What’s Brand?
What’s Brand? Brand is an important part of any business.
Branding is a strategy that we need to help our clients with – much like copy writing and usability. While the logo is an important first impression for your project, it can’t stop there. The brand needs to be reflected in the content, style and feel of the website, and extend to every part of the business.
> Brand Includes:
Brand Name (the name of the product or service)
Brand Positioning (the business’ niche)
Brand Management (the application of marketing techniques)
Brand Equity (the marketing effects or outcomes)
Awareness
Image
Value
Brand Definition (the distinguishing name and/or symbol, including the logo and colours)
> Brand Affects
Customer service
Aesthetics of the website/logo/business card/letterhead/clothing
The sights (building and furnishings), sounds (music that is played), and tastes (what is served, etc.)
Content including titles
Branding is a strategy that we need to help our clients with – much like copy writing and usability. While the logo is an important first impression for your project, it can’t stop there. The brand needs to be reflected in the content, style and feel of the website, and extend to every part of the business.
> What Are Some Factors That Affect Brand?
Businesses can also affect their brand positively and negatively by simply watching their actions and ensuring that they reflect the business they want to receive, and are socially sustainable and responsible for their actions. But we (both as consumers and designers) can affect brand in positive and negative ways. While we can positively affect brand by providing good and bad reviews as consumers, we can create a negative brand image by creating branding elements (such as the logo and colours) that don’t reflect the business well.
> How Designers Can (Positively) Influence Clients’ Brands
So you’ve been signed onto a client to do their branding. You say to yourself – I was signed onto this project to do branding. My only real deliverables are a logo, letterhead and (maybe, if you’re in a good mood) a business card. While this is true – your only tangible deliverables will be those things, you certainly can’t ignore the rest of the process. Make sure you teach your clients what branding is (something more than a first impression), and that your tangible deliverables, reflect the brand name, positioning, and management.
Here are some questions you can ask your clients that are important in creating identity pieces (such as a client’s logo, business card, letterhead, etc):
– What words would you use to describe your company?
– What words would you like your clients to describe your company?
– How is your business different that your competitors?
– What do you strive to provide to your customers better than the next guy?
> Closure
Branding without analyzing all of the impressions a business makes on it’s clients is like usability testing without analyzing the final data and making changes. While we may be asked to create identity pieces, we need to ensure they reflect the company properly so that it creates an effective brand.
What do you think? What is branding to you?
Brought to you by JAMES COSTA
