Thinking about the Brand o’ the Fae

I started Faerie Made in early September 2002 and over the past nine years it has been an organic flow as it has been evolving and changing. I never took a business class and to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. But I did it, I’m still doing it and I think it’s been pretty cool.

Part of what I focused on as Faerie Made has shifted, morphed and grown is to make sure that I had a good brand and the importance of building the Faerie Made. This post is focused on the name and the logo as part of branding.

When I first started selling my soaps I wanted to call it Faerie Maeve, because I loved the name of my newborn daughter, Maeve and she was my little fairy girl. But it just didn’t flow off the tongue right for the business name. During a chat with a friend we ended up with Faerie Made and … it worked.

My first “logo” was a clip art fairy with a photoshopped “Faerie Made” across it.

This was definitely not royalty free, just a picture yanked off the internet but I loved it. I thought I had the bestest of the best logos ever.

I think I was naive. Sure, the faerie woman was pretty. And complex. And not easily reproducible from large to very very small. Nor in black. nor royalty free!
I needed to accept that I was really in business and I needed to have something that would be:
memorable
look good up close
far away
in print
and on the web.

Also, it became necessary to look at the possibility of receiving a cease and desist from someone about the image yanked off the ‘net that I was using.

It was time to take Faerie Made to the next level.
So as I began building my brand with Faerie Made I had a new logo created which was made just for me, the biz and it’s the same Faerie Made logo we are using today. She met the criteria.
She was:
memorable
looked good up close
far away
in print
and on the web

The logo met the criteria, and I made sure no one was using the name in commerce. In July 2004 I trademarked it through the US Patent and Trademark Office and in May 2006, Faerie Made became an (r).

A good logo and a name are part of branding. There are other things that can be done to help build a brand and that’s for another day

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