Case Study: Brand Naming Flying Colours Creative

CASE STUDY: Flying Colours Creative

How I named, themed, and built a brand world that turned one designer into a category of one.

Breaking it down like it was as easy as ABC…

A — ANGLE

(Audience POV + Messaging/Positioning)

Eva’s audience is creatives, coaches, and service providers who built something bold but can’t quite articulate it.

They don’t want minimalism. They want to stand out. But they:

• Took messy action and DIY’d their branding into a corner

• Have nothing cohesive to show for hours of Canva-ing

• Are overwhelmed trying to translate their energy into actual brand assets

• Keep polling Instagram like the peanut gallery knows what it’s talking about

Eva knows branding goes beyond a logo, and the “right” colours…Her work delivers the kind of branding that finally feels like them. So I positioned her accordingly:

• Color isn’t unprofessional.

• Confidence comes from branding you can actually use.

• And being “too much”? is the whole damn point.

B — BRAND PERSONALITY

(Founder voice + values + preferences)

Eva’s not the “I help you shine” type. She’s not here to be palatable. She’s not interested in astrology, energy work, or anything that feels ethereal, intangible, woo, soft or delicate. Eva has edge. She told me that if you want to make her do something? Tell her she can’t.Her vibe is a little villain-coded. Booksmart with bite. Fierce but calculated.

She loves:

• COLOUR, volume, depth

• Rulebreakers

• Strong aesthetics

• Suspense, true crime, and Harry Potter

• And being a foodie

And all of this screamed – circus, fun house, carnival. Big, bold, fun, and “foodie” if she wanted to go there. This direction would make her brand feel:

• Cinematic

• High-stakes

• Full-spectrum

• A little bit dangerous

• And completely hers

C — CRITERIA

(Naming + Messaging Requirements)

We needed a name and language system that could:

• Reject bland without sounding juvenile

• Work across offers, content, and digital products

• Carry both metaphor and meaning

• Give her clients a role to play in the brand story

• Be scalable, referable, and flexible

And most importantly: It needed to make Eva sound like the only possible choice.

THE CONCEPT: BIG TOP BRAND ENERGY

The name didn’t come first. The strategy did. And then, it was solidified with this one quote from Eva. That’s when I knew I could run away with the circus… 

“You’re not a copy. You’re a true original.”

From there, I pulled the thread:

True original → Novelty → Rarity → Wonder → Marvel → Sensation → Spectacle → Big Top → “Over the top” → Confidence.

That’s where Big, Top Brand Energy came in.

A maximalist motif with metaphorical legs and built-in structure.

We turned Eva into the ringleader. Her audience? The troupe.

This gave us:

• A fully ownable language system

• Endless metaphor extensions for content, offers, and visuals

• A central theme that held up across her entire funnel

• Permission to go loud—strategically

THE NAME: FLYING COLOURS CREATIVE

Eva was still operating under her personal name. But it was clear from day one: she wasn’t JUST a freelancer. 

Flying Colours Creative gave her the name she needed to grow.

It referenced the phrase “with flying colours,” meaning to win boldly and unapologetically. It instantly aligned her with color, confidence, and creative victory. And it positioned her as the anti-beige studio—without ever saying “bold but elevated.”

It did all the work, without trying too hard. Just like her.

It gave her:

• A bold, ownable studio name

• An immediate brand point of view

• A creative direction rooted in rebellion, originality, and over-the-top confidence

And it became the anchor for the concept that followed… THE EXTRAS: BEYOND THE BIG TOP

When I build a brand system, I don’t stop at the obvious. If the metaphor has legs, we run with it. And this one? Had enough stamina to tour the country.

Here’s what I gave Eva on top of the core naming and messaging:

OFFER + PRODUCT NAMING

With the brand concept locked and the name secured, we built the rest of the circus.

Signature Offer

• The Extravaganza Her all-in, all-eyes-on-you brand experience—framed around a “three-ring system” of strategy, creative direction, and execution.

