Brand Origin: Day 1 of March Meet The Maker
BRAND ORIGIN
This is an interesting prompt to kick of this month of story telling! I have a tendency to ramble, and answer twelve questions at once, so imma try and keep each day's post brief...(!)
I'd spent months folding books as a hobby, and refusing to sell them. Most people LOVED them (and still do!), but I'm well aware that some people react with abject horror, at the thought of folding a book's pages. And I get it. I really do. But all of my books are reclaimed and would otherwise have ended up in landfill. And, perhaps most importantly, no matter how illogical it looks, NONE of my books are cut or damaged in ANY way. I ONLY hand fold 'dog ears', to create what you see. So, in those months, I'd said "no books were harmed in the making of this", about eleventy billion times. When I eventually phoned the HMRC to decide whether I was going to start selling them or not, I was completely on the spot when the tax man said "and what's your trading name going to be?"...I hadn't even thought about it, I'd fully expected to decide NOT to go in to business during that phonecall haha - but, without thinking, I replied "No Books Were Harmed", and that was that!
My very good friend is a graphic designer, and it was he who said "I'm going to brand you", and it was sooo early in what became a life defining journey, that I kind of thought it was a bit OTT, having this proper, big time graphic designer 'brand me', but I'm ever so glad he did, because from that very first few weeks, I was a fully fledged, professional looking bizness...even if I didn't really feel it! So from there, my branding had leaned into the colours and vibe that Graham created for me, and I've never looked back. I even have my logo tattooed on my chest!
You can read more about my branding story, and see the tattoo HERE
I'm taking part in this year's March Meet The Maker. It's primarily an Instagram thing, with the focus being on telling your story via photos. You might have noticed, I take shite photos, but I can ramble on in type for ages haha So I'm going to mostly take part, right here, on NoBooksBlog.co.uk