Design and branding; graphic design and brand identity. ‘Identity,’ as in, answering that question, ‘Who am I?’
Sorting out these questions of identity takes some work. It takes quite a bit of effort, to be honest. I think that is why most people put it off. Because, at the end of the day, it’s an existential question.
Who am I?
In this post, I’d like to offer a context for brand identity design that zooms way, way, out, and investigates more deeply into ‘identity’. Of course, there’s also the footnote here, which is, we change as we grow. Maybe we can ask,
Who am I, now?
A fundamental building block: ‘Who’
There was a time I worked in newspapers, and we had this thing we had to get to right away, at the top of any article. The five why’s: who what when where why. It’s the first thing in the WWWWWH fill-in-the-blanks chart you get when you are writing a news story. (The ‘h’ is how.)
I spent a lot of time when I was writing stories about people on getting to know people’s way of thinking. I’d say 90% of my conversation time was for the purpose of learning their ‘who.’ I loved feature writing, the most. I wouldn’t just stop at a job title, for example, the way you do in writing newspaper stories. Instead, I would stay with a person’s personal story, and learn about the uniqueness of their story. My goal was to find out something that they would say that helped me understand very clearly the intricacy of their personality. I still remember an architect saying, ‘I like to draw. I like to design.’ And that, along with a portrait photo I took of him, was the pullquote the next day in the paper, front and center. It was his retirement story.
The back-and-forth dialogue in person was how I could uncover a depth and complexity, and even contradictory parts, of someone’s ‘who’. Naturally it takes building rapport. You can’t just walk into an interview and expect people to open up, and share, in this way. But you can build to it.
For me, writing wasn’t about the news, as much as learning about people. Better. So, I moved into brand identity design and set up Design Kompany in 2006 in Seattle. Because talking about people’s stories, values, ideals, dreams, and hopes helped me think about ways to package their brand identity and present to their clients who it was they really were, and since most were owner/operators of small businesses, it worked.
Design x journalism: that’s where I can help. This is my own spin on design, and a way to share something back with those who wanted to go through this uncovering process in a collaborative way, and have a thing that was tangible come of it. A brand mark. A logo. A sense of clarity.
This was wonderful to get to do. I had the chance to explore several hundred ways of thinking through interviews to write feature stories for my newspapers. I was in southwest Ireland, for three years, and when I moved back to the United States, in Seattle, for a total of six. The newspaper work totaled four years for full-time, and bunches of other things, here and there over the years.
Exploring the ‘who am I’ question
I keep finding out as I go that the most confident people, the most relaxed, the least ruffled when there is conflict are those who are quite solid about their ‘who I am’ identity. It’s a fundamental block in building anything of real substance; otherwise, you might quit or give up or run off or sabotage the thing you are making. Because if the ‘who’ question isn’t very cleary articulated, and I should qualify here, and say ‘who for now’ because we do change many times in a lifetime, but yeah, if it’s not crystal clear who you are when you embark on a new venture of any kind, doubt will definitely enter into it, later.
Doubt will mess things up, later. Doubt and anxiety and feeling like something isn’t right. Starting a new project, taking a promotion, moving to a new country, breaking your routine, traveling the world, or having another kid aren’t going to resolve doubt. Clarifying ‘who’ will. This is where Design Kompany’s years of experience helping people to do just that kind of work comes in.
The ‘a-ha’ moment: discovering your way to clarity, breakthrough
I’m Dipika Kohli and I help people figure out how to figure things out, right now, wherever they are in life. We make graphic designs through this studio, so people can have a ‘mark’ that comes out of the process and can be used as a logo, a brand identity, or, sometimes, I’ve seen people use them as tattoos, tooo.
The process is the main agenda at DK. Figuring out things takes time and guidance, and we have a six-step series that works because it took 50+ past explorations to do this exact work to tweak it to be what it is.
I do this from my virtual studio of Design Kompany. Thanks to my background of life in Ireland where I met a million wonderful conversationalists. Thanks also to working in journalism in Seattle where very smart people kept me on my toes in my interviews, I know how to ask the right questions.
My clients and I explore together towards the important places where clarity will fall into place. This works because I also have a good sense of intuition, and we go on these trips, turning and finding our way, until we hit it. There’s a magic moment, an aesthetic moment, of ‘a-ha.’
