personal branding for a feminist writer, Amelia Hruby
branding as expressing the essence of a person and her vision
recently, I discovered the pure joy and delight of doing personal branding work for my entrepreneurial friends.
when I say “branding,” what I really mean is: helping kindred spirits express the full essence of themselves in visuals and words, and projecting their vision to the world.
Amelia is a close friend I’ve known since our years at residential high school, where we lived on the same floor together. a decade later, she’s finishing her PhD, building a community around her feminist consciousness work, and coming out with a book on feminist mantras (!) in this post, I’ll share the branding process through my eyes, and through hers.
why go through a branding process at all?
seeing comes before words. branding is about looking visually deliberate and immediately recognizable. but it’s not about forcing you to put on a mask; it’s peeling away all the masks. I see branding as a deep process: an exploration of values, mission, aesthetics, and vision — and expressing that into visual and verbal language.
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Amelia: my decision to work with Kening was motivated by a pretty exciting career milestone: I have a book coming out later this year! I wanted to work with a designer to create a visual presence online that would help me grow my platform and sell more books. Going through a branding process seemed like the best way to clarify the goals I have for my work, so I could consistently communicate that message in my writing and online imagery, building a community of readers and supporters along the way.
a color palette to express softness and strength
how do you communicate a sense of femininity without feeling girly, strength without feeling harsh?
Amelia and I talked for a long time about colors that could feel playful yet substantive, avant garde but approachable, nourishing and nurturing, like a container to hold you, like we live with our eyes open. these are all her words, and I used them to guide me as I explored over twenty color palette iterations.
throughout this process, I had Amelia pay attention to the colors that filled her world; the paintings she was drawn to at museums, the lipstick she gravitated towards. all of these aesthetic magnets were clues to her core.
what we ended up with is a palette with soft coral tones, balanced with two cools: a lush lavender, and a deeper light indigo.
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Amelia: in my work, I'm always trying to share feminist ideas and themes clearly and with compassion. I want to call people (particularly womxn and gnc/nb folks) in, while also critiquing patriarchy and systemic injustice. I needed my branding to be able to hold open this space between comforting and critical, so Kening and I spent a lot of time talking about how to build a relationship between the fonts and the colors that would feel welcoming without feeling weak, and could stay soft while building spirit and strength.
a typography family to feel substantive and provocative
Amelia had picked out a blackletter style for her Instagram posts a while before we began working together — and I thought it worked really well; it gave an edginess to her writing, which felt very nourishing and nurturing.
we talked about how the typography was just one ingredient in the meal. to create a complex flavor profile, it had to balance and play off the color palette.
so I found a refined blackletter font, then paired it with a simple mono font to balance the seriousness of the blackletter. the result is a feeling of boldness and bookishness — yet all of this was balanced by her soft color palette, and her way of using language and personal stories to engage with her audience.
a simple, musical logo
I designed a simple circular word mark with the letters of her initials arranged to feel like an “ah” — sounding like a sigh, or of the vocal cords singing, resonating — with pure and simple expression.
then, we put all the pieces together. we didn’t actually redesign her website; I simply added the visual styling with her new brand elements in place, and did some small tweaks. but they made a huge difference.
Amelia’s website before we created her visual brand
Amelia’s website after the rebranding
visual styling for instagram template posts
a quick mockup I created of a future website redesign
Amelia’s reflections on the branding process, and next steps
on how the branding process felt:
I loved working with Kening. She made the branding process feel deeply personal and creative. She was a confident guide who led me on a journey through my sense of self (since we were building a personal brand) toward new colors, ideas, and images that I didn't even realize were so perfectly fitted to me until I saw them. I was so impressed by her skill and sense of ease, and I've recommended her to many of my friends since.
surprises, brand discoveries, and insights:
At first, I was a bit intimidated to be asked so many questions about the words and images that I connected to my brand, but in the end I was surprised by how much I had to say. I found the entire process really clarifying and purposeful, and I appreciate how holistic Kening's approach is because I felt like it allowed me to bring so much of myself to the work--which she was then able to masterfully capture in my branding.
how things have felt differently since:
I love my new brand and get compliments on it all the time! The new fonts and colors make me feel more confident than ever sharing my writing, and I can already see how they are helping my writing travel farther and get seen more online. People are constantly telling me they recognize posts as mine because my branding is so on point!