Branding By Design: By Design Branding

By Author: Pritesh Bagwe
Total Articles: 30
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Every good company should be trying to create a brand and not just creating a company or a nice product. A well branded company has placement in your mind and heart–when you think of innovation, perhaps you think of Apple Products. When you think of graphic design, you may automatically think of Adobe Products or Photoshop. These are just great examples of what good branding is and how they create an emotional attachment with their audience.

When you create a business without really throwing attempts at branding it, your audience will kind of lose sight of it and most times think of it as a copycat business or nothing to really write home about. Worst of all, you may not have an audience at all! The best way to find out if your client is serious, is to ask them what they would like their brand to be perceived as. If they don’t have a decent answer (that makes sense: saying ‘We want to be the next  'Apple’ doesn’t count), then they aren’t serious about their business and desire no long term success.

Brand recognition and consistency :

The ultimate goal of a company, is to win the hearts and ...
... minds of your consumers. Once you’ve done that, you have achieved what is called ‘brand recognition.’ This means your audience knows the company well enough to know what they may or may not say, and what they may or may not look like.
 
How design contributes to branding :

Design is only a small portion of branding. Creating a super sweet logo and letterhead doesn’t mean anything if the consumer doesn’t have a great perception of the company. However, good brand design can help build a solid foundation for a brand. If the brand is to be known for their scholastic wealth and achievements, you want to create something that gives off that feeling. If a brand has a product that is designed to make the consumer happy, don’t create or use anything that could do otherwise. Pick an idea or feeling and nail that down as best as possible.

Designers can also contribute to branding through creating work that is consistent with the views and perception of the clients company. Something all designers (and companies, for that matter) must understand is good design equals good quality. When you really brand something in a consumers mind, it can really stand out for ever, for example color schemes and logos are really memorable and help create a good foundation or start of branding. You want to keep this in mind so that you make something that can be EASILY remembered, rather than easily forgotten. When you are working for a company that isn’t quite new and isn’t quite old, just try to create something that follows along with the design and perception that they already have going on. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel (of course unless asked) but you should think of more creative ways to get across the same message they have.

Most of the branding should come from the company—what do they stand for, what do the sell, who do they cater too—so hopefully for a good designer, branding should be a breeze, as far as logos and color schemes go. Designers can also contribute not just by the design but by the way in which the design and/or the company is presented. For example, if a company sells a product that needs packaging, what is the best kind of packaging for that product and how is it designed? Or even simply, should a company have a tri-fold brochure or just a simple sell sheet. Though minute, these things have a ton to do with how a company is perceived and remembered.

To summarise, design in branding is integral and adds immense value to the buying process and then going onward to building the continuity and loyalty. Brands with a clear vision of design as an enabling tool realise this and make all out efforts to tell/sell the design story.

So very clearly, if you as a brand have designs on your customer, do ensure that design plays a prominent role. We live and consume in a visual economy, so sending out strong visual clues becomes imperative to attract, captivate and compel. In order for this to happen, design has to play the role of the catalyst. After all brands have the onerous task of making its customers feel good, look good and repeat the experience. Very clearly, design in branding has its role well cut out!

At ISD Global, we insist that the brand brief is as comprehensive as possible- because the more thorough the briefing, the easier it is to integrate key design elements into the creative process and make it look seamless and natural. The brief could be for identity design, advertising design, packaging design or space design, the core ethos remains the same.

Visit : http://www.groupisd.com