What do we consider when designing your brand?
Your Company Culture
How would you describe your company? Think about the key words and attributes that might describe you, what you do and how you want others to see your organisation. You may be a traditional, trustworthy company that your customers rely on for an important service. You may be cutting edge and want customers to feel like they’re getting something original that nobody else offers. Are you eco aware, specialists in your field or do you offer help and advice? What’s important to you and how do you want to be perceived? Whatever it may be will underpin our thinking when designing your logo and building your brand.
Your Target Audience
While you don’t want to alienate your current audience, you may want to attract a new kind of customer to grow your business. If you think of a venn diagram with your current customers in one circle and your ideal audience in another, we strive to hit that sweet spot right in the middle. This is accomplished by having a discovery session. This is where we have a discussion about your customers, who they are and what appeals to them. Once we have the target audience in mind, that’s our guiding star that not only keeps us from designing for other graphic designers, but helps you when considering your feedback. Designing a logo is a partnership, and by keeping the target audience in mind for both us and the client, it narrows the project focus and avoids a scattergun approach.
What do you love
Your customer is the priority but you need to love your brand too. In the discovery session we will talk about what appeals to you and how you want your brand to look. Taking a look at other brands, websites and design inspiration in general, is a great way to get a feel for what you like or you think your customers will like. From these discussions we come up with stylescapes. Stylescapes are essentially moodboards that we put together to give you an idea of how the brand may ‘feel’. These are sometimes more useful than anything discussed in the initial meeting. Here you can pick out the fonts, colours and styles that you like or dislike to give us a better understanding of how the final brand or logo design should look.
Keeping it consistent
So your logo has been designed and you love it, but it doesn’t end there. A successful brand rollout means treating that logo correctly, and we do this by following the rules. In the case of branding, this means having a brand guidelines which outline the fonts we think need to be used alongside the logo, as well as a structured colour palette to keep consistency. There may also be rules on how to use the logo to ensure nobody changes the colour, squashes it into a tight spot or even, heaven forbid, stretches the logo.
Summary
Your brand is more than just a logo. It’s a combination of things, your tone of voice, the images you use, your values and everything you stand for. A brand is the feeling your audience gets when eating in your restaurant, using your service, buying your product or whatever it might be that sets you apart from the crowd.
