3 Branding Basics Every Graphic Designer Should Know

I’ve observed a lot of graphic designers focusing only on making their designs beautiful. Often they forget that every design has a purpose and that is to communicate a message or some information to its target audience effectively.

Different Strokes For Different Folks

I’m not saying that the designs should not be attractive. Of course the logo design, brochure design or packaging needs to look attractive, but ‘attractive design’ is relative.

What graphic art attracts a sophisticated luxury product buyer could look too drab and dull to a flashy teenager. And what instantly catches eyeballs from rural buyer would in all probability be an instant-miss by this chic urban customer. The point is, design keeping in mind the target audience.

Inconsistent brands confuse buyers

Graphic designing is an element of branding. A customer experiences brand through the product or service, that brand’s values, personality and communication among other things. So all forms of visual communication including illustrations, packaging design, point-of-sale, website design, logo design, marketing collateral etc help create a brand identity in the target buyer’s mind. Communicate the brand consistently and clearly at every touch point. It should feel like it derives from one place.

Great design is invisible so that the brand message can shine through

I’ve seen graphic designers over complicate designs to convey marketing messages. The design challenge is to simplify the brand message visually in such a way that the design resonates subconsciously with the audience telling people how they’re supposed to interact with the brand. Highlight the brand and its message, not the design. “Design should never say, ‘Look at me.’ It should always say, ‘Look at this.’” – David Craib

Published by OH! Design Studio – a branding and integrated graphic design firm based in Mumbai, India. From brand strategy to brand activation on online and offline channels, OH! Design Studio provides 360 degree creative services for launching new brands, re-branding and online brand activation & marketing.

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Highlight The Brand And Its Message, Not The Design

Brand design and communication design has to do more than just look good. 

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – Steve Jobs. 

So what makes great design for brand communication?

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Great design is invisible so that the brand message can shine through

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I’ve seen graphic designers over complicate designs to convey marketing messages. The design challenge is to simplify the brand message visually in such a way that the design resonates subconsciously with the audience telling people how they’re supposed to interact with the brand. Highlight the brand and its message, not the design. "Design should never say, 'Look at me.' It should always say, 'Look at this.'" – David Craib.

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Brand communication design should feel like it derives from one place

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Graphic designing is an element of branding. A customer experiences brand through the product or service, that brand’s values, personality and communication among other things. So all forms of visual communication including illustrations, packaging design, point-of-sale, website design, logo design, marketing collateral etc help create a brand identity in the target buyer’s mind. Communicate the brand consistently and clearly at every touch point. It should feel like it derives from one place.

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Successful design connects a brand with its target audience 

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What graphic art attracts a sophisticated luxury product buyer could look too drab and dull to a flashy teenager. And what instantly catches eyeballs from rural buyer would in all probability be an instant-miss by this chic urban customer. The point is, design keeping in mind the target audience.

The original version of this post was released on Graphic Designer's Blog.

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Published by OH! Design Studio - a niche branding agency based in Mumbai, India. From brand strategy to brand activation on online and offline channels, OH! Design Studio provides 360 degree creative services for launching new brands, re-branding and online promotion.

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Branding Mistakes Businesses Make And Its Implications

There are some common mistakes that big and small businesses make when they set their branding goals and invest their time and money to build a recognizable brand. 

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Branding efforts stop at logo design

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When using your favorite cab service, do you think about their company logo design or the vision that it represents? Logo is definitely a very important part of your brand’s identity because it goes on all your communication and products and also because it does reflect the company’s values or vision (if you go deeper), but that’s not where the branding stops.

Every touch point of your brand with its stakeholders presents the opportunity of creating an experience. That experience is the brand.

Related Reading: What brand really is?

Point is many companies stop at logo design when working towards building their brand. They must continue their efforts and take their brand experience to other collateral and touch points. 

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Inconsistencies in brand design

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• Brand Design brings the brand to life and hence graphic designing is an important element of branding. 

Brand design is a part of every visual communication that a company creates for their target market- be it their corporate website, product brochure, office environmental graphics, product packaging, outdoor advertisements, etc.

When companies don’t care about consistency in visual branding for all touch points, it gives mixed messages to their current and potential customers when in fact it should feel like it derives from one place. 

• At brand design company OH! Design Studio, while working on communication design projects we follow brand guidelines which give businesses a way to keep a brand consistent and recognizable.But companies neither invest their resources in creating one, nor find it easy to comply by it.

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Not knowing enough about the target audience

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Companies get vague when they are asked to describe their target market. 

Related Reading: What is target audience?
 

If you don’t know much about your target audience, it means you are trying to communicate with a very wide audience with different tastes, preferences and pain points. Your marketing messages and value proposition would most probably get vague too.

