Branding myself
So I’m kind of at a crossroads right now. I have been freelancing for almost 3 year, when I started out I thought it would be fun to pretend to be a “company” but now after building clients and seeing how life is as a freelancer I’m thinking of dropping my “company” and being a self branded name… I admit “ThePureDesign” is lame, SEO is Terrible, and other then me being obsessed with minimal things it really does not mean anything to me.
where as my name… is hard to spell?
Help? insight?
I guess I’m just caught between building a business or building a brand on my name…
Who says your name can’t be your brand?
I can think of hundreds of people where their business is their brand, even though its completely transparent that when hired they’ll be working with a team of other collegues either on staff or outsourced by you. They trust that and every other move you’ll make because they trust you.. the brand.
take a look at guykawasaki. You think he coded alltop.com? Hells no. He can’t design worth shit.
How about redheadwriting.com? You think she programs all her clients websites? No, because she’s a badass writer, but has made herself her own trusted brand where others believe she’ll not only deliver, but that they’ll undoubtably trust whoever she works with to code the site for her just as much as they trust her.
(in order to not make this a 100000k post by naming a few hundred i’ll leave it at those two). Just go forth, find people you TRUST who can do the shit you either can’t or don’t desire to do (and that they can do it just as well as you can do whatever you’re passion is), and rock it.
-brent
dude totally true. highfive
jared erickson all the way, like, double rainbow all the way.
:)
seriously, your name is unique. i don’t know any other jared ericksons… and your work speaks for itself.
*blush*
I don’t think your name is hard to spell at all. And honestly I have never refered to you as the guy behind “the pure design” I have always said, “you know alliswell?”
I say you go with Jared Ericson or human4rror
true true.. or i could name it “Jared the bison designer”
which would instantly make you a hit with the bison owners of colorado and me
I see “Jared Design” working. The d and e being anagrams. You could do a whole shadow off of Jared and make the shadow be the word “design”. just a thought. (sorry, my creativity runs sometimes)
haha nice!
I think Jared Erickson is a great name. Definitely memorable and sounds cool.
Definitely rock the name. You could keep the pure design URL to use for something layer. For the pure design always seemed more like a name for a blog. Rock the name for sure.
I will make it a blog only if you help with content :-)
+1 for your name. It IS hard to spell (too many variant spellings of Erickson/Erikson/Ericsson/etc.) but you could probably easily buy those domain names and redirect them anyway. thepuredesign doesn’t really mean anything in particular to most people, and your clients are gonna know you by your name anyway.
This is, of course, assuming that you’re choosing between the two. I think you could come up with something catchy that integrates your name and still says “brand name”… JEA – Jared Erickson Arts, or something more clever than that. It’s always nice to have something that can be long or short.
Go with the name I’d say….
It’s not hard to spell
My “supersimbo” was a bit of an accident – my surname is Simpson & for my first ever email address I was suggested “alsimbo765″ by yahoo so a mate who was with me at the time blurted out “supersimbo” sarcastically! And ………..
Fan of the name, definitely.
I concur! Name +1.
I’d go with your name. Its much easier to spell than my last name: Clendineng. And Erickson just looks cool.
I did shorten mine to jenclenDesign. For ease of communication and that its much easier to make a logo out of jenclen than Jen Clendineng. :)
I’ve always been a fan of ‘a company’ for several reasons, things happen sometimes that are beyond your control, if something happens to your company name your legal name isn’t tarnished but if something were to ever happen to your business and it was widely known as your legal name that makes it a little harder to move forward with a clean start. My grandfather always said never use your name in your company name, i.e. The Jared Erickson, Co., LLC I never understood what the big deal was until now. After working for an attorney for many years and seeing the economical downfalls many have been forced to let their businesses go and start new ones, the ones who built their names up have had a harder time with building new clients because in this day and age you can find out almost anything about anyone on the Internet. It’s easy to say that will never happen to me, but easier not to even take the chance.
Wow really really good point. Yeah i was not really worried about the “llc” kind of thing but never thought of being able to “start over” without the complication of my name being tarnished..
Hrm.. This IS a good reason to go “company”. It’s nice to have the logical break from you as a person and you as what you do. Taxes, etc. Good thoughts!
Boo taxes
Jared Erickson. It’s the same concept in music. If you are a band, you have a name to represent a collective of people. If you are a solo operation, there’s no need for a brand name, as you are selling yourself. If you foresee having more people working with you in the future, keep the brand.
Great point.. never thought of it in the music world… and even you as a photographer, you may have some people help out with your projects (like your gilfriend making props out of sticks!) but it’s still you that people are paying for. Maybe I will go with Miley Cyrus then!
go with whatever one is working best already! if “Jared Erickson” is working then THAT ALREADY IS the brand! Expound on that!
oh, and go to brand camp! http://www.matchstic.com
pshhh I can draw a flamming skull on a box myself ;-)
I gotta go with just your name.
It may be just because I already know you and what you do – but when I think “Jared Erickson” there’s something… fitting about that.
It’s a name i expected to see associated with a tagger – or a large, name brand designer.
It rings, and I think it defines the work eloquently.
I also think alliswell works nicely too, i know that that’s not part of the question, but hear me out…
Think about it – if you had something that required/allowed a ‘line,’ you would have AllIsWell by Jared Erickson.
IDK, IMHO it just works. <– Imagine that "works" in italics. I'm not gonna try different random types of code to make it happen.
/DEV/A\V
haha you crack me up, yeah I considered alliswell as well… just not sure.. arggg life decisions!
You could also do something like:
“Jared: I Can Kick Subway Jared’s Ass”
Put THAT on a business card!
totally doing that! freaking diamond jared and subway jared… gosh!
name, name, name that’s where I stand.
If you want to get cheesy I’m thinking:
http://jethatsawesome.com
but seriously your name, go with it.
haha, or should i go with JEISONLINE.com ;-)
You be YOU Jared, it’s what your clients are buying anyway right? If you had a big team or something I could see branding yourself as an entity so that feelings wouldn’t get hurt. I totally know where you are coming from though, we used Grasshopper for a year and we hired a lady with an english accent to do our voice over work so we would look international. How dumb are we?
man… if I had a European accent I would be making millions… .
I’d hug either.
peace | dewde
I know I’m late to this game… but I’d just stick with your name. It’s worked out for me pretty well. My blog is gbrenna.com but I also point grahambrenna.com to my blog. Branding yourself is a weird game that’s for sure.
Go with your name! you got a cool name. In the long run it builds value to you as a brand, in the future whether you set up your own gig or join another established studio it adds weight.