Who Creates Your Brand?

Nasa branding history

Whether you’re creating a whole new brand from scratch or just refreshing your existing brand, you need to decide who will be involved in the process. For a project this crucial to your business, it’s well worth calling in the pros and hiring a branding agency. They can add value by developing your strategy and revealing game-changing insights into your marketplace, while delivering first-class design. If your budget doesn’t stretch to a full design service, their strategic input alone can prove invaluable. Even if you’ve hired an agency, you’ll also need to decide who will steer the project internally, taking on the role of brand guardian. Whether it’s you, another member of your staff or a small team, choose people who really understand the essence of your business and can contribute their time, energy, and expertise throughout the process.

How Is a Brand Expressed?

Depending on your business, branding can mean very different things. If you’re in the service industry, for instance, you may need to give more attention to the point of delivery, such as customer service and employee uniforms, than to the logo or website. If your business is international, you’ll need to take cultural and linguistic implications into account. And if your business exists predominantly online, there’s the issue of how your branding will work in digital environments.

Creative material use in branding

I stumble upon many creative materials on a regular basis. This is one of them. With the creative usage of heat sensitive materials on the cover, the Camden strategic transformation story with their acquisition was slowly revealed effectively from cover to cover. The color changes from one body temperature to the next. It's never the same. To date this branding project has won over 100 awards and appeared in some 50+ books and publications. What a humbling experience for me and I'm very grateful for the client who understands that good design is good business. And most times it takes boldness and fearlessness especially on the client part to do something different in order to take their brand to the next level.

What is a brand?

So What Is a Brand?

Your brand is how you communicate the essence of your business. Many think branding is simply a logo plus typefaces and color palettes, but that’s only part of it. It’s also your business name, the products or services you provide, and how you deliver them to your consumer. It’s the idea you create in your audience’s mind about who you are and what you do. It’s this idea of your brand that’s so powerful, and prompts your customers to choose you over a rival. Take a look at AT&T old and new branding and how it's used in an advertising campaign.

History of super famous Apple branding

Brands occupy every corner of our lives, and affect almost every decision we make each day. Why do we choose one brand of soda over another? Why does owning one particular make of car give us a sense of pleasure or pride, while owning another satisfies less? Take a look at how Apple brand evolves over the years.

Branding is every bit as important to small business as it is to big companies. Every business has a brand. The question is whether the makeup of the brand is created intentionally or accidentally. There is little doubt in my mind that businesses that find themselves in possession of what some would call a strong brand are far more likely to achieve great things than those that simply go out there and compete.

Logo Life (BIS Publishers), a new book by Ron van der Vlugt, compiles the stories behind 100 famous logos, from Apple and Adidas to Nike and Volkswagen, providing graphic histories of some of the world’s most influential companies.

Infographic showing Facebook data

Infographic showing how the data moves through Facebook likes.

Branding helps you grow your business

For many small businesses, branding is one of the most overlooked and underestimated business tools. While many business owners may think of a brand as a logo - it’s really much more. A strong brand represents the essence of your company, a clear statement of what your company is and what differentiates you. And it can have a big impact on your business. A strong brand can help you compete with much larger organizations.

One key to building a strong brand is authenticity, which can begin with developing a brand mission that captures the “why” of your business and then delivering on that mission.

Consistency is also imperative. It’s critical that you communicate your brand through every customer experience, every day. Virgin America is a good example. Their branding extends across various touchpoints – from the logo on the planes to the extra touches like snacks and blankets on flights – you see how creating those consistent ties can make the brand even more memorable to customers. 

Branding is more than design. Good branding extends into other areas, like how you handle customer service or innovate products or services. The rebranding process can raise the bar for everything you do, like how you present yourself, how you greet visitors. It’s like getting a makeover; you start looking for other areas to improve.

Wantful - a new concept of gifting website

For your next gift, send a catalog you curated.
Wantful lets you give the gift of choice--by sending someone a customized, 16-item catalog of gifts to choose from.

Here’s how it works: You visit the site (which is exceedingly sharp and easy to use, reaffirming your sense that this is indeed going to be a Good Gift), tell it a little bit about the gift you need (who you’re buying it for, their gender, and a dollar amount you’re looking to spend, from $30 to $500), and answer a few questions about the recipient (which of these style homes would so-and-so like to live in; does so-and-so like cooking, etc). The site then spits out a nice clean grid of product thumbnails algorithmically picked for your recipient, culled from an inventory of a few thousand items. The products include neat bracelets, artsy coffee table books, cool candle holders--a lot of stuff you’d expect to see in New York’s Museum of Modern Art Design Store. Kitchen gizmos are very prevalent. Anyway, you pick sixteen of these products, and Wantful puts them into an elegant little catalog, sends it to the recipient, and lets them choose one to have as their own, courtesy of your credit card.

It’s clever. A book from Wantful combines the "this way you can get something you like" guarantee of a gift card and the lasting usefulness of a genuinely cool product. But as the site’s founder and CEO John Poisson told Co.Design, it also carries with it that central Good Gift component: surprise.

A cool website always stands out

Wexley School for Girls - A Seattle ad agency

Creative material use dazzles party guests

An installation made of balloons, shredded paper and nylon netting was suspended over guests at the recent Beaux Arts Ball of The Architectural League of New York. Design by: SOFTlab

Creative egg packaging

A minimalist but still effective package design that uses a single piece of recyclable cardboard. It folds back to both display and protect the eggs. Designed by  Hungarian designer, Otília Andrea Erdélyi.