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While a brand and a logo may look the same, do not be mistaken. Creating a brand goes much further than designing the graphic.

Emotional connection to brands

Brands become personal statements through emotional connection. The products or services offered by an organisation provide rational ground for the evaluation of the organisation but emotional links are formed by conferring values outside of product or service practicalities.

This is about cultivating an environment for product/service delivery, defining a market position to occupy. Your market position sets the agenda for people’s expectations. Building the brand to create position is a process of continuous, constant, homogeneous promotion across all media.

All elements promoting the brand must relate to the same brand concept to develop the brand image. Transactions conducted outside of the context of a brand do little to build loyalty.

The brand is an umbrella for the product. Products have their own identity linked to the brand. Honda make cars, motorcycles, formula one racing cars and lawn mowers. Honda has loyalty. Their products reinforce that emotion. 

Emotional and rational triggers drive reaction. Connect emotional responses to the brand and create a positive mood for exchange.

The Brand Design Process

We conduct a consultation process where we agree on the strategic objectives for the brand or identity. This is written up and agreed upon prior to creative executions. This may require a brand strategy documenting the business objectives that address your audience, their insights, your position in the market place and types of activities. We need to understand where you plan to take the business to make sure the brand supports and confirms those activities. The brief is written in consultation with you. We have a checklist you can use to help prepare for an identity briefing.

Brand Values

By defining these we can guide the brand so people inside and outside the company have common understandings - what comes to mind when they think about the brand? Brand values cover the big picture idea for use in every level of communication - identity, fit out, advertising, packaging, web sites, product - even the way the telephone is answered.

Brand is about the values you trade on. It allows people to connect on an emotional level – the key to loyalty. It determines what value to expect from your organisation. The associations surrounding the brand must be co-ordinated to generate the desired feeling when the brand is thought of. This is not about product, although your products carry your values. By creating a persona for the brand we give the identity a set of values which provide clear parameters for its public representation.

For a brand to truly gain leverage in the market place it must be associated with ideas that resonate with people. Ideas and values that are grander than the immediate product benefits. Ideas that are big enough for everyone to believe in.

Brand Name

The name or brand requires meaning. Selecting the right name for use as a brand requires the right combination of enigma, actual meaning, history, phonetics and inference.

To guide the balance it is useful to consider what will be required to give the brand meaning. Orange™ now means telecommunications, but only after a large public advertising campaign lasting a couple of years. Kwikcopy has their name doing the work for them. Is there a budget to tell people what the brand stands for and why they should care?

Logo Design

The Brand Value Document provides all necessary conceptual direction for the development of the identity. Additional practical requirements can be briefed at this stage for inclusion. The process of creating the brand graphic is the same as for logo design. 

1. Concept Development
2. Design Development
3. Design Refinement
4. Presentation to Key Decision Makers
5. Selected Design Refinement and Final Approval

Brand Application Strategy

A guide document for how the identity elements can be used across media such as radio, television, internet, print, advertising and signs. This demonstrates how the brand can be projected in media outside of the visual realm. How to apply the Corporate Identity to the behaviours of the organisation.

Positioning Statement or Slogan

Slogans may sound a bit old hat but when done right they drive a guiding core directly to the market position you want to own. Cleave a path and others will follow. Make the obvious obvious.