Alyssa and I recently agreed to host a birthday party for our friend Hannah. We thought it would be chill — we pictured a typical birthday party evening. You know, with an invite list that's rather loose but that still doesn't feel like your house will explode. But what we didn't account for is just how popular Hannah is. 50 people ended up rsvp’ing!!! It was an overwhelming number of people to plan for at first, but then I bought things and made things, and started feeling into the whole idea. Everything was going to be fine! Until...I realized we had one big problem: the flow.
Our house is very old with serious, distinct rooms that really suck you in and make you forget about the rest of the house. It’s the polar opposite of open-plan. I tried to counteract this: first, by asking Alyssa if I could cut a new doorway into the dining room; she declined); and later, by making sure that each room was super useable so that the party could morph into any of the spaces. We put a table of drinks outside with a fire pit area, extra seats and room to sprawl in the living room, and, my favorite, a disco dining room where we’d pushed the furniture to the edges of the room and added disco lights. Looking around before the party, I thought we’d nailed it. Every single space seemed ready to welcome a crowd.
But from the moment the party started all the way to its final fading moments, the party didn’t leave the kitchen.
My knee-jerk reaction was annoyance (how could no one want to be in the disco room?!). But also, I get it, kitchens are where it's at. There was food and access to drinks via the back door. The island made it possible for a group to gather and chat, with a place to put your drink. Everyone else was standing and mobile, bouncing from one conversation to another. Kitchens have a warm, approachable atmosphere that makes you feel at home in someone else’s house. In hindsight, I learned that it’s not possible to design a perfect party or dictate how people use the house. It’s the people who show up that make the party into a good party.
When getting a new brand off the ground, there’s a similar balance to strike: you’ve got to get the party started but you can’t try to button everything up all at once. Admittedly, there’s an argument for buttoning — people want to be impressed and they also need to trust you, and good design will help establish that — but the building of a brand doesn’t happen instantaneously. It’s not realistic to expect yourself to churn out a perfect brand right from the start.
There are only two things needed to get the brand (party) started : 1) a brand identity, aka the look and feel, and 2) a website to house the information about the brand. The website can feel like the easy part (thanks to an abundance of user-friendly website builders), but it’s the brand identity that’s particularly intimidating, especially if you’re a person who identifies as “not creative.”
A brand identity can be as simple as a font, a color, and a logo.