Other Names I pitched: 

• The Highwire – Her high-stakes, high-pressure VIP day

• The Content Carousel – Her monthly retainer for content design

• Big Top Brand Boost – Strategy session that’s low-commitment but still part of the tent

• Shop the Sideshow – Her digital product store (Not the main act—but still something to see)

Newsletter

We renamed it Uncaged. A better fit for a founder who’s done people-pleasing, done hiding, and definitely done compromising. But I didn’t stop there.

I gave her a structure she could implement instantly if she wanted to go more thematic: The ROAR Format

• R — Revelations

• O — Opportunities

• A — Achievements

• R — Resources

Same circus motif, more structure. Easy to deliver. Easy to read. And fully scalable as her content volume grows.

Each name followed the metaphor. Each one helped the system scale.

THE WORD BANK (AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT)

A good motif doesn’t just make things cute. It makes them cohesive.So I gave Eva a verbal identity with a full-blown brand lexicon to pull from anytime she needed to create something new.

Here’s a sample of what I handed her—with built-in use cases:

Word	How It Shows Up
Ringmaster	Eva’s role in the brand system (and clients ready to lead)
Tightrope / Highwire	Used for VIP offer and metaphors around pressure + balance
Clown car	DIY branding gone rogue—overstuffed, no direction
Big Top	Core services and the main offer ecosystem
Sideshow	Secondary offers, templates, digital products
Carousel	Ongoing content, consistent design retainer
Spotlight / Spectacle	Language for positioning Eva and her clients as the main act
Peanut gallery	Callout for crowdsourced opinions that don’t move your brand forward
Monkey business	Weekly AMA content on Stories—mischievous, branded, on-theme
Balancing act	Describes the tension of visuals vs voice, chaos vs control
Menagerie	Her portfolio—because it’s a wild, diverse showcase of client personalities
Send in the clowns	Used in captions, onboarding emails, and anywhere she wants to wink at the chaos before the clarity hits

Anytime she names a new service, workshop, or template, she’s got a brand vocabulary to pull from that keeps her aligned, referable, and recognizable. No more staring at a blank doc. No more reinventing the voice every time. Just spin the wheel and go. I even pitched her a fully developed personality quiz as a lead magnet -- designed to deepen her funnel, attract aligned leads, and reinforce her metaphor in every result. Each archetype is a client readiness type in disguise. Strategic. Segmentable. Sellable.

Example results:

• Tightrope Walker: Balancing the early scrappiness with the need for a polished brand. These are the people who have invested in minimal branding in the past and know how to walk the line with it, but if they tried to “go rogue” they might fall off the tightrope. 

• Aerialist: Reaching for new heights and daring to elevate her brand. Ready to do whatever it takes to get their brand out there. This is the client who has DIYed things thus for but needs stability.

• Fire Breather: Bringing intensity and passion to her business, now needing refinement. They’ve never invested in branding, and have made it thus far off fire content. They usually do face-to-cam reels, written content, but now they’re ready for an actual brand identity. Your hottest leads. Pun intended.

• Stilt Walker: Standing tall despite challenges, aiming for greater stability. This is the client who needs a sturdier foundation first.
  

Use it to convert. Use it to connect. Use it to entertain and educate.The metaphor holds—and gives her a funnel tool that doesn’t feel salesy. All of it fits. None of it feels forced. That’s the magic of metaphor when it’s done right.

THE OUTCOME

Eva didn’t just get a name. She got a system. A vocabulary. A stage to stand on.

After working together, she went from “designer operating under her own name” to the creative director of a fully-formed brand universe—with:

• A name that says what she does without spelling it out

• A motif that scales across offers, emails, and visuals

• A set of naming conventions she can use again and again

• A metaphor that actually makes selling easier

• A tone so distinct it carries from the homepage to the invoice

Most importantly? She doesn’t need me to keep it going. She’s fluent in her own brand now.

She can:

• Name new offers without a whiteboard meltdown

• Write content that stays on voice without sounding formulaic

• Keep her brand cohesive without it ever feeling boring

Because the brand voice isn’t her talking about branding. It’s her running the show.

THE TAKEAWAY

You don’t need to play it safe. You need a structure bold enough to hold who you actually are.

Flying Colours Creative works because every single piece—from the name to the Notion template shop—pulls in the same direction. No beige. No burnout. No brand voice whiplash.

It’s not just fun. It’s functional.