How Do You Find the Soul of a Brand?
Discovering the intangible essence that makes your business feel alive and authentic.
How Do You Find the Soul of a Brand?
You can have a beautiful logo and still not have a brand that feels like anything.
I see this all the time.
The colors work. The typography is lovely. The website looks professional. Everything technically belongs together, but somehow, there's no pulse.
That's usually when I start looking for the soul of the brand.
I know "soul" isn't exactly a technical branding term, but after nearly 20 years of creating brands, it's one of the best ways I know to describe that intangible thing that makes a business feel alive. It's the part you recognize before you've consciously analyzed the logo or read the About page. You simply feel who they are.
And every business has the ingredients for one.
The soul of your brand is hiding in why you started it, what you care about, what you notice that other people don't, and how you want someone to feel after experiencing your work. It's in your taste and your personality, but it's also in your standards. It shows up in the things you refuse to compromise on and the tiny details you care about more than anyone reasonably should.
Those are the things I want to know when I'm building a brand.
I want to know why this business had to exist. I want to know what you wish were different about your industry. I want to know what your clients say about you when they're describing you to someone else. I want to know what you love, what you're drawn to, and what feels completely wrong for you.
This is also why I love exercises like finding your Brand Animal. Tell me your brand is "sophisticated," and we could go in a hundred directions. Tell me your brand is a swan because it feels graceful, effortless, and quietly beautiful, and now we're getting somewhere.
We're finding its soul.
Only then do I want to start translating that into color, typography, photography, language, and design.
Because your visual identity shouldn't be a costume you put on your business.
It should be evidence of what's already inside it.
That idea became a huge part of why I created SEEN. I wanted women to have a way to uncover their brands before trying to design them. To dig around a little. Follow their instincts. Notice the patterns. Find the parts that feel undeniably theirs.
You don't have to manufacture a personality because someone told you every business needs a brand archetype. You don't need to become more polished, more interesting, or more like the women whose businesses you admire online.
You need to get curious about what is already there.
Because when you find the soul of your brand, the design decisions stop feeling quite so random.
You're no longer trying to make your business look like a brand.
You're making it look like yours.
Alanna Frattaroli is a Creative Director and brand strategist with nearly 20 years of experience creating brands and creative experiences. She is the founder of AlannaCo and creator of SEEN: Build Your Brand in Canva, a self-guided branding experience designed to help women uncover the strategy, personality, and visual identity already inside their businesses.
