Brand Design for Leadcraft
Once in a blue moon, creating a new brand takes years to complete which makes it extra exciting when it’s finally ready to release into the world. Yes, my branding process may only take six weeks, but sometimes there’s so much more going on behind the scenes to make it all come alive. Such is the case with today’s brand reveal, and the final result is so worth the wait!
Jennifer Rappo (JR) is a professionally trained actor and singer through NYU Tisch School of the Arts, a CTI-Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, and a performance coach for TEDxCambridge. She’s also a dear friend and colleague. I’m so grateful for her influence in my life and her wisdom that comes sometimes through coaching and sometimes through friendship. If you have a coach-friend, you know what I mean!
For more than a decade, JR’s unique blend of skills and training has fueled her passion to help female founders and celebrities unlock their important messages, trust their voices, and position themselves as respected thought leaders. We first discussed branding JR’s business several years ago, but she wanted her coaching and consulting business to be distinct from her own performing and speaking, so we needed a new business name. If you’ve renamed a business, you know how hard it can be and how long it can take! We kept the idea of her new brand quietly simmering in the background until the right name came last summer.
JR is now the proud Founder + CEO of Leadcraft. If high-end, luxury brands are your style, you’re going to love this reveal!
1 | Brand Strategy
As a boutique leadership development and communications consultancy, Leadcraft is all about “crafting confident leaders” so women can “live their legacy, not just leave it.” JR’s expertise in the theatrical arts and her unique methodology allow women to master their stage presence and capture their audience as they become sought-after thought leaders who make an impact today and in the future. She approaches leadership much like live performance—as an art and a craft. You don’t have to be “born” a leader—in fact, few people are—but you can become a leader through training, practice, and mentorship.
Knowing all this, I knew JR wanted to stick with her trademark black and white style. Fortunately, these colors work perfectly for her elegant-but-edgy brand. But I also knew that using ONLY black and white would get really boring really quickly, and when owners get bored with their brand, they’re tempted to go down all sorts of rabbit holes, adding new random elements, and losing the brand consistency they worked so hard to build.
JR understood this and was so happy when I added the subtlest nude tones to the overall palette. It kept all the elegance and added just enough je ne sais quoi to keep things interesting. Our keywords for Leadcraft are poised, ambitious, mysterious. The color psychology of black is luxury and dramatic, white is sophisticated and clean, and nude is feminine and warm. The color palette is a beautiful blend of simplicity and depth which perfectly captures JR’s own style and her high-achieving clientele.
2 | Logo Design
As the primary visual element of Leadcraft, the logo needed to be clean and high-end. The font is über sophisticated with lots of customizations in the ligatures and disconnected horizontal lines. This gives the feeling of leaders growing and “becoming” through the creative process. Overlapping the “D” and “C” symbolizes the joining of their communication and leadership skills. The subtle diamond at the center highlights the magical sweet spot when these two aspects come together and brings a surprise touch that elevates the whole logo.
3 | Brand Board
The button and pattern have the same simplicity as the logo but with new shapes that bring some interest to the overall brand. The danger with “simple” brands is that they can easily become uninteresting. These elements provide a variety of logo marks for flexibility and consistency that will last for years to come.
4 | COLLATERAL & SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m very cautious about using metallics in client designs as they often look cheap and don’t work in digital applications where silver generally looks grey and gold looks brown. Not very appealing. JR’s print collateral uses silver in only the tiniest areas to keep it really classy, and printing silver foil through Moo allows us to create custom, economical designs. Her new social banners and templates are all in Canva for her team to easily update and publish.
“Michelle’s the real deal, and her decades of experience are evident in the way she cares about her clients and listens throughout the creative process.
Even though I was nervous, I trusted that she understood my bigger vision and new brand story. She even let me keep my minimalist black and white colors!
Now I’m so proud and confident to talk about what we do and to share our brand with the world in a stronger way than ever before. This truly represents the 2.0 version of helping leaders step up and own their voice.”
– Jennifer Rappo, Founder + CEO, Leadcraft
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