This is the whole goal of the process at DK. For a while, before the pandemic, I was hosting real-life conversation salons, in which, everyone got a chance to talk. That is one way, I feel, we can find out what we think about things. We can explore, and confirm, our philosophies and ideals, or be challenged to investigate or interrogate them.
It’s the breakthrough that gives you the oomph you need.
Maybe it validates what you think you feel you are, already. Or it unblocks something that was dormant for so, so long. Mayve you were reminded of who you were at sixteen, and this feels the rightest to you, once again. Maybe you just needed to have someone guide you along this process to say, ‘Yeah. This is me. This IS me.’ And from there, you’re unstoppable. This unstoppability comes from knowing who you are. Through the process working with me, ‘Who’ is outlined. (Or, more accurately, ‘Who-for-now.’ Clearly.) And from there, the sky’s the limit. Why waste time that you could be using better, once you know Who am I.
DK’s first tagline was ‘anything is possible’. In a later chapter, we often said ‘lets play?’
We love collaborative conversation and empathetic listening, and use these skills, honed over the years across cultures of Seattle, southwest Ireland, and Kyoto, to discover the unique facets of what makes your brand personality who exactly it is. Then, we delineate it. Your ‘brand concept.’ We shape your visual communications, with graphic design, from there.
As for DK, we’re influenced by people who are curious, open, and engaged in their work. Jazz is influential; so is architecture. The quiet spaces where we can return to solitude, too. Insight, simplicity, discovery. These are what make DK uniquely DK. We invite you to say ‘hi’, and see for yourself what making space can reveal to you about… you.
For the last decade plus, I’ve been exploring deeply this question of identity, to ask, to learn how to help others also ask, so that we can all more snugly fit what we feel about who we are with what we do with our everyday life. The time doesn’t come back. The time, also, is our most precious resource. Why use it up doing things that don’t align with our core values? One might ask that. Or one might not.
A high-quality design process is the bulk of the work of the designer, according to DK
What’s our process? The tools of many design studios are in ours, too. We made mood boards. Came up with keyword lists. Worked together for the ‘onliness’ statement, something we read about in the book Zag.
In the days when DK was in Seattle, we got to know different architects and software engineers who would find this blog and get in touch. From there, sometimes, things would go into the wonderful space of discovery dialogue that became, soon enough, our signature offer. Branding, brand identity design, and the center of that, which is, of course, brand message design.
What is messaging?, you ask. Subjective, but here is my take. I define it as clarity. Clarity in the knowing what it is you want to say.
To whom. And how.
This starts with the classic adage ‘Know thyself.’
‘Okay. Tell me more.’
There was this great zoom dialogue that was recorded and posted on YouTube about how coaching is tough because coaches love tools, but when someone is asking you about how to build a house, they don’t care about the tools. We get so attached to them. I really loved hearing this so I’ll qualify what I want to say with this paragraph, ahead of it, in case you’re not into tools.
The best tool I’ve found for how to figure out who you are is this one small exercise you can do that will illustrate it out for you. You know yourself better than anyone, so here’s the thing to do. Write your obituary. Sometimes, I used this tool when a client was particularly good with words, but maybe more introverted, or not comfortable talking about themselves out loud with me. This simple exercise might reveal something in that instance. I used to recommend it to people. ‘Cool,’ I’d say. ‘ I have some homework for you…’
DK’s design process guides you towards the ‘a-ha’ moment
Some chose to do it, some did not, but I did it, personally, and wow. It was so, so good to do. I recommend doing this regularly and seeing how you’ve changed, as you go. There’s also a book title that pops to mind, here. A relative of mine had recommended it to me; she said the title was ‘Who will cry when I die?’ I didn’t read it, being someone who was so not into self-help (in those days, I’m more open to it now, if the person really actually knows what they’re talking about and isn’t a 22 year old ‘self-help guru’, haha) but I found snippets many years later online that tied in with the things I’m saying above.
Figuring out who you are takes setting the intention to do that and recognizing we change many times in a lifetime, too. It’s okay not to know sometimes. It’s okay to use tools to help you find clarity and sort things out. The book title helped me remember my own key message.
Who are you interested in becoming? What kind of legacy do you want to leave?
Famous quote, now:
People won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
Shall we talk?
Design Kompany is open to queries for new projects that start, with each quarter. Check out our current services, and explore with us in a conversation, so we can see if we’re a good fit. Here’s a link to a page with options of how to contact DK: