Business Startup Ideas: Where to Draw Inspiration for Branding

When entrepreneurs are developing their business startup ideas, the topic of branding inevitably comes up. It often gets pushed to the side. Startup owners worry about budgets, or think they should fully develop the product before they start on the branding. Sometimes, however, these concerns are just excuses made by entrepreneurs who are secure in their business or development acumen but less sure about the creative aspect of branding. Here are some tips for finding inspiration during the branding process.

Avoid Trying to Imitate What Others in Your Field Are Doing

Let’s start with a place you shouldn’t draw branding inspiration from: your competition. No matter how successful other players in your industry are, imitating their branding when you are developing business startup ideas will only confuse customers and make you look like a pale imitation of a company they already know more about. The key to successful branding is differentiation. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take a close look at what the competition is doing, because you should. You should zig where they zag.

Take Advantage of the Internet

There are tons of amazing design and branding blogs and catalogues out there that can jumpstart your creative thinking about creating the look and feel of your brand. Collect every photo, paragraph, and illustration that you like. What can it say about your brand? Eventually, look for a common thread through what you’ve collected, and you’ll probably find the basis of a brand. Of course, there’s always a word of caution with looking at branding design that others have already done–you have to make sure not to take too much inspiration and accidentally plagiarize someone else’s hard work.

Take a Deep Look at Your Vision

Once you’ve the landscape, it’s time to turn inward. Think about your vision and how to best communicate it through a brand. The first few things that come to mind–the obvious stuff–isn’t what you’re looking for. If your business has something to do with education and the first visuals you think of are apples and pencils, keep brainstorming. You want to come up with a unique style that says something about your brand specifically rather than about the area that you work in.

Branding can be a real challenge, and many people who are passionate about their business startup ideas would much rather work on developing products and services than on creating a brand. That’s where the branding and naming experts at A Hundred Monkeys come in. We have decades of experience helping entrepreneurs with great business startup ideas figure out how to articulate their vision and get information about their company to the people who need to hear it in an effective way. Contact us today to find out how we can help your startup take off.