Brand Strategy and Identity

Written by Ron Bercume — February 13, 2010 at 3:52 | 0 comments

The construction of business identities and logos requires more than just brainstorming some visuals and hoping for the best.

Good logo design exists at an intersection of creativity and hard-nosed business sense. Educated designers generally focus on several essential factors before beginning the production process.

Let’s look at four of those essential factors. These represent part of the process that underlies successful corporate identity construction. Good designers are not just sketchbook talents. They have an understanding of business and marketing that is as well tuned as their artistic skills are.

Brand Strategy: The designer needs to develop a strong understanding of the client company’s strengths. He or she also needs to recognize the client’s weaknesses. Smart designers will go beyond the obvious, developing an idea of why customers in the company’s market make decisions and how those preferences are developed. This information helps to inform the designer’s work and provides a point of reference for testing its effectiveness.

Brand Science: The most highly-sought creators of logos and corporate identities approach their work with a pronounced business sensibility. They treat their work like one of the company’s assets – which it is. They often make and test adjustments and alterations, divining an idea of the financial implications of those changes. This unique ability – a combination of business acumen and artistic insight – allows good designers to realize creative and memorable angles and approaches. It often separates design novices from the top corporate identity teams.

Naming: A logo may be the face of a company, but these days creating a marketable identity often involves giving the business a name as well. If you are faced with the challenge of naming a business, you should take voice of the customer and competitive intelligence data (as well as similar elite-level business strategies) into account. You must also concern yourself with legalities, trademarking, copyrighting and the like.
This is where a designer must combine creative instincts with intelligence, education and research. A company may be able to survive a variety of poor decisions, but a weak name is not one of those manageable errors.

Brand Identity: After a designer knows what he or she is working with and has determined who that client is, it is time to put all of the pieces together. This is the construction of an overall brand identity wholly consistent with the research and business understanding developed earlier in the process.

Only after these steps are completed should a design team actually begin production. Thinking of corporate identity creation as a fast or purely visual endeavor is inaccurate. The graphic designers who create effective and memorable brands realize that an effective final product must be built upon an informed foundation.

Tags: Brand, Corporate Identity, Identity, Logo Design, Strategy