Brand Development: Telling your story through the wonders of typography and design. Building trust and recognition in just the right way.
The process
Business objectives vary hugely. However the process of developing a brand identity for a business is actually very similar. Every business must understand their customers’ or clients’ needs and wants and find ways to appeal to them. This is the purpose of developing a brand identity.
What is meant by brand identity
Brand identity is fundamentally about communicating who you are, what you have to offer, and what makes you different. Branding launches products and services and at its most extreme can be the difference between success and failure of a business. Having a clear identity draws people to a business and enables a business to differentiate and compete with other businesses already in the market.
The process of developing a brand identity can be broken into the following steps:
Understanding the values of your business
If you are a small business where you are the key operator, it is important for your own values to be aligned with the values of the business. It is our values which inspire and motivate us most. So having our business reflect our own personal values will help the business succeed through difficult times. As it happens it is these same values which can be the key to attracting many clients and customers to a business.
Bigger companies and corporates tend to approach understanding values by identifying the target market for the business. The values of the business are then modelled on the perceived values of that market.
A strong brand clearly and consistently presents these values. It is a fun process understanding your values and setting up your business to reflect them. Once you understand your business values your logo can be developed.
Logo development
A logo tells a story about a business that is designed to reflect its values. A strong logo will deliver a message that will sit in the market place and communicate to the target market in the right way. To start on the process of logo development, ask the following questions:
- Who is your business wanting to attract?
- What is the nature of the business? Selling jewellery or selling meat?
- What is the story behing the logo? Adventure or travel versus meat or cleaning products have very different stories
- What kind of values does your business reflect? Traditional or cutting edge? Solid and dependable, or dynamic and innovative?
- Who are your main customers? Wealthy, middle class or people with less money? Competing on price is useful but it isn’t enough and sometimes it isn’t even a good idea!
Describing in words and pictures the business message becomes the brief for any logo designer. Keeping the message simple and clear is important. Logo designers know that their job is to capture and communicate stories and messages using fonts, words and icons. They are paid well but there are ways to keep costs down.
Content
The content of a website refers to all text, images, graphs and videos etc that is on the site. It needs to be organised in such a way as to engage the visitor and guide them through the site. Website text should ideally be brief and to the point. To do that, a clear sense of purpose needs to be maintained. Like the logo, the front page needs to be directed at the target audience and the experience that will work for these people. Sometimes the visitor is given an experience with a lovely image and other times it is more magazine-like and the visitor is given information and options.
Understanding your visitors enables you to give them a suitable experience. Each website will be different. How the content is presented needs to reflect this difference.