A brand identity consists of any visual assets that your business uses to communicate with your customers. It includes your logo, fonts and colours, as well as your website, stationery, social media and more.
But if created without purpose or customers’ needs in mind, you reduce your chance of success. Follow these steps to make sure you create meaningful brand assets.
Defining the brief
If the brief isn’t clear, the outcome will be muddled. A good understanding of what your business is trying to achieve will provide the foundation for a strong and successful brand identity.
- Who are your audience? Can you identify their demographic, their interests and their problems?
- What are you offering? What is your product or service?
- How does your business/product/service solve your customers’ problem?
- Why are you offering this product/service? What are your business aims and objectives? What drives you?
- Where does your business sit against the competition? Who are the competition? What sets you apart?
The answers to the above will set out your brief and guide decisions throughout the design process.
Developing concepts
With your brief defined, it’s time to start creating concepts. At this stage it’s important to explore the different paths set out in your brief, using any key words to inform the creative direction.
Be as creative as possible when generating ideas. Explore fonts, shapes, colours, pattern and even motion if it’s relevant. Push the boundaries set out by the brief – you can exaggerate features in the conceptual stage and find the right balance later when revising your ideas.
Before you take any concepts further, it’s important to analyse them against your brief. Do they meet the criteria set out by your research? Are they relevant to the target audience? Do they communicate your business objectives? If not, try looking at the brief from a new angle and see what you might have missed. If yes, then you’re ready to take these forward into the revisions stage!
Revising and reviewing
Don’t settle unless it’s right. Refining concepts into a strong outcome can be the longest and most difficult stage in designing a brand.
You might need to explore several options to realise which direction is best. Or you might even take aspects from several concepts and combine them to create a new single concept.
Just as when developing ideas, you need to review any revisions against your original brief. Remember that your goal is to find the best solution for your business. It can be useful to reach out to a selection of your customers to get their feedback too – do they identify with the design?
Rolling it out
The final decisions have been made. You have a sleek logo, a fresh colour palette, and a shiny new website – what now?
Making sure your brand rolls out smoothly and is used correctly has equal importance to getting the look right. A set of brand guidelines will outline what your assets are and how they should be used. It’s important that they’re easy to understand and thorough enough to guide the creation of your marketing material. Anyone who creates visuals for your business will need to be given the guidelines to make sure your brand is cohesive and your messaging is always clear.
Finding the right people for the job
At Bluemoon, we believe the best approach is collaborative.
We know that no one knows your business better than you. That’s why we value your input throughout the branding process and we’ll always take your comments on board, while using our expertise to guide you and develop ideas and concepts that are consistent with your needs.
Looking for a new brand identity? Get in touch to find out how we can help.
