Brand Clarity for Multi-hyphenates (the only guide you need)
Brand clarity is tricky when you love many things. So I want to start and end this post with a message: don’t stress about figuring it all out, just start creating. Clarity comes quicker by doing, not thinking.
Personal brand clarity sits right next to self awareness. But it’s easy to create a different mask for your online digital life, separate from who you really are. I hope I can bridge that gap with this post.
This is how I finally discovered my own personal brand clarity as a multi-passionate artist.
Let’s get to it.
Table of Contents
What Is Brand Clarity? (and should you care?)
Brand clarity is knowing exactly who you are and who you’re for. It’s the ability to condense your work into a simple sentence.
From there, it’s just showing up as that person consistently across projects and content.
As a multi-passionate artist, brand clarity was always tricky for me. When you do many things and embody many personalities, it’s hard to unlock clarity.
The rest of this guide is my solution to that problem.
Why Brand Clarity Matters
Attract the right audience
Boost your creator confidence
Create a cohesive brand identity
Know exactly what to make (and what not to make)
Plot Twist: Brand Clarity ≠ Niching Down
If you’re multi-passionate, you know how hard it is to stick to one thing.
Luckily (and surprisingly) brand clarity doesn’t mean niching down. It’s really just about understanding myself, my lifestyle and how I want to show up.
It’s knowing who you are, what you do and who you’re talking to.
When I have brand clarity, I show up with confidence and consistency.
So go ahead, be your full (scattered) multi-self. It has nothing to do with clarity.
Okay…then what is brand clarity really about?
6 Tips for Brand Clarity
1. Have A Perspective (what’s your brand philosophy?)
Your perspective is created out of lived experiences, interests, skills, values, personality and goals.
Together, they create a core philosophy about life. This is a fantastic starting point for brand clarity.
It’s less aboutwhat you do and more about why you do it.
2. Find Your Throughlines
Your throughlines are core brand themes that pop up no matter what you’re doing.
These are things you care about. The vibe you naturally create.
Throughlines show up in your visual identity, style, vibe, life philosophy and methodologies.
And together, these can shape your brand mission and purpose.
For example, it doesn’t matter if I'm making art, music, videos or writing a travel blog (for my personal brand), I tend to show up with the same vibe across all domains: minimalist, unpolished and casual with a love for adventure, art and aesthetics.
From here, it’s pretty easy to extract a mission or purpose. And that’s exactly what I did:
I want to inspire other people to also live a more carefree, creative, adventurous lifestyle.
And that’s my audience——anyone who likes similar things and wants to live a similar lifestyle.
3. Share A Lifestyle
Rather than trying to choose a single niche or build a domain-specific brand, just share your lifestyle.
This is the perfect solution for the multi-passionate.
Your lifestyle is naturally multi-layered. So share it all (but ground it in your life philosophy and vibe…the thing we just talked about above).
If you’re unsure about your exact identity, check out my post on choosing your niche as a multi-passionate.
4. Be Visually Consistent…If You Want
You don’t need to build the next Apple or be the next Mr. Beast.
I also think visual consistency happens naturally, especially the more you create.
After all, if you’re punk to the core, you’ll probably show up that way everywhere no matter what.
In a basic sense, visual consistency just means sticking with the same logo and color palette across platforms.
But again, whatever.
If you’re early in your journey, it’s probably better to just focus on one platform at a time anyways (aka, no need to worry about cross-platform consistency).
Building out your perfect visual identity could just be procrastination (aka, stop planning and go make something——that’s where you’ll find true brand clarity).
5. Use Brand Motifs
Brand motifs are recurring visual elements that represent your brand identity.
For example, Oxis uses a fish as part of her project identity. There’s often a fish somewhere in her videos, even though it’s a music project.
I see creators doing this as well, like putting a simple drawing of their brand identity motif in the background hanging on the wall, so it’s just out of view but noticeable for anyone who’s looking.
Brand motifs are a creative way to subconsciously design your brand with a core recurring visual symbol.
6. Start Creating, Dammit
Brand clarity (self awareness) comes from showing up and getting some skin in the game——i.e. actuallymaking things.
I don’t want to sound harsh, but I only say this because I sat on the sidelines for years…planning and scheming but getting no closer to clarity.
I was an armchair creator…
The thing that changed everything? Actually making stuff. Failing and getting back up to do it again.
It’s awkward and ugly and feels chaotic. But it works.
Don’t be an armchair creative like I was (stuck in a loop of learning and planning but never actually starting or finishing).
If you want clarity, it’s best to stop trying to find it and let it find you.
Again, the best way to do that is to just start creating projects and sharing them.
They won’t be perfect. And they might not even be aligned.
But do them anyways. Get the junk out of your system.
It might take 100 bad videos before discovering the right one.
Once you find some momentum and get traction, you can start worrying about the minutia (like brand keywords, consistent colors and perfect cohesion across accounts).
Alright, that’s all I’ve got.
Later ✌️
