Students listen to a graphic designer’s perspective on how to create their personal brand. OSV hosted this panel in the ARC on Feb. 6. There was an estimated 110 students in attendance.
The Office of Strengths and Vo- cations (OSV) hosted an event in the ARC Thursday called Successful Branding, which introduced the idea of personal and corporate branding to students. The conference featured a small sum of faculty members, alongside a crowd of 110 students.
The event opened with questions posed from a moderator directed at five panelists. One in particular, Terry Hogelucht, creative director and brand consultant for Hogelucht Creative, gave some insight on the topic of developing a brand identity within a graphic design standpoint.
“You start with the name, then you try to evoke that through your design, whether that’s through typography or imagery or both,” said Hogelucht. “So your visual identity should be an image of your personality, or your product personality.”
Hogelucht described the process that takes place in corporate branding through understanding the market, obtaining the company goal, how they want to be viewed to the public—
questioning phase—then research.
“I immerse myself in their situation and then get back to them,”
said Hogelucht.
The next topic was concerned with personal branding, which was highlighted mainly by Liz Goodgold, a branding and marketing expert, as well as author, coach and motivational speaker. Goodgold stressed the importance of developing a consistent image, authenticity, learning from the competition and assessing the type of audience the individual is relevant to in the market.
“If you try to be something you’re not, you will be found out; you need to be authentic,” Goodgold said.
In the closing statements, the issue of career advice was touched on by Simon Vetter, an executive coach and leadership developer for various clients including, Microsoft.
“There’s so many philosophies around leadership,” Vetter said. “The most important thing is credibility, building a strong relationship between what you say and what you do, basically behavioral change.”
Students were given the chance to ask questions, some of which found the venue to be extremely helpful in their career aspirations. Shelby Chrisman, a junior managerial and organizational communication major, took away some helpful information from the conference.
“I thought it was intriguing and inspiring,” said Chrisman. “It made me focus on the image I want to put out to the employers and what that looks like. I didn’t take a marketing standpoint from it, but I really liked the personal branding aspect.”
Another student, Abigail Wulah, a senior Biology major, was able to retain important points from the speakers as well.
“The things I learned tonight about self branding will be crucial to forming my network,” Wulah said. “In general, if you establish yourself as a personal brand, you can greatly increase your chances of employment.”
While much of the presentation was based upon the concept of corporate versus personal branding, there was a personable aspect discussed in helping students strive to achieve their own distinguished goals.
