WELCOME TO THE NEW HOME FOR DeRUSHA
I’m so glad you’re here and I’m so glad to have my new website and brand live and in the world! My friends at Superhuman in Minneapolis took me through an intense and inspiring process of discovery, strategy and identity. I love this stuff!
DISCOVERY
In some ways, creating an identity for a personal brand is not that different than branding a company. What am I about? Who are similar brands in the area and in the same space? Superhuman did market research but they also did one-on-one interviews with clients of mine, partners, and confidants to get to the heart of what I’m all about.
STRATEGY
Discovery led to a couple archetypes as options. I’ll never forget sitting in this session, where we talked a lot about my TV career, being a reporter, and telling other people’s stories. I was asking the younger people on the team what they thought, and the youngest member of my team, Malia, said, “I think we’re talking too much about what you have been doing and not enough about what you could be doing.” BOOM! Mindblowing insight. Really helped propel us forward.
My archetype is: The Everyhuman.
My purpose is: FOSTER FEARLESS PARTICIPATION.
Identity
Then it was the fun stuff: design and copywriting. What colors should we use? What font? What photography style? And what will the brandmark be? Most personal brands in the lifestyle space use some version of a signature—and we didn’t really want that. We wanted something that was personal. It’s my brand! But it should also be able to live on the handle of a line of kitchen knives or a beanie or luggage—a brand that looked cool and sophisticated but also approachable.
Cream, Cherry, Sand, Navy and Lilac are the colors we went with. You’ll see them all over this site.
We’ve toyed with a couple catch phrases. My favorites are:
EVERYDAY LIFE, EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCES.
IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN TOO!
The team did a photoshoot and mocked up potential merch. We iterated, we argued, we laughed—it was really an amazing experience. It also has changed the way I talk about things in my newsletter and on social media: I want you to dive in. I want to be a resource so you can make your life a little more fun and make our community a little more robust and rich. Now is my time—and it’s yours too!
SUPERHUMAN: MY DREAM TEAM
From left to right: Malia Horgen - Copywriter, Laura Horan - Head of Strategy + Experience, Van Horgen - Founder/CEO, Bela Litvinov - Strategy Intern, Beccah Peper - Designer. Not pictured is Head of Project Management extraordinare, Alex Reimringer.
