Brand Design

Brand Design is Multifaceted

Branding / Identity Design

• Branding is used to connect your product to your company name
• Logos are part of branding, but so is consistent design of your products
• Colors can play a big part in brand memory for customers/users

Brand Voice / Language

• Brand Language is how you communicate through words and stories
• These are key words and phrases that will be used consistently in advertising, packaging, etc. related to the business

Brand Visuals

• Brand Visuals is how you communicate through photos, graphics, and colors.
• Examples are logo, letterhead, and business cards

Emotions

• Brands want to evoke specific emotions and feelings when you experience their brand
• This needs to be consistent through all of their branding on their website, through the user experience using their products, watching their commercials, looking at the product itself, labeling of their products, etc.
• This could be done by having a unique package size or form

Creating Experiences

• This is shown through "unboxing" videos on YouTube.
• What does the outside of the box look like?
• What is the first thing I see when I open the box?
• Is there a greeting card that I see right when I open it?
• How is everything wrapped? What kind of paper do they use?

Final Deliverable

• Logo design files
• Package designs
• Marketing materials
• Social media campaign

Strong Brand Campaigns

Characteristics:

• Unifying theme
• All visuals are connected through words, language, colors, shapes or patterns
• Could create a custom icon set
• Flexible assets
• Logos can include a unique font that is identifiable to the brand
• Could also include a graphic or pattern that is unique to the company
• When you have several choices of elements to work with, you can mix them together in different ways for multiple different elements such as menu, website design, package design, etc.
• Structure and Guidelines
• Brand guidelines can include very specific elements to the brand
• For example, can include size of font in a heading for print material, size of font for subheading, specific fonts used for each different type of heading, etc.
• It helps other people involved in the design to stay true to the original design brand ethos

How Do I Come Up with a Design?

Do Your Research

• To get a good design you need to ask the right questions, and get proper feedback from the company
• You need to do deep and intensive industry research before starting the branding process
• Don't guess what the client wants. You end up filling in the blanks with improper information. Use your research and feedback from the client.
• Research your client's competitors. This way you will become familiar with how to market that company/item in the unique ways that can help you stand out.
• You need to understand the unique offering that the company has can help you spin your visuals and language to your advantage.
• You should experience the product or service that your client offers firsthand.
• Visit competitor's businesses as well to see how they have designed their space, present their product, and experience their product/service.

Two Different Ways to Get Info from Client

1. Client brief provided upfront
• History of the company
• Company goals
• Mission statement
• Desires and expectations for the brand development process
• When you are reading through the client brief, take note of words or phrases that are used repeatedly
• Highlight words that jump out at you
• Use these words in a word map as you brainstorm ideas in the future
2. No brief provided - they don't know what to provide
• Send them a list of questions that are tailored to their business
• Questions would cover their company goals, mission, desires and expectations.
• Questions will be different for each client. You might already be familiar with the company, or it might be brand new and you don't know anything about it.
• Your goals would be to discover target audiences, likes, dislikes, goals and more

Questions to ask all clients

• Ask for a full list of services or offerings
• Make sure to ask what their unique selling point of their product is
• Don't be afraid to ask questions about things you don't know or understand
• What don't you want me to include? Colors, symbols, etc.
• Are they any websites that you can direct me to that will give me a good sense of what you are talking about? (Industry specific jargon, etc.)
• Who is your target audience? What generation of people? How much money do they make? Likes, dislikes, location, age?
• What is your price point?
• Style preferences?
• Ask them to brainstorm. List some words that describe your company, product, business, etc.
• Outside of the logo what else will you be needing?

Defining your Target Audience

Customer Persona

A customer persona includes a page with a possible picture of their face, age, likes, dislikes, profession, job title, sex, favorite food, habits, goals, values, preferences, location

We are not our client's target audience so you must consider who is

Hopefully your client has given you some of this information to go on. Otherwise you can do research, or ask someone these questions that you know that might be part of their target audience.

