Baking brands: Like a crumble, it’s all in the mix
Brands, like apple crumbles, only come alive when the right ingredients come together. Mistaking a logo for a brand is like confusing a bag of flour for a crumble — essential, but incomplete on its own.
In practice, creating a brand means the right bringing together a combination typography, photography, colour, tone of voice and sound. And just as a crumble needs time in the oven before it’s ready to serve, a brand needs patience and consistency before it’s recognised and remembered.
If you’ve ever had one of my crumbles, you’ll know the crumble itself is not some over-refined, sandy topping. No, it looks like a lunar landscape — all rocks, uneven and rugged — because that’s what a proper crumble should be.
In this article, I’ll walk through the ingredients of a brand, and how they combine to make something greater than the sum of their parts.
Step 1:
Logo Flour – 4oz
Plain, foundational, but no one eats a bowl of flour. A logo is essential, but meaningless on its own — it needs the other ingredients around it to matter.
Step 2:
Typography Oats – 2oz
Typography provides structure and texture. The choice of style (serif, slab-serif or sans-serif), case, tracking and weight gives type its voice, and often you can recognise a brand from the typography alone, even before the logo appears.
Step 3:
Colour Butter – 4oz
Colour is richness and warmth. A consistent palette becomes shorthand for recognition, such as Coca-Cola red or Cadbury purple, which trigger instant associations.
Work it all together until it resembles a rocky lunar landscape (not a sandy desert), then add sugar — step 4.
Step 4:
Sound/music Sugar – 3oz
Like sugar, sound dissolves but transforms the whole. From Intel’s chime to Netflix’s tudum, audio cues give rhythm and memorability, embedding a brand in your mind without a single visual (even without the logo).
Step 5:
Photography Apples – 1lb
Photography adds freshness and flavour. The style of imagery, whether cinematic and moody or bright and lifestyle-led, sets the tone instantly and can be as distinctive as a logo.
Step 6:
Tone of voice Spices – 1tsp
Like spices (such as cinnamon), tone of voice is small but transformative. Playful, serious or irreverent, it shapes how a brand is remembered, and without it the mix feels flat.
Step 7:
Validation Baking – 1hr/180°c
Validation is where test marketing happens — the oven where your brand’s ingredients fuse. Undercooked brands launch too soon, overcooked ones burn out chasing trends. Getting it just right takes patience, consistency and serving it to the right people.
Step 8:
The brand Crumble – serve hot
Each part alone is unremarkable, but together they’re unmistakable. A proper crumble is lunar and uneven, not some over-refined, sandy topping. A proper brand is layered and textured too, and isn’t complete without the addition of custard…
The flourish:
Brand champions Custard – as much as you like
…because in branding, custard isn’t another ingredient. It’s the brand champions — the people, such as marketers, brand guardians and customer-facing staff, who live and communicate it every day.
So, whilst enjoying the crumble, remember this: a logo alone is never enough. It’s the blend of ingredients described above such as colour, type, voice, photography and people that creates a whole — a brand that lasts and is valued.
