Finding Your Brand Voice: From Personality to Point of View
Brand Materials is a guided series exploring the foundations of brand strategy, from purpose and positioning to voice, personality, and emotional connection. Each piece is written to guide you through the thinking behind branding, step by step.
In this post, you’ll learn how to shape a brand voice and build a point of view system that establishes personality and authority in your niche.
What is Brand Voice?
Brand voice is the consistent way your brand speaks about its work and the world around it. It’s what allows someone to recognize your writing before they recognize your name. If you’ve ever read something and instantly known who wrote it (even before seeing the name) then you have an idea of what brand voice means.
Your voice tells your audience how seriously to take you, how close to stand, and what kind of relationship you’re inviting them into. Whether your brand feels warm and conversational, precise and assured, restrained and thoughtful, or challenging: each choice carries meaning.
Consider how your voice ties your communication together. Is it warm and welcoming? Bold and irreverent? Quietly confident? Curious and poetic? What does it tell readers about your brand?
Brand Voice vs. Tone
While voice remains consistent, tone adapts. You may sound different in a reflective essay than you do in a sales page, just as you would speak differently in a quiet conversation than in a room full of people. The expression shifts, but the underlying perspective stays intact.
A wellness brand might write with steadiness and care when addressing burnout, and with more momentum when introducing a new offering. A coaching brand may sound open and spacious in onboarding, then more directive when outlining commitments. The tone flexes, but the voice remains recognizable.
Voice as Point of View
Brand voice is not neutral. It reflects how your brand understands the world. This is where voice becomes a point of view system rather than a tonal preference.
Every brand, whether intentionally or not, communicates beliefs. What you think is broken, what you think is misunderstood, what you think deserves more care or less attention. Your voice is how those beliefs surface in language. It shapes how you frame problems, what you challenge, and what futures you imagine possible.
Two brands can offer similar services and still sound entirely different because they see the work differently. When your voice is clear, your content stops sounding informational and starts sounding deliberate. It answers questions like:
What truths about your industry do you want to name?
What are you tired of seeing done the same way?
What possibilities excite you?
What do you do differently, and why?
What ideas or norms do you subvert or disrupt?
Finding Your Voice
Once you understand that voice is a point of view, the question shifts.
You’re no longer trying to invent a tone or choose the “right” words. You’re clarifying how your brand sees the world, and then letting that perspective guide how you speak.
The steps below aren’t about sounding different for the sake of it. They’re about translating your values, mission, and worldview into language that feels consistent, intentional, and recognisable over time.
Here are a few steps to help you put your voice to paper:
Begin with your values
Your voice is an extension of your values. If compassion is your values, your voice might feel gentle and empathetic.
Return to your mission
Mission also helps guide your voice. A brand advocating for slow living might choose grounded, invitating language. A brand pushing for systemic change might lean into sharper, bolder language.
Imagine your brand as a person
If your brand walked into a room, how would it hold itself? Would it ask questions, or listen? Would it speak slowly and thoughtfully, or with quick bursts of energy? Sketch the personality, then distill it into five descriptive keywords to help guide your writing.
Consider your audience
Voice is relational. What kind of voice makes your ideal audience feel seen? Do they respond to intimacy and softness, or structure and certainty?
Scan your competition
Every industry has its clichés. If everyone else sounds professional and distant, there’s space for warmth. If your space is full of trendspeak, there’s power in restraint. Defining what’s missing gives you a chance to claim ground.
Use contrast to sharpen
Defining what your voice isn’t makes what it is clearer. For example:
Our voice is: grounded and authoritative, but conversational. Expertise with warmth—a guide, not a lecturer.
Our voice is not: dry, clinical, or detached. We avoid jargon and keep our words human, accessible, and easy to understand.
How to Sustain Your Voice
You can treat your voice like a toolbox or repository. Instead of starting from scratch every time you write, build a set of resources that makes your voice easy to sustain and repeat. For example:
A Voice Guide
Create a reference guide for how you speak (Notion, Google Docs, or even a private folder works). Capture:
Core voice descriptors (e.g. warm, grounded, bold)
Do’s and don’ts for phrasing, structure, or tone
Reusable blocks of copy (taglines, intros, calls-to-action)
Samples of writing that you want to repeat
This helps keep you consistent, but it also helpful if you hand your content to a copywriter, VA, or collaborator.
An Inspiration Archive
Start keeping records of what sparks your voice:
Musings, phrases, or metaphors that surface in your everyday thinking
Ideas and observations that reveal your unique point of view
Examples of industry “norms” you want to disrupt (and your counter-takes)
Content, quotes, or even visuals that feel tonally aligned with your brand
These become the raw materials you can draw from to create fresh content.
Concluding Thoughts
Brand voice is not about clever phrasing or surface-level distinction. It’s about coherence over time, and how you brand expresses its worldview. When your language reflects your values, your mission, and your way of seeing, your brand becomes easier to recognize and easier to trust.
Up Next: The Storybrand Framework
In the next entry of Brand Materials, we’ll explore how to use story to orient your audience. You’ll learn how to structure your messaging so people quickly understand where they are, what you offer, and how they fit into the picture, without needing to be persuaded.
Shop the Resource Library
Studio Founded extends this work through a design-led resource library of templates, workbooks, and systems shaped by strategy and considered design. Each piece is created at the meeting point of strategy and fine-art sensibility, made to help your work be seen, understood, and sustained.
Made for founders seeking an antidote to hustle culture, these resources support work that is enduring, fulfilling, and built to hold the life around it.