You can have multiple customer types

Steps to creating a Customer Persona

• After doing some research as to who your target audience is, find a photo of them on pexels.com or unsplash.com.
• Give them a name that would fit their age group
• Give them a title. Whether that is a professional title or just a personality type, add it under their name.
• Add an Overview section with some general facts about him/her. Age, status, occupation, income, location, education.
• List his/her goals related to your client's business
• List his/her values for life related to your client's business
• Problem-solving opportunities. List problems that your customer persona has that you can solve with your client's product or service
• By developing and presenting a customer persona to a client, it shows that you are doing brand strategy and not just brand design. This shows that you're thinking more about it than others, you can develop more refined ideas, and then also charge higher prices.

Finding Direction

After you have gathered enough background information about your project, it is now time to start finding out what direction the client wants to go in. There are different ways to do this.

• Brand boards
• Mood boards
• Style boards
• Brand style presentation

You should put together two or three different boards for your client to choose from that are designed based off of your research.

• These different boards should include photos, textures, typography, and other barnd or design work that can portray the right mood and style you are going for.
• It's okay to to use other people's designs on your boards, but make sure to give them a very small print credit to the photographer and/or designer on the page.

Style Boards / Mood Boards

This presentation should be kept simple, and kept to just one page. Think of it as an extension of your customer persona.

• Using free stock images (pexels, unsplash, pixabay) find a picture of someone who is your customer.
• From there add images that show what they like to wear, their likes, dislikes, textures, patterns or backgrounds that connect with your customer persona.
• You can use the photos as color and typography inspiration as well.
• If you have photos of their actual products, include them on your board.

Suggested Sizes for Boards

• 4000px wide x 1200px high
• 2000px wide x 3000px high
• 300px per inch - keep in high resolution

Client Rating Scales

Using rating scales with your client can help you get a better perspective of what their company represents and who their target audience is.

Examples of Scales

• Price: Lowest to highest
• Target Audience: Feminine to Gender Neutral to Masculine
• Target Audience: Entry level to Retired
• Style: Modern to Transitional to Traditional
• Style: Bold to Reserved
• Style: Bright to Neutral
• Desired Audience Characteristics: Rule breakers to Rule followers
• Desired Audience Characteristics: Risk takers to Risk adverse
• Desired Audience Characteristics: Extroverts to Introverts

Client Briefs

A client brief is a short questionnaire you have your client fill out to answer important questions that lead you to your design.

Example Client Brief Questions

1. What is your company name and how you would like it to appear on your logo? 
Do you have a tagline?
2. What industry are you in?
3. What services/products do you offer?
4. What sets your company apart from your competition?
5. Words or phrases you think of when you think of your company?
6. Describe your target audience. (Age, gender, interests, income, geography, etc.)
7. What is your price point? (inexpensive, middle of the road, high-end)
8. Do you have an idea of what you want in your design? If not, that is okay as well. (Colors you like, colors you dislike, similar to your old design or going in a new direction?, who is your competition? - so it is not too similar, etc.)
9. Outside of the logo what other designs will you be needing? (Business cards, letterhead, t-shirts, bags, etc.)

Watermarks

• Insert logo
• Reduce transparency
• Possibly change to grayscale depending on how it looks with original colors

Printer Requirements

All printers will have different requirements depending on their software and equipment. The following information should be confirmed with your printer before sending the files over.

1. Very important! Always keep one file with typography as text, and then a separate file in which you convert all typography to curves!

Business Card

1. Make sure to include the bleed
• Standard bleed: 1/8" (0.125")
• Or sometimes 1/4" (0.25")
2. Typography is converted to curves (remember to keep one file with typography as text as well)
3. CMYK color mode
4. Nothing in margins
5. Save as PDF
6. Press quality
7. Make sure to check off the section for marks and bleeds when exporting
8. Make sure to check off the section to use the document bleeds when exporting

Print VS Digital Designs

Digital

• RGB color mode
• Pixels
• Use the highest resolution you can (300 dpi)

Print

• CMYK
• inches
• needs bleed
• Standard bleed: 1/8" (0.125")
• Or sometimes 1/4" (0.25")