Behind The New Kayte Ferris Brand
Changing my business name was never just changing the name. It was changing my approach, my structure, how I went about what I did. It was also a hard reset on what I actually did. It was opening up and lifting and self-imposed boundaries and being freer.
This meant that, more than just pressing a button to change a name (and the many many admin consequences of that), I had a few things to figure out…
Figuring out what this brand is about
Before I’d always agonised over what was and wasn’t Simple & Season, what was on brand and what had to live elsewhere, what I could and couldn’t talk about. I was marketing, then I was never talking about marketing again, and then I talked about marketing sometimes but very cautiously. The point of moving to Kayte Ferris was to open this up, remove the pressure, allow all the things that interest me creatively to have a home here.
But I also knew that one of the reasons I’d been wandering in the business desert for the last few years was the lack of a distinct Why, a rallying purpose to give everything some momentum. With everything now being a possibility on the table, I knew that I’d need that focused Why more than ever to keep things focused.
I turned to my own Purpose Kit, a product I made nearly six years ago, to gain some clarity. I know that what I’ve always been interested in is the grey. In a world that so desperately wants black and white, I have been drawn to the shades in between, to the very nature of knowing, of certainty, of desires. For so long I wanted that black and white clarity, but all I learned was that it didn’t bring me what I thought I wanted.
I’ve also been in interested in the way we work. In the way we approach things, in the ways we get in our own way, in habits and practices, how some people do things and others do not, in motivation and focus. I’ve also been interested in how these two things meet, how we find out what we want and work towards it in a screaming shouting capitalist world.
Working through the prompts in the Kit, I surprised myself. I found myself writing that the pursuit of certainty was the problem, not the solution. That seeking absolute knowing closes us off to our creativity, to possibility, and has us working in an iron grip. I found myself writing that instead of certainty, we should become comfortable with the not knowing, and pursuing curiosity instead (more on this in a post next week!).
I found myself writing “the impact I want to have is that no one thinks they’re wrong or failing but pursues what lights them up with openness”. And it was true.
Figuring out what this brand looks like
I looked through logo templates on Canva. I spent a few fun hours with online colour palette tools, making combinations and naming the colours and putting them all into a neat PDF with their hex codes. I compared fonts and found the matching pair of serif and sans serif I liked best.
And then all that was left was to apply it to the website, and after a short amount of trying to figure things out and fiddling with the Squarespace palette function I took a step back and… it was all the same. I’d changed the colours and the copy, but it was the same website in new clothes.
I wrote in my Thoughts & Things newsletter this month about this. About how hard it is to make a change when you have the strong muscle memory of what you’ve always done. When you are editing a website you are used to seeing a certain way, it’s hard to imagine how else it could look (same goes for work, relationships, homes, hobbies, entire lives). To make change is less about making plans, and more about breaking habits - habits of doing, habits of thinking.
In order to break out of my website funk, I had to look outside of myself. I searched for Squarespace template inspiration and scrolled through other people’s websites, seeing what else could be possible. I replicated the bits and pieces I liked from each one to make a version 1 of the Kayte Ferris website that felt like the fresher parts of me.
Figuring out what’s next
The most important thing was accepting that this is a version 1, in all the ways. It’s a version 1 in that it wipes the slate visually, gives me a future jumping off point. But it’s also a version 1 in that I’m not 100% sure what’s next. This is a brand and a Why I am going to grow into.
What feels freeing is that I am consciously not seeking certainty in this. I am not looking for a straitjacket structure of a business model (although I’m not immune to seeing what other people do and thinking ‘that looks nice’, I am reminding myself to add ‘…but not for me’ to that thought). Instead I am looking out of open and willing eyes, curious at what might be possible.
What that means in practice is catching the self-talk that tells me what is and isn’t possible for me, it means paying attention to what is interesting me, prioritising what is creatively fulfilling. For example, I enjoyed running Finish With Confidence so much last year that I’m eager to run it again, rather than building out some kind of staircase funnel of products I’m just going to run it again.
As my dear friend Jen Carrington wrote in her most recent email, “joy is fuel”. By remaining curious about all the possible things that could create that fuel, and committed to showing up to my best practices, I will build what’s next for this creative life.
