How to Brand an Online Comic

A brand is an indelible mark on the mind of the people that becomes inexplicably entwined with and part of your product--in this case, your webcomic. It not only sums up the content your webcomic will offer readers but also you and your ideas behind it. In addition to being a visual symbol of your online comic, your brand also includes the reader's experience so you want to invest time in encouraging a particular mindset before, during and after. While branding any product or service can be a complex and time consuming activity, I'm going to break it down into some simple basics you can begin with and build upon over time.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Know your audience. To begin, you must determine who you are telling your story to. With something as personal as an online comic can be, chances are good that your target audience is much like you in age, interests, income and general stage in life. Avoid limiting yourself automatically. Think about your comic objectively and try to identify other demographics that will want to read the strip once they are introduced to it.
2. Set yourself apart. Decide what makes your webcomic different from others. The nature of freely available web content makes it so that choosing one provider does not automatically exclude others but you are still jockeying for a portion of the readers time and that is a very valuable commodity. If you can pick out even one element about your comic that makes it unique, you can build on that idea and turn it into a sincere benefit for your prospective readers.
3. Create a distinctive logo. Once you have identified your audience and what your webcomic is trying to communicate, you can build a strong logo to encompass this. Your logo can be a stand-alone symbol (a glyph), a combination of a symbol and a letter or two from your name (an alpha-glyph), comprised primarily of letters and numbers (alpha-numeric) or a combination of one or more of those three. It should be distinctive and memorable while conveying a sense of what you are all about.
4. Use your logo everywhere. Make sure the logo (the emblem of your brand) along with any slogans or tag-lines is present on every page of your website, on every banner you use for advertising and on every piece of merchandise you produce. The key to building a brand's recognition is for people to see it and instantly think of your webcomic. Visibility is how you gain that recognition.
5. Back up your brand. Once created, the task then becomes to continually reinforce the principals behind your brand. Of course you are going to ensure the quality of your main product (the comic itself) but when you make decisions about the content the brand your are promoting (the attitude behind the project) should benefit from those decisions. If you ever find yourself questioning whether to tell a certain story, consider how it will affect your readers connection to the brand. If your website is merely a page that shows the most current strip, consider adding more content to give the readers a better experience when they come by for each update. At Cons, not only do you want your brand represented on every card, flyer and freebie you hand out you want those items to, again, reinforce the attitudes and ideas behind your online comic.

Tips & Warnings

• Brands are not static. They will change as you and your comic change and as your readership ages or progresses in life. Keep this in mind and adjust it when necessary.
• Since you want to communicate a certain idea with your logo, pay attention to the effects color and font choices have on emotional response. Try possible logos out on friends and strangers alike to discover what gets the response you are looking for.