Trying to be everything to everyone impacts your communication too because the client brief to your creative agency would be devoid of useful information about your consumer group.

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Not considering online channels for branding.

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Many businesses still consider branding for offline space only. Online marketing strikes a chord in their mind, but online branding sounds disconnected. 

This is in a way an extension of first two points.

Online channels are as important as any other brand touch points for your business. Be it website, social media channels or paid ads, maintain high standards for all brand elements.

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No emphasis on internal branding

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Effective corporate communication strategy is important for many functional reasons, but one of them is internal branding. When companies fail treat their own people as an important stakeholder, they are in a way making them unaccountable for delivering on the organization’s brand promise.

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Published by OH! Design Studio - a branding and integrated design agency based in Mumbai, India.

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What is a Brand?

What is your idea about building a brand?

A nice logo, an interesting name and maybe an appealing look and feel- do you think it ends there?

Brand identity is just a part of brand, but it is not everything.

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Then what is a brand?

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People come in contact with a brand in different ways. A prospective client making a new business inquiry interacting with your people is forming a perception about your brand. Your existing customer using your product or service forms some impression about your brand.

• Brand is Perception Just Like Social Perceptions.

Come to think of it- don’t you form impressions about other people based on what they wear , how they talk, their body language, personality, tone of voice, how they think, etc.

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In the same way, every brand has a personality and a tone of voice. A brand can choose how to communicate with their target audience and existing customers, what goals it wants to set, what strategy it wants to follow.

Read More About Target Audience >>

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For example, if your website design is unappealing, looks drab or is filled with dull copy or jargon that your target audience won’t understand easily, it just gives an impression that you don’t care for your site visitors enough to give them information properly or you don't care for their experience.

Take packaging as another example. A good packaging design can create a truly unique brand personality . But this packaging has to really speak to your consumer. If you don't know enough about your consumers, then that loose connect is your brand.

OH! Design Studio recently helped reinvigorate a dairy brand by giving its packaging more personality and identity, something that this client intended to leverage for its branding benefits as a part of packaging redesign exercise.

• Brand is Caring at every level.

A five star hotel’s marketing team which always complies with brand guidelines for all forms of communication does a wonderful job in presenting the hotel brand in a consistent way. But if that hotel’s F&B staff fails to acknowledge their customers who’ve been visiting that property for last 20 years then that’s your brand which doesn’t care much about customers.

• Brand is Reputation

Reputation is important not just for big brands but also for small businesses and for individual service providers.Good reputation wins customer loyalty and leads to them recommending you to others.

• Brand Identity and Design is also an important part of your brand.

You can personify your brand by giving it an identity as well as look and feel. Work with a branding agency which makes an effort to take your brand and communication design consistently across all communication channels- be it website, social media channels, blogs, brochures, packaging, and other marketing collateral which you create for promoting your business.

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If You Have A Business, You Have A Brand.

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Big or small, big corporate house or a one man army- it does not matter. Brand is everything that you, your people and your business does and the way you do it. The question is what type of brand you want to create or let’s say what kind of brand perception you want to build.

You might be interested in: How branding impacts sales?

 

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Getting Started

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Brand perception is influenced by the overall experiences customers have with a brand. Start by defining your brand and work on the brand strategy identifying how, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering your brand messages. This process is called branding.

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Published by OH! Design Studio - a full-service branding agency in India. From brand strategy to brand activation on online and offline channels, OH! Design Studio provides 360 degree creative services for launching new brands, re-branding and online brand activation & marketing.

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Build Brand Identity With Successful Strategy of OH! Design Studio

OH! Design Studio helps you make your brand, a sign of your refinement. It lets you develop a brand identity method that fabricates trust towards your organization.

Brand Identity

OH! Design Studio has a strategy that keeps up, enhances and maintains the brand in a manner that it partners your brand with positive results. Its Strategy includes various critical angles, for example, cost viability, and helps you in building your clients trust and picking up client’s fulfillment, in-store presentation, and rivalry. It centers straightforwardly on your brand and how your brand stays good to your clients.

Fitting brand management done by OH! Design Studio has come about in one item's higher deals, as well as on different items connected with that specific brand. For instance, if a client cherishes Cadbury's Dairy milk, then the client is more inclined to attempt different items offered by the Cadbury organization, for example, Cadburys Bourneville.

Brand Identity is exceptionally vital from the perspective of Reputations Corporation, a consultancy bunch from Vancouver, has done a review on brand identity and organization notoriety which demonstrates that 72 percent of clients accept that organization's notoriety impacts the purchasing choices of clients, an organization who has an amazing  notoriety 80 percent of workers will work there with less pay.

OH! Design Studio manages successful brand identity heads your organization brand to your clients on whom you are focusing and helps you assemble their trust towards your brand. 

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