Designing a brand is no easy task. It takes a lot of thought and preparation. There are a few key questions you must ask yourself before beginning to craft your ideal brand. What is the message you want the brand to convey? What type of person are targeting your brand towards? What type of logo and colour scheme would work best? These are all questions that should be on your mind as you begin the creative process. Breaking the design process into two different stages will allow you to work as efficiently as possible. The first stage being the creation of a brand identity followed by the actual designing of logos etc.
Brand Identity
Brand identity is a fancy term for how your brand looks to clients. It is basically anything to do with logos, packaging, colours and typography. All of these are really important because they are usually the first thing potential clients will notice about your company. The key to successful brand identity is to have unity and consistency throughout. Check out or blog post on consistency to learn more.
Another segment of brand identity is brand personality. A phrase commonly used to explain this is, ‘if your brand was a person, what would they be like?’ When trying to find your brand’s personality, start with the message you want your brand to tell potential customers. The personality of your brand will be present in nearly everything your company does. For example, it will be seen in all of the graphics you use, all of the social media posts and how your employees present themselves to your clients and customers. Building a good brand personality sets the foundation for your company and will allow the actual brand design process to proceed much smoother. Until you have decided on how you want your brand to be perceived my customers it will be difficult to begin designing things like your logo or packaging.
Design Process
Once you have figured out the message you want to convey, it’s time to start actually designing the brand. This means creating the logo design, choosing typography and deciding on the colours that will represent your company. You need to make sure all of these fit with the type of customers you are trying to attract. For example, using bright, in your face colours and fonts when targeting over 65’s may not be the smartest idea. This type of branding is much better suited for a younger audience. Essentially, what I mean is, know your consumers. Without an in-depth understanding of the market your entering, how will you know how to best attract them?
When designing your logo, consider those of your competitors. How can you make yours stand out? It needs to be clear, simple and easy to understand, but more importantly – visually appealing enough to remember. When it comes to the colour scheme, this choice is more important than you may think. Our previous blog post gives great insight on the importance of colour, why not check it out. When it comes to the fonts you choose, make sure they are legible, but enticing. Memorable, yet balanced.
Brand design can be quite difficult and requires a lot of planning. However, if you go about it systematically you will be surprised at how quickly the ideas will flow. If the idea of doing it yourself scares you, why not get some help from people who can make sure your brand comes to life? People like us.
