7 Steps To Design Your Brand
If you’re working to develop your brand, it’s important to first understand what a brand is and what it takes to create one. A strong one at that. It’s probably most important that you know it doesn’t happen overnight.
The good news is that while this may seem intimidating, it doesn’t have to be. Here, you’ll learn everything you need to know about designing for your brand. Let’s start with some brand basics.
A brand identity — one with a face, trust, and a mission — attracts people who agree with what your brand has to offer. Essentially, it’s a promise to your customers. A good product or service generates customers, but a good brand generates advocates.
As Paul Rand says, “Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”
So, how do you create a strong and coherent identity for your brand?
Stay tuned, because you’re about to find out.
- Complete Your Brand Strategy
The first step is always the biggest. Try answering this question in less than one sentence.
Who are you as a brand, or rather, who do you want to be?
Should you need more inspiration, check out Simon Sinek’s ‘Start With Why’ TED Talk.
Your brand strategy is a detailed plan that outlines exactly what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it. It is comprised of your:
- Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values)
- Brand Messaging (brand voice, personality, tagline, brand messaging pillars)
- Brand Identity (logo, colour, typography, etc.)
Your brand identity is a tool to help you communicate your brand, visually. Thus supporting your brand strategy. As such, before you dive into your brand identity, it’s important to have a fully fleshed-out strategy.
2. Research Research Research
Did I mention doing your research?
To best position yourself in a market, you must first understand that market. Building a brand identity without knowing your target audience is just shooting in the dark. Identify your competition.
Building a brand identity is all about differentiation: making your brand visible, relevant, and unique. However, without a firm understanding of your competitive landscape, it’s easy to blend in.
As you go about your research, make a note of the following:
- Who your “lowest hanging fruit” customers are — the ones you could most easily sell to.
- Who your top-of-mind competitors are — the brands that are established and known in the market.
- How your customers speak and what they talk about — the interests they have and the language they express themselves in.
3. Write Your Creative Brief
Once you’ve completed the previous steps, you have the information you need to start the design process. However, don’t dive right in. Start with a creative brief that details the pertinent info you need to keep your team (also yourself) on the same page. Writing a creative brief just helps you ensure that you create a visual identity that aligns to your brand. But also having said that, don’t provide too much (or too little) info. Your brief should always be — brief. Your goal is to inform, not to overwhelm.
4. Develop Your Visual Elements
Here comes the fun (and challenging) part. You want to develop each element in the order written here, as each element influences the next.
It starts with your logo.
Designing your logo is a pivotal point in your branding process. As the main representative of a brand, your logo drives the rest of the brand design.
Once you have a solid logo, you can explore your colour palette. Colour is a great tool to differentiate your brand from competitors. A good colour palette is clean and flexible, supplying designers enough choices to be creative but not enough to overwhelm them.
Every visual element in your identity should contribute to a cohesive visual language, and thus each should compliment the other. This is particularly true of the next element, typography.
It is important that you only have 2–3 font types for your brand. With too many fonts, you lose the effect of consistency and recognition. If you aren’t someone that understands design language, let me make it clear. Imagine if every time you spoke to a person, you used a different accent — people would have a hard time placing you. They also might think you’ve lost it. Now that is definitely not the connotation you want for your brand.
This allows me to segue into the next element which is your brand voice.
Again, think if your brand were a person, how would it speak? What would it talk about, and what tone would it use? To develop your brand voice, you need to focus on what you would like to communicate and how that would connect with your brand personality. In all facets of communication, from text to video dialogue to imagery, choose a language that “sounds” like you.
Then lastly, your additional elements. Your brand may have unique communication needs, depending on your industry. So it is important that you determine which ones serve you best. These elements include imagery and visuals if you are selling a product for example. But if you are a service-orientated brand other elements work better for you, such as testimonials or blog articles.
Designing these elements may seem intimidating, but just take it step by step. Follow the process.
5. Develop & Build Your Style Guide
The only thing more heartbreaking than a pixelated logo is a beautifully designed identity that is never used correctly. A brand style guide is the saviour here. It is considered “optional”, but all the work you put into understanding and developing your brand elements is wasted if you don’t have one to keep track of your choices.
Your brand style guide should include the following:
- Brand Story
- Voice
- Logo Usage (especially if you have more than one)
- Imagery
- Colour Palette (with exact colour codes) — help a designer out 😉
- Typography
In summary, your brand style guide assures that your design choices remain consistent no matter who’s designing them.
6. Brand Awareness
To work on brand awareness, write down your branding goals. You can then create a calendar through which you set specific branding goals. The most important thing to remember in this stage of developing your brand is that your brand is a growing venture. Leave enough space in your branding process to allow room for changes and even some mistakes along the way, without losing your core mission.
This brings us to the last point, which is, of course, the most important one.
7. Evolve Your Brand As You Go
Building a brand doesn’t stop with creating a beautiful brand identity or even with your brand launch. Your brand needs to exist, and remain consistent wherever your customers interact with it.
Naturally, you’ll continue to shape and evolve your brand as you expose more customers to it and learn more about who your customers are and how they want to be spoken to.
It’s important to accept (and appreciate) that you will never have 100% control over how people perceive your brand. All you can do is put your best foot forward and try to resonate with your core audience.
But hopefully, at this point, you have the tools, knowledge and resources to start somewhere. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t have the resources to take on this project yourself, we’re happy to help you get your brand on the right track. 😉
