Courier Media is based in London and a “proud member of the Mailchimp family” published the “ultimate guide to starting a growing your dream business” as a five-step guide to inform people how to take control of their working lives. The five sections are: Daydreaming, Foundations, Launch, Momentum and Opportunities. The magazine, that could be a book, is filled with insights from experts and consultants from the global business world. The scope of this article is to extract, distill and present what these professionals share about company identity and branding design for budding, new and established organisations.
How to shape your visual identity
The magazine has to provide the foundations of branding and visual identity and its importance comes right after finances and its importance is stressed and relayed as a three part process. Due to people being quick to judge your brand and how your company, products, services and or experiences are perceived and remembered are important to initial and repeat business. Studies show that people have an impression about a website after 50 milliseconds. The perceived image goes beyond just your name or logo and extends across the entire visual identity that comprises of: colour, typography, photography and illustrations. Sam Fresco from Wildish & Co, a London based design agency, provides the steps to create a visual identity.
Step 1 – Brand Strategy
A brand strategy meeting should be held to discuss the vision for organisation to get everybody onboard and working to the same goal to understand “who” the organisation is and what they provide – plus how they provide it. The key questions to be answered are listed:
What is your vision?
What one adjective describes you?
What adjectives should customers feel?
What one album describes you and why?
Which brands do you love and why?
Which brands to you hate and why?
Where can customers find you?
Step 2 – Interview Brand Stakeholders
Seek information from key stakeholders (internal and external), staff, customers and retailers etc to build a picture of the business, to learn what they think is important about the business. The key questions here are:
How do you perceive our brand?
What are we trying to achieve?
How are we communicating it?
What’s our brand’s most important strength?
Step 3 – Get Designing
After the company is understood and it is agreed who the company is, and a strategy is established then you need to get designing your visual identity and should look to work with a designer such as myself to craft your brand assets and make them real across all your desired media. The required items for a brand are: name, logo, colour palette, typography, creative direction, photography, illustration and iconography.
Intellectual property issues
Finding the right name for your business and the legal backend is important to get right, save time and avoid potential legal issues in the future. It was recommended to perform searches for any good names you have found or created to make sure they are not already being used in your sector or anywhere else if it relates or could matter. Google and social media are suggested to be good places to start looking for duplication and possible infringement; then trademark searches and finally consulting a legal professional is advised to make sure the company name is free and then to secure it for yourself for the future through applying for the desired trademark in all the desired global locations.
Establish or change brand values for rapid market alignment
Jono Holt, founder of the branding agency “Otherway” shares how to find your products purpose. Finding why your business should exists and its clear purpose is increasingly important beyond merely profit. Small companies can be nimble to incorporate key societal values into their brand from the start or change much faster than a large or legacy organisation. This speed presents clear marketplace opportunities and competitive advantages to get ahead and do things differently from established brands. Jono indicates as the climate crisis escalates small companies can cap their environmental impact and present their sustainability values immediately, especially when time in this area is considered such a critical factor and legacy brands can’t align as quickly and have history. This brand value is highlighted by Beagle Button, the browser extension that suggests ethical shopping alternatives, that more than 70% of people say they want to shop more sustainably, but don’t due to price or a lack of awareness that alternative products exist.
Provide trust in how you manage customer data
Shopify has reported that 61% of customers will only share their information with a brand if required. Over 50% of those surveyed are increasingly concerned by how brands are using their personal information. Forty-four percent of customers are ok with brands using their personal data to deliver relevant information and deals. And 40% of customers have refused to buy from a brand due to concerns of how a brand will use their personal information. Privacy and data autonomy has just begun with GDPR and the curtailing of cookies with consumers expected to demand more control and transparency over their data.
Verbalise your brand values
Finally and for your brands future, is was highlighted to verbalise a brand values by turning words into memorable or even actionable phrases that resonate with stakeholders, staff and customers. An example would be the word “bold” made into the positive phrase of “always ambitious”. This is an interesting part of branding as it opens up and stamps the values into the staff and through to customers so they become leading mantras for an organisation.
Buy your own copy of Courier 2023 here:
https://www.couriermedia.com/product/how-to-start-a-business-2023/
View Stuart Docherty Design branding design services:
https://www.stuart-docherty.com/branding-design/
