There are a lot of designers that struggle with their own identity, myself included. We develop brands for other businesses all the time, so you would think that branding your own would be easy. Well, it’s not. It’s far more difficult and, in fact, it’s something that may take years to develop.

I used to spend far too much time trying to design a logo for myself only to hate it two weeks later, when I would decide to go in an entirely new direction. What I’ve now learned is that the reason I was failing repeatedly at branding my own business, was because I had no idea of what exactly it was I wanted to achieve. And if I take a look at the brands I’ve developed and why they seemed ‘easier’, it’s because each and every client came to me with a clear and precise business plan already prepared and thought out.

These days, everyone and their uncle call themselves a graphic designer, which makes it extremely difficult to separate yourself from the crowd. And while it’s good practice to dabble in different areas of design, eventually you need to find your niche if you want to be successful. Now, I’m not saying to give up working on projects that don’t fit into whatever your niche may be, because it comes as a great asset to those who can work with different styles/themes, and work across different mediums. But, you do want to fine tune your business goals and focus on the areas where you really want to excel, and in turn this will help define who you are as a brand.

What really helped me in discovering my brand, came first and foremost from my inspiration sources – blogs I followed, articles I read, designers I admire, and of course my own personal style and taste. One day last year when I was asked the question, where do I want to be in five years?, is when it hit me and everything became crystal clear – I finally knew where I wanted to be (from a business standpoint, not physically), and how I was going to get there. Hallelujah! Now, if you haven’t heard of the five year plan, basically it’s a planning tool where you take some time to think about where you want to be in five years, and you develop a step by step plan (complete with goals and milestones) of how you’re going to get there. And until last year, I’ve honestly never had a chance to really sit down and think about my own five year plan. I tried asking myself this question time and time again, but I never could settle on a definite answer.

So to sum things up, if you’re anything like me and are struggling with your own identity, a good place to start before determining your long term goals is by asking yourself the following questions:

1 / Where do my strengths lie?
2 / What is it about design that I love the most?, and
3 / If I could wake up and work on any project, what would it be and who would it be for?

If you start with those basic questions and really give yourself honest answers, then you will have a solid starting point in fine tuning who you want to be as a brand, and where you want to go as a business.

It’s funny how you can get so frustrated one year, and then the next everything becomes crystal clear when you realize that THIS is what I want to do for the rest of my life and THIS is the direction I want to head in.

Have you ever had a similar struggle? I’d love to hear more about how you got to where you are today.

• If you are looking for vintage or retro fonts for a design, Bluefaqs offers up some nice ones right here.
• This article had me giggling to myself all day – 10 Iconic Fonts and Why You Should Never Use Them.
• I found this one day and it made me so happy – If you like the Travelocity advertising as much as I do then you’ll enjoy The Roaming Gnome.
• I am in love with Color Theory right now. The combination of classical piano with some eighties style beats just gets my heart revving every time I hear it, not to mention the type treatment on his latest album.
• Jonathan from Illuminated Mind has some great advice for those times when you’ve fallen out of love with your work.
• Next time I buy a bottle of wine I’m going to look for the Neil Ashmead GTS Shiraz, which was made as a tribute to auto (and wine) enthusiast Neil Ashmead.
• An in depth and inspiring interview with British Type Designer Jonathan Barnbrook.

Last week I touched briefly on some of the activities we embarked on while we were in Fiji. This week I will expand on our River Rafting adventure, because it turned out to be a once in a lifetime experience.

Before the trip started, this was one of the things we had already set our minds on doing. It was an all day trip that would take us to parts of Fiji we wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to see. The trip started early in the morning when we met up at the River Rafting offices just outside our hotel. While enjoying a hot cup of coffee we signed the waiver, were then given our wet bags and off we went!

It took us about two hours to get to the starting point of the river, but the drive, as bumpy as it was, was gorgeous. As soon as we turned off the main road, we ventured into the rainforest for another hour, driving up some pretty steep switchbacks that I’m not sure any other bus could handle. We stopped at one of the high points on the road for a quick break and some banana cake, which is where we were divided into our rafting groups and assigned a guide. We were lucky enough to be in a group with some new friends of ours who we had just met that morning at our hotel, so it was just the four of us and our guide – which made the day just so much better! Here are some of the pictures from the trip to the river:

This is where we stopped for our break and banana cake.

Once we got to the starting point, we geared up and set off on the twenty minute, extremely steep and muddy, hike to the mouth of the river where our guides and boats were waiting. After a quick lesson on what to do when you fall in, because apparently it was guaranteed, we were on our way. At this point I didn’t even care about the rapids, I was so excited to be surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen:

The time we spent on the river was about 5 and a half hours with a lunch stop in between. We didn’t really know what to expect in the way of ‘white water’, but we knew nothing could be as bad as the class 4 rapids we battled in Ottawa a few years ago. As we got going down the river through steep cliffs and rainforest we hit a few sets of rapids here and there, but nothing too challenging, which made for one of the calmer adventures of our trip!

After lunch we continued down the river, and as we were getting closer to the main town, we started rafting through some of the local villages. At this point there weren’t really any more rapids, so we spent the final few hours on the river just taking in the real life that surrounded us. There were kids playing and waving, people relaxing, cows grazing and it was just inspiring. Every person you passed would wave and smile, and you really got a sense that we were surrounded by genuinely happy people. Unfortunately some of the pictures came out a bit blurry, but I’ve posted them anyways in hopes that you can get a sense of what it was like:

If you look closely you can see the cameraman in the kayak – this goes to show how full and lush the forest was surrounding us.

She wanted to go swimming too like her brother (above).

If you meet someone from Fiji and they say they’re no good at volleyball – don’t be fooled. We made that mistake and lost miserably almost every day we played.

Local transport to and from the main town.

All the local kids were showing off by seeing how far they could jump into the river. They were having so much fun that we were tempted to jump out too!

In the end, our entire trip to Fiji turned out to be a really cultural experience. When we planned the trip last October, we were hoping for a hot, sunny, tropical getaway. Well, we didn’t have too much of that, until the day we left of course! But we left with friends we didn’t have before and people to visit when we return to Fiji. Because of that and the experiences we shared, the trip turned out better than we could have ever expected.