Design Practice: Study Task 4: Build a Brand

Define your brand:
Review the product or service your business offers, consider the emotive and rational needs and concerns of your customers / consumers. Your brand character should promote your business, connect with your customer base and differentiate you in the market. Identifying the core principles of your company can provide the backbone of your brand and what you, as a company, stand by and adhere to.

When building your brand, think of it as a person:
Your personality determines how you behave in different situations. Of course for people it's intuitive and it's rare that you even consider what your own character is, but when you're building a brand it's vital to have that understanding.

Consider what is driving your business:What does your business believe in, what is its purpose and who are its inspirations. These things can help establish your emotive brand positioning and inform the identity and character for brand communications.

Your brand should always use a consistent tone of voice:It will help reinforce the business’s character and clarify its offering so customers are aware exactly what to expect from the product or service. Alternatively, aim to make your key messages work together to build a coherent identity. Be aware of your competitors and identify the opportunities and threats to your company.

Who is your target audience?Branding should be targeted to the demographic that your service is aimed at.

Don’t mimic the look of chains or big brands:
Try and carve out your own distinctive identity. Independent operators can leverage their status to attract customers who are looking for something more original and authentic, which aligns with their own business.

Be innovative, bold and daring – stand for something you believe in:
Big brands are weighed down by layers of bureaucracy, preventing them from being flexible and reacting to the ever-changing needs of their customers. Consider your branding when communicating to your customer base.

Workshop Brief:
You will be working as a creative trio for this workshop. Your trios will be drawn up at random. You will randomly draw out a company or trade that you will have to brand. Treat this as a start-up business, rather than a rebrand or a re-fresh. Consider what roles you will be allocating and also consider the time you have on this project.

1. As part of this task, you will have to digitally create a ‘Brand Guideline’ or ‘Brand Style Guide’ to articulate the driving force behind your brand. This will create the structure that you will build from, to and within. Decide what you have to design first in order to build your brand. This will include, but not limited to:

Concept – Overarching concept, how does this define and focus the brand?
Logo & application – How to use the logo & how not to.
Typography - Font choices, Point sizes, Hierarchy, Number systems, leading, tracking, kerning.
Colour Selection – Linked to your concept of possible.
Layout & Grid – for differing formats and sizes.
Tone of voice
Copy
Web

2. Create a brand map / plan of application / body of work of the products and services your brand will stretch across (for example & not limited to):

Logo & application
By-lines / straplines
Product, Range and Distribution (methods, application)
Advertising
Audience
Way finding
Invoices and associated stationary
Proposals

You are expected to produce a large digital body of work. If you have managed your time well, you have the option to print out if you feel it is necessary. All of this work you produce will be compiled into a slideshow and you will present it to the group on Wednesday 5th March. You will present as though you are pitching to a client. You will have a maximum of 5minutes per trio to present, so keep it to the point and explain why you have made certain decisions.

We would like to hear your pitch as though you have finished a project for a client, so we will not be focussing in on the developmental aspect to the project. We want to know the concept, what the brand is, who your audience is, why your designs are successful, and brand strategy.

_____

This was a one day brief where we were required to build a brand and identity for a job/company/profession given to us at random. For this task I was working in a group with Sam Cook and Laura and We were given the topic of fencing.

At first, it was slightly unclear as to whether it was intended to be fencing as in the sport, or fencing as in building fences. After speaking to Lorraine we were told it was us to us to choose between the two. After brainstorming on the two separately, we agreed that we would prefer to work as a company who builds fences. This was due to the outdoors, nature and growth aspects of fencing. We thought we would be able to create a strong identity through the fencing company branding.

After some initial discussions and considerations, we began to think about who we were as a business, who we wanted to target our service at and why we were providing the serving. We wanted to create a concept which was reasonably innovative and unusual. We agreed that it was ideal to be a family-run business, focusing on the idea of 'The Family Tree' in connection with wooden fencing and the rings found in wood with age. This was also relevant to the concept of a new business which was going to grow.

With a strong basis behind our concept, we were able to start thinking about a proper name for our business. Some of the ideas we came up with included:

Prim & Proper
P&P Fencing
Budding Fences
Build & Bud
Urban Gardens
Prosperity
Cultivate
Boost
Bloom

From the selection above, we chose to go with the name 'Cultivate'. We thought it was the most appropriate for our high-end fencing/gardening company as it was a formal, sophisticated and memorable name. We also thought the definition of 'cultivate' was particularly appropriate for our concept:

1. Prepare and use (land) for crops or gardening
2. Break up (soil) in preparation for sowing or planting
3. Try to improve or develop (one’s mind).

We then began to come up with various logo ideas. As we wanted to be seen as a stress-free business providing a helpful and efficient service, we aimed to keep our branding as minimal as possible. Below are a few of my initial designs created in Illustrator:

Laura and Sam did a variety of logo variations too. We all liked the simple use of the the leaf for the dot of the 'i' in Cultivate. Our favourite variations were three which laura created using a capitalised type for the logo with a small added leaf above the I. We felt this was all we needed to convey the core message of our brand - elegant, organic, professional and stress-free.

The final logo is shown below:

Once we were happy with our logo, it was then a case of applying this to a range of media that we were going to need for our company. I was in charge of creating the business card. My initial thought was to take the small leaf from the logo and apply it to the top and bottom edges of the card (shown below):

After sharing this with Laura and Sam, we agreed that although the leaves looked nice, they were not necessary and did not work consistently with the rest of our branding. Therefore I removed the leaves and kept the business card as simple as possible. The final business card contained the logo alone on the back, with our company contact details and information written clearly on the reverse of the card.