your head and all these strategies that are coming up and sometimes it’s really hard to communicate that and get it put out into words. 

And so I needed some sort of foundation to pull it all together. I had been reading some books and I read the book, The Hero And The Outlaw, and that’s when everything kind of clicked together.

And I was like, oh my God, this is exactly what I’m doing. And this is the words, this is how I’m doing it. I didn’t even kind of realize that, and I became obsessed, but to be honest, I’ve always been obsessed with like personality tests and psychology. I took a ton of courses in high school, and always thought I would be a psychologist. And then I went into college (and I’m multi-passionate).

So I have many different roads that I went down in college and I always enjoyed psychology. And so this really brought everything together with me connecting my passion for how people act and why they act the way they do. And getting into the heart and soul of who you are. 

So one of my goals with my clients, when I build their brand, is to really embody who they are so that they look at this and they’re like, oh, this is totally me. I want something that is everlasting, that has a foundation. So through my signature three-step process, I’m really able to get down to the root of who they are, what their brand is, and really have that come to life.

So when you think about brands, we need to think about them as living people, brands have personalities, just like we do, they evolve and grow just like people. So we wanna make sure that there’s a firm foundation to build that on. 

Marta: So tell the business owners or business leaders who are listening, like how does this apply to them and their website and their branding?

Autumn: So a lot of times we see when we’re trying to figure out what our branding should look like a lot of times people just go directly towards the look of the brand. And so what I wanna encourage is that people are not just looking at what’s popular, what’s beautiful out there, but really to find something that really connects with who they are and that’s authentic and true to them. Because you know, like one of my all-time sayings is let’s build your brand on Facts, Not Fads because fads come and go and what’s popular today is, might not be popular tomorrow.

So we wanna build your brand. We want it to be everlasting and to be able to grow with you and connect with you as a person. So that’s really important to just not follow like the fads you know, the fads that are going on to just build something that really connects and means something to you.

Marta: Awesome. So what are the three psychologies that you Use? 

Autumn: I do a three-step process and it helps me get an overall picture of who they are and what they wanna communicate.

The first step is the heart story.

I first learned about this process with Emma Natter. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, but it completely changed how I got down to the heart story. I ask a series of questions that boils down to a core memory and are related to how they view the world. The question that I ask as we’re meditating is, “how would the world be a better place if they felt this?”

This process, a lot of times, it’s surprising and emotional because everyone has a core memory that has changed their life, even if they don’t realize it. As entrepreneurs, we have started our businesses for a reason. And a lot of times we know what that surface-level reason is, but usually, there’s a core memory behind it that has shaped your life. And it can be kind of surprising what it is. So that’s the first step. 

The second step is taking that core memory and kind of digging deeper, asking a ton of questions, and finding the values and the overall goal of your brand, as it relates to your passion of why you started this business. And that’s where I really hone in on what brand archetype they are. And the brand archetypes are based on Carl Jung’s theory of personalities that there are 12 different types of personalities.

And so the different types, if you wanna go into that, 

Marta: yeah. 

Autumn: There’s the hero. That is the person whose overall goal is to empower people, to change the world.

The outlaw who wants to destroy what isn’t working.

The magician who wants to help people make their dreams come true.

The Explorer who wants to find freedom through adventure

The gesture who just wants to lighten up the world 

The caretaker who wants to be of service and help people

The every man, or, sometimes this is called the citizen who wants to create a community of belonging.

The lover archetype wants people to feel a connection through relationships. 

The Sage archetype, this is the biggest one that you could think of, um, like Oprah Winfrey, who wants to change the world through knowledge and information.

The innocent, who wants to build a safe world.

The ruler who wants to create order

The creator who wants to create something of lasting value.

And so by finding this archetype, we can better understand how to communicate with the base foundation of who our brand is and the main goal of the brand, and with this that’s where we really find the voice and the communication style of the brand. Where with the heart story, we found the, “the foundation”, and “the why”  this is more of like the “what we are” and “how we’re gonna communicate”.

And then the third step is color psychology. 

And this one I am totally obsessed with. I first found out about color psychology in the book, how to style your brand by Fiona Humberstone. Since then I have taken her color psychology course, and I’ve dug a lot deeper into it, and done a lot of research. This is actually another theory that is based on Carl Jung as well, but it’s taking a step further. So anyone in the seventies probably has heard of seasonal color psychology, “are you a summer, winter, or fall style?” So it got really popular back then. But I’m using that process towards brands specifically, and I use this to determine how a brand should look outwardly, what colors, what kinds of shapes, what should be the photograph style and the fonts, and this really sets the tone for the brand.

And also this is using nature, what God has already created,  to like see how colors come together in nature. So that’s another reason I really love color psychology. I’m a Christian, and it really just kind of relates to what we already know is true about our world through, you know, how nature reacts.

So spring. When you think about spring, that’s when everything is like blooming and coming to life. So these spring brands are forward-thinking, inspirational, creative, energetic, and transparent.

And this looks like light and bright colors with yellow undertones and high saturation. You think about tulips and the greens that are blooming at that time. So we want fonts and patterns to have like the appearance of movement, just like we see in nature. Like the bees are buzzing and the flowers are blooming. We wanna kind of carry that feeling over into the fonts. So maybe some swish fonts and some rounded things and anything like a logo that maybe has a gif kind of style to it that it’s changing. So that’s really like the spring brand. 

And then the summer is like the hot and active season. It’s also the season of luxury. We think about all the people going on vacations. So brands in this season are elegant, efficient, productive, and well organized. This looks like cool, delicate, and muted colors. We want rounded and soft, patterns and rounded fonts,  just to kind of state that kind of luxury kind of feel.

Um, and then fall. Now, this one is a really, a lot of brands fall into the fall category. <laugh> so fall is the productive season. You think about like school coming back into session, the harvest times, and the brands that are fall are warm, friendly, earthy, passionate, organic, and have family-based values.

This season has the widest range of colors. If you look at like nature and fall, there are so many colors everywhere, and those colors are warm and intense and a little bit muted. And we want handwritten fonts and patterns, some illustrations, anything that looks approachable to kind of brings that warm and friendly aspect back into it.

Then there’s winter and winter is a special season. It is the season of extremes. So these are usually like either one way or the other. Brands that fall into this category are visionary, cutting edge, grounded expert high-end. So this looks like cool, intense, and strong colors. And this is the only season that you can use the color true black. That’s the only season that can use that color.

Now with the other seasons, you can have a dark blue or a dark green to pull those brands together.

So brands with the winter seasons can be either one of two things. They can be extremely colorful, bright neons, all of these colors that seemingly, if you’re a minimal kind of person that seemingly clash to you or something like that, but like all of the neon colors, or the other extreme of being very, um, minimal and understated. So it’s gonna be one extreme of the other. We want fonts and patterns that are strong, geometric, and dramatic because these are the experts in the field.

Those are the four seasons and that’s the three-step process I go through.

1. The Heart Story. 
2. The Brand Archetypes
3. The Color Psychology.