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Nial: Sophie, graphic design, brand, the whole sort of physical interpretation of your business. You can’t turn street corner without finding you’re tripping over two or three designers and in terms of graphic designing and obviously there’s some fantastic standards and you know, qualities out there in terms but where’s the big difference, when do we need to think that a graphic designer can provide us the product but actually we need you know, a the brand coach, what’s the difference between a graphic designer and a brand coach?
Sophie: It’s a really good question and I’ve spent the last 10 years telling people how they should have a graphic designer rather than just use a printer and I think people are now, have got that, they now understand that actually you know, printers specialize in printing things and graphic designers specialize in designing nice things and making them look pretty and more professional so that they can get a printer that’s going to work really well. So the difference between a designer and a brand coach is kind of a next step up from there. A lot of people think that the graphic designer is responsible for their brand but that’s actually really not true, they’re responsible for making the brand look pretty but they’re not responsible for creating the brand. Actually the creation of the brand, the full identity of the business is 100% on the business owners lap in that one and often they need help to do that because they don’t recognize that they don’t understand it so you know the brand is your stories, the story behind your business so it’s the, you know, it’s the, it’s you really, you know if I was to say to you, you know, why are you here, what do you want to do? It’s similar to the business, you know, what is the business there for? Who is it aiming at? Who is it serving? What is its great goal in life?
That’s what a brand is all about and the graphic designer just you know, displays that for you, it gets that message across in a visual way so actually a brand coach will help you identify what your business is all about, why you’re doing it, you know and where are you going with it, how are you going to get that brand message out there?
Branding started off being you know branding a cow just to identify in a herd and now it’s something, this whole new thing and it has changed a lot over the last hundred years and branding is changing more and more all the time but it’s becoming more and more important and people haven’t quite clocked on to that one yet but you know, branding is, there’s a quote, branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, it’s the impression that you want people to feel, it’s their emotional connection when they come into any aspect of your brand so that’s what you’re trying to create, you’re trying to create an experience for someone to have that makes them want to come back and buy from you which is why a brand coach is different from a designer because they help you figure out what you want to get across. Then you go to the designer, marketer, PR person, whoever’s on your team and you say, this is who we are, this is what we want to say, please can you say it in a good way…
Nial: So the brand coach is helping you find your style, the designer is helping you to render it and actually produce the images and the material to go with it and also the printer is there to actually fulfil that?
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a team effort.
Nial: That’s fantastic, thanks.