Define Your Visual Requirements For many consumer product marketers, the majority of “branding” takes place in the packaging. Visual identity ties into human emotions, and there are plenty of case studies of consumer packaging redesigns that infuriated a customer base or dramatically increased sales. Service companies and B2B brands are more encompassing than a singular label, box or package, but the visual identity can unify a brand, neutralize it or worse of all, damage it. There are three key elements to visual branding: • Relevance: Do the visuals support the written brand strategy and promise? • Quality: Are the visuals professionally designed? • Consistency: Are the visuals consistent at all market touchpoints? Unfortunately many B2B companies lack all three elements to their brand visual identity. The smaller the company, the worse it usually gets. And it’s especially common in local sales-‐driven organizations. Why don’t companies spend more effort on their visual identity? Some don’t realize that they have a problem, since the market doesn’t often give direct feedback. Very few new prospects will every say “I don’t want to engage because I think your company looks cheap and schlocky.” They simply fall out of the pipeline quietly, or make an excuse. Other companies just don’t care, which is fine as long as you’re not one of them. Now that you’ve outlined your brand architecture, determine how to translate it into the visual representations of your brand: logo, color palette, corporate font, etc.
Summary EXERCISE SUMMARY When to Address
Who Should Participate
After you’ve developed your brand strategy & story Business leaders: company founders, owners, presidents and vice presidents Marketing and sales leaders
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
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Where to Use the Results Why it’s Important
Creative team Your brand visuals will impact almost every touch with your market.
Defining your brand visual requirements gives your creative team direction for evaluating your current and future brand identity.
Your brand visuals are sometimes the first representation the market sees, and What Builds Upon it should support your promise and strategy. A few hours to a few days, depending on your situation Timeframe to Completion Potential Business Impact
High – for all Brand Strategy exercises
Deliverable
You’ll review your logo to match to your brand strategy (or outline the requirements if you don’t have one) and determine your colors & fonts and outline where to use them.
Next Steps
Define your brand operational requirements
Target Completion Date
PARTICIPANTS
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
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TASKS
PERSON RESPONSIBLE
DUE DATE
Notes
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
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Define Your Visual Requirements
What to Complete
1. SELECT BRAND VISUAL REQUIREMENTS 2. MATCH VISUAL REQUIREMENTS TO EXISTING BRAND
Where it Fits in Brand Strategy Summarize Your Brand Audit Your Brand Internally Audit Your Brand Externally Analyze Audit Results Choose Brand Type Confirm Your Value Proposition Select a Brand Theme Determine Value of Your Features & Benefits Chart Your Emotional Benefits Determine What Your Brand Means Create Your Brand Personality Traits Create Your Brand Promise Define Your Brand Strategy Create Your Brand Positioning Statements Write Your Brand Story Select Brand Visual Requirements Match Visual Requirements to Existing Brand Define Brand Operational Requirements Match Operational Requirements to Existing Brand
1. SELECT BRAND VISUAL REQUIREMENTS
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
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COLOR Color plays an enormous role in conveying your brand promise and personality traits. Don’t just choose colors that your team likes or that you’ve used in the past; select a color palette that supports that promise and traits. By choosing the right color, you reinforce the work that you’ve just done. If you use a color that’s inconsistent with your brand promise and personality, you can neutralize your work and confuse your market. Should you use multiple colors? Color is most powerful in large doses; however, you can use two colors to add interest and depth. Just make sure they convey what you need to convey. Make sure your selections work well electronically. If your website is important in your sales process, or if you send a lot of documents or email campaigns with color, make sure you choose colors that look good onscreen. For example, silver in print will be gray online. COLOR
TRADITIONAL MEANINGS
NAVY BLUE
Navy blue is a masculine color associated with depth, expertise, and stability. It’s a preferred color for corporate America. Blue is associated with tranquility and calmness. The color of the sky and water, it symbolizes sincerity, trust, wisdom and truth. Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes harmony, safety, growth, freshness, and fertility. It’s a restful color that suggests stability and endurance. Red is an emotionally intense color. It’s associated with energy, strength, power, danger, and passion. It’s highly visible and enhances human metabolism, increases respiration, and raises blood pressure.
BLUE
GREEN
RED
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
Is it consistent Is it consistent with with brand your brand promise? personality? (Which trait?)
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COLOR
TRADITIONAL MEANINGS
ORANGE
Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It’s associated with enthusiasm, joy, stimulation, attraction, creativity and health.
YELLOW
Yellow is the color of sunshine and produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. It's associated with joy, happiness, vibrancy, intellect and energy. Purple combines the stability of blue and energy of red. Generally associated with royalty, purple symbolizes luxury, wealth, power, and dignity.
PURPLE
BROWN
Brown is the color of earth. It’s associated with genuineness, simplicity, dependability, and friendliness.
BLACK
Black is associated with power, mystery, elegance, strength and formality. Black can be very formal, elegant and prestigious; it adds depth when combined with other colors. Gray/silver has similar connotations to black, evoking dignity, wisdom, and responsibility.
GRAY/SILVER
GOLD
Gold is associated with success, money and wealth; it can evoke comfort and quality.
Is it consistent Is it consistent with with brand your brand promise? personality? (Which trait?)
Now, select your colors and define how each of them should be used in your materials. Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
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COLOR
COLOR NAME
HOW IT SHOULD BE USED
PRIMARY
SECONDARY
TERTIARY
Final palette selection Have your designer help with the selection of the final PMS, CMYK and RGