Ever wonder how a brand is created. Here we give a quick overview of how we approach branding.
When you come to us for a new brand or a refresh, there's a process we follow to ensure that the right people are involved, these are the steps we take:
1. Understand your business goals & personality.
Whether we are completing a complex brand refresh or a simple brand creation the essence is the same - we start by understanding you, your business, your customers, the market and your place in that market.
We meet with you and ask you lots of questions to really delve deep into the personality of your business as well as your goals, now, and in the future. We take notes, sketch ideas, show you things we like and dislike, things you like and dislike and get as much of an understanding of the business as we can.
Your brand isn't just the colours and shapes you choose, it's more than that - it's your culture, attitude and ethos. We need to understand all these things to make sure the visual id we design really represents the entirety of your business.
2. Market & user research
We take all that lovely information gleaned over coffee and biscuits and add to that our own research. We look at your competitors and audience analyse all the information we have and start to build out user profiles.
We then start to look at the types of style and designs that appeal to the user profiles and consider how this needs to relate to the business.
It's at this point that business preferences are reconsidered if they conflict with what the research shows.
3. Logo Design
Armed with all the findings and analysis, we finally start the design work. Taking into account everything we've learnt along with our experience, we start to think about shapes and layouts, initial colours and fonts. We create and discard lots of different versions as different ideas take hold, some that work and some that don't. We work on those with potential, finally selecting at least 3 ideas to present back.
We prefer presenting our ideas in person, watching you as we reveal each concept - looking to see if the reactions are the same as those when we showed other members of our team. Seeing if our favourites are your favourites, importantly noting all your reactions.
We take feedback on board and work up the chosen idea more fully.
4. Visual Elements
Once we are all in agreement with a logo, we can then start to expand the visual elements that support the logo, for example, fonts and colour palettes as well image styles and even tone of voice to use.
We will determine which fonts should be used and when to use them including the font size and weight in different scenarios. We will work look at which colours support the logo and collate a pallet of colours that can be used.
We will review whether illustrative or photographic styles are best for the content or whether its a combination of the two. We'll define what that style will actually look like as well as the language to be used and the tone to be conveyed.
5. Corporate brand style
Having agreed the visual elements with you, we will then start to roll them out across your assets - from stationery, brochures and banners to key rings and bags as well as signage, video idents and image watermarks, whatever you need, the more obscure, the greater the challenge.
This is the really exciting bit as we get to evolve your brand across real-world assets seeing it really come alive. We also use our expertise, ensuring the right fonts, colours and sizes are used in the right way to give maximum impact to the viewer.
6. Style Guide
The final step is the brand guidelines or style guide so that moving forward we ensure you keep the integrity of the brand and implement it consistently when we're not around to keep an eye on things.
The style guide sets the rules on what can be used where and how it should be used. You can hand it over to anyone you work with who is involved in creating assets or content for you and be confident that, applying the stated rules will ensure your brand's long-term survival.
If you would like a free no obligation quote for your small business branding needs, please do not hesitate to get in touch at contact@carbon-pixel.com.
LINKS
If you want to see something more visual, check out our infographic Carbon Pixel Brand Process.