Winter, a glorious season of extremes.

Winter Brand Personality is a visual representation of confident, self-assured and bold brands.

It will be a perfect visual style for a Ruler or Rebel archetype, but if done well can also serve Lover and Creator. It will enhance the subconscious messaging for brands in high-end fashion, luxury travel or banking & finance and business coaching,

Winter visual style will represent brands who are decisive, driven, perfectionists, leaders and experts in their field. They are strong and bold, communicate directly and conquer the world with ease. They can plan and see the big picture as well as jump straight to detail, with focus and objectivity. They simply get things done.

If you are this type of brand, Winter Brand Personality might be for you.

 

 

Visual style is NOT your brand though.

Don’t make a common branding mistake and only focus on visuals to build your brand.

To learn how to build the whole brand strategy, discover your Brand Archetype and learn:

• who are your ideal clients and what they are longing for,
• what is your brand’s main goal,
• how to build an irresistible brand experience,
• + examples from brands you know.

 

Brand archetypes are a great way to use psychology to tap into your clients and customers emotions and influence them, help you focus your brand WHILE still staying true to your values.

You don’t need to pretend to be somebody else, you don’t need to try to be everything to everyone.

The more you focus, the easier it gets to attract the right customers AND define your brand’s personality (and voice).

So if you’ve been feeling like you:

• need to rebrand again and again
• HUSTLE but never get the MOMENTUM
• are screaming into a VOID

Read on because this is for you.

 

Different people can perceive different brands differently. That’s why it’s so important to only focus on YOUR ideal people and not worry about the rest.

It all is influenced by your brand PERSONALITY.

To really connect with our IDEAL customers and touch their hearts we need to tell a story.

We need to start selling and EXPERIENCE, not the product or service.

And Brand Archetypes help you figure out what that actually is.

Brand Archetypes help us focus and build a consistent character, but that’s not all.

They help us DIFFERENTIATE our brands from others in our niche. You can use them to have a unique take on your niche, build a different personality.

For example: let’s compare Canduby’s chocolate to Snickers. Both are chocolate, but they have totally different personalities.

Cadbury is all about the pleasurable moments (Lover archetype) and Snickers helps you get going again (Hero archetype).

Even though this is the same niche, they are totally different brands.

Or brands Like Tresseme (Girl Next Door Archetype), L’Oreal (Magician) or Magnum Ice-cream (Lover Archetype, all about pleasure).

We all have goals, motivations, fears and personalities.

 

Those things can be organised into 12 Brand Archetypes:

We’ve got 4 core differentiators between Archetypes groups and those are the main goal of the archetype. So there’s:

1. Provide Structure with Caregiver, Ruler and Creator
2. Connect to others: with Girl Next Door, Lover and Joker
3. A spiritual journey with Innocent, Sage and Explorer,
4. and Leave a mark with Rebel, Magician and Hero.

 

 

Once that you know if you’re a Ruler, Lover or Rebel, let’s talk about visuals.

One could think the Winter colour palette would be all about delicate whites and frosty, sunny landscapes.
But it actually is very bold, with bright colours and the only colour season that contains pure white, and black.

 

Winter Color Palette

Colours are bright, strong, intense, clear and often extreme. Choose from ice blue, neon tones of red, lime green, turquoise, black & white, bright and clear yellow and magenta. Those colours can’t be found in such extreme tints in any other colour season palette.

Design inspiration:

Design and layout should be high-contrast and quite minimalistic, depending on which Brand Archetype are you. Have a look at out Pinterest board to get inspired:

|

Textures and patterns

Patterns and textures for Winter can be: black&white, bold, highly contrasted, colorful and bold, in extreme, neon colors.. They can use geometry, round and rectangular shapes mixed together.

 

Photography style

Photos are highly contrasted and hues are strong – think bright colors and bold poses.

Remember: Winter Brand Personality is only an overall visual style guide and can differ from archetype to archetype. Make sure to know what is your archetype so you can represent it with ideal colors, fonts and photography style.

 

Fonts

Choose clean, minimal fonts. The only condition is: they need to be bold.

Perfect fonts for Winter are:

 

 

If you’d like to choose beautiful script fonts that accompany this season, get inspired by these:

Lines and shapes

Shapes for Winter are bold, geometrical and simple. Avoid rounded rectangles (in buttons for example) and if you use oval shapes use circles rather than elipses.

Are you a Winter?

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this season. Does it resonate with you? Let me know in the comments.