Business of Making

Branding Foundations · A Guide for Makers

Thoughtful branding doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be you.

Your brand isn't your logo. It's the feeling people get when they come across you, and it's what lets you charge what your work is worth instead of racing everyone to the bottom on price. This guide is the groundwork everything else in your business gets built on, done once, properly, in a few evenings. Written by a graphic designer and maker who built her own brand from day one and never had to rebrand, and who has built countless other brands through her graphic design and digital agency over the past decade. Me.

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Branding Foundations: A Guide for Makers, open on a tablet

One week it's earthy tones. The next, you're eyeing someone's pastel packaging.

You know the feeling. You try a new font, a new caption style, a new product line because it's doing well for someone else, and nothing quite sticks. Without a clear brand you're a ship with no course, and every one of those little decisions draws from the same limited pool of energy. Psychologists call it decision fatigue. It's why you can feel completely wrung out after a day of choosing fonts and colours.

Here's the bit most people get wrong. Your brand isn't your logo. Your logo is one tiny piece of it. Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room: your products, your photos, your captions, the way your parcel arrives, how you reply to a hard message. For makers it matters even more, because people aren't just buying a thing. They're buying from you.

When your brand is clear, people remember you. They trust you. Trust is what lets you charge what your work is actually worth.

I wrote this with one maker in mind.

She's brilliant at what she makes but feels out of her depth with the business side. She might be sewing, painting, pouring, printing or laser cutting. Whatever it is, people love it.

She's juggling a lot. Kids, a day job, or both. Her making happens in the gaps: nap times, after bedtime, a Saturday morning at the kitchen table. She's selling on Etsy or Instagram, maybe at a few local markets, and she's had enough sales to know she's onto something.

Quietly, though, she's wondering. Why does my page look a bit all over the place? How do other makers make it look so easy? She's saved a hundred posts about branding and she still isn't sure where to start. She's tired of advice from people who've never run a maker business. What she really wants is someone real who's done it, to sit down with her and say, here's what actually matters.

If any of that sounds like you? Hi. I wrote this for you.

There's an expensive way to brand a business, and I've watched a lot of makers take it.

As a laser cutter and a graphic designer, I've seen hundreds of logos that just aren't going to work. AI-generated logos. Blurry, low-quality files. A picture or two stacked on top of each other with some text slapped over the top. The moment you want it engraved, cut in vinyl, embroidered on a shirt or blown up for a market banner, it falls apart, and you're starting again.

That's the small version of a much bigger pattern. Jumping straight to the logo before the foundations are there. Changing the look every few months. Copying another maker's style or voice. Trying to appeal to everyone. Each one costs you money, time and the trust you'd started to build, and a rebrand is the most expensive way there is to find out what you actually stand for.

When I started my first maker store in 2019, I brought everything I knew about branding with me. We built it properly from day one, and we never had to rebrand down the track. That's what I want for you too.

A business built on a rock, not on sand.

The groundwork, in the order I'd do it with you.

The logo and colours come last, on purpose. They should be the expression of everything else, not a replacement for it. Keep a notebook nearby.

  1. 01

    Why your brand matters

    What a brand actually is, what it does for your prices, and why a clear one takes a whole heap of decisions off your plate.

  2. 02

    Your story

    Why ordinary is exactly what people connect with, the three things a good brand story answers, how to bring your customer into it, and where to use it once you've got it. With mine as the example.

  3. 03

    Who you're really for

    My favourite bit, and where I see the biggest changes happen. How to find your favourite customer and turn her into one real person you write to, and why narrowing down doesn't mean missing out.

  4. 04

    Why they'll choose you

    You were never meant to win on price. Why people's brains reach for price when they can't see a difference, how to find your thing, and the one sentence I use with clients to pull it together.

  5. 05

    How your brand sounds and looks

    Your personality in a handful of words and how it talks in practice. Then the visuals, kept simple: the only four pieces you actually need, including the one most makers forget, how to build them without a designer, which files to save, and the checks to run before you lock it in. With how I did mine.

  6. 06

    Showing up the same way, everywhere

    The part that actually makes it work. Every place someone bumps into your business feeling like it came from the same place, the unboxing moment where makers outshine the big brands, and where to start if you can't fix everything at once.

  7. 07

    Pulling it all together

    Your whole brand on a single page, the traps I see makers fall into all the time, and how to use what you've built as a filter for every new product, collab or trend.

Built so you decide, not just read.

Short chapters, plain words, and a few things done on purpose, so you finish with a brand in your notebook rather than a head full of ideas.

A chat, not a lecture

Written the way I'd talk to you across a table. One idea at a time, in the order you need it, with no corporate jargon and no promise of overnight success.

Have a think

A page of questions at the end of every section, so the answers are yours and not mine. There's real psychology in writing it down: unfinished thoughts keep nagging at us, and once they're on paper your mind can let go and move on.

I show you mine

My story in one line. My reader. My logo and submark, and why I chose them. My colours, and the one I swapped because it looked like a placeholder. You see the thinking, not just the result.

The psychology, in plain words

Why a clear brand saves your energy, why people snap to attention when something feels made for them, why familiar things earn trust, and why the moment a parcel is opened matters so much. Each one explained, and what to do about it.

Honest about the traps

The mistakes I see makers fall into all the time, named plainly so you can sidestep them. Including the one that lands people with a hefty bill.

Done beats perfect

Please don't spend months and a small fortune agonising over your logo. Done and consistent beats perfect and never finished. The guide is built to get you there in a few evenings.

have a think

  • If a customer was telling their friend about your business, what would you love them to say?
  • If you disappeared tomorrow, what would your customers miss most?
  • Go and reread your last few captions. Do they sound like the brand you just described?

Three of the questions from the guide. There's a page like this at the end of every section.

What you'll have when you close it.

If you write things down as we go, you'll finish with all the pieces of your brand sitting in your notebook. That's more than most makers ever sit down and work out.

That's your foundation. Your rock.

A year from now, you could still be changing your fonts every few months and wondering why nothing sticks. Or people could be recognising you before they see your name, and trusting you enough to pay what your work is worth, from a brand you built once and never had to redo. The guide doesn't do it for you. It sits beside you while you do it, in a few evenings.

Build it once. Build it properly.

Branding Foundations

A Guide for Makers

$29RRP $39

  • 52 pages in seven parts, from why your brand matters to pulling it all together
  • A have-a-think page at the end of every section
  • My own brand as the worked example: story, reader, logo and colours
  • The psychology behind each piece, in plain words
  • 50% off the Brand & Style Guide Template, with the code inside
  • A PDF download, yours to keep, to read on your phone, tablet or laptop

One avoided rebrand pays for it many times over.

Get the guide for $29

Checkout happens on the Business of Making store. Prices are in Australian dollars.

Two pages from the guide

From a designer who's also a maker.

Bec, with her youngest on her hip Bec Macedon Ranges, Australia Read my story

I was a graphic designer before I was a maker. I've spent more than ten years in graphic design and web development, building brands for florists, builders and countless online stores through my agency, because I'm genuinely obsessed with brand identity. Then I built two maker stores of my own. Between them, they've done around 100,000 orders and more than $3 million in sales, and the first one grew into Australia's largest craft blanks supplier without ever changing its brand.

There are plenty of business coaches out there. What makes this different is that I've actually done it, at scale, with my own maker business. I'm not a faceless brand or a guru with a formula. I'm sharing my reality, the good bits and the messy bits, because I genuinely want to help.

Everything in here has been tested in the real world, not just in theory.

Questions you might have.

Who is it for?

Makers who sell, or are about to, and want a brand that feels like them. If your brand grew by accident and your page looks a bit all over the place, this is the one. If you've got a brand you love and it's working, you probably don't need it.

I already have a logo. Is it still useful?

Yes. The logo is one tiny piece, and it comes last. Most of the guide is the thinking underneath it: your story, who you're for, why they'll choose you, how you sound. If your logo passes the checks near the end, keep it. If it doesn't, you'll know exactly why.

Do I need to be good at design?

No. Nothing in here needs design skills. Where you do need to make something, I walk you through doing it yourself in Canva, with the files to save and the mistakes to avoid.

Can't I find all this online for free?

Bits of it, across a hundred saved posts that contradict each other, most of them written by people who've never run a maker business. This is the whole foundation in one place, in order, with the psychology explained and my own brand as the example. A PDF, yours to keep, for $29.

How is it different from the Brand & Style Guide Template?

This guide helps you decide. The template keeps the decisions: a polished Canva document you hand to a printer, a designer or anyone who helps in your business. Do this one first. Your 50% off code for the template is inside.

How long does it take?

Read it in an evening or two, then work through the have-a-think pages at your own pace. Start with whatever people see first, usually your Instagram and your product photos, and work through the rest bit by bit. There's no deadline on any of it.

You don't need a perfectly polished brand. You need one that's unmistakably you.

By the last page you'll know why your brand matters, who you're really for, what makes you different, and how you want to look and sound. That's the thinking most makers skip, and it's what you'll come back to every time you feel pulled in ten directions. Pick one evening this week, grab a notebook, and start with the first question.

Your customers fell for the real you. Let them hear it everywhere.

Bec x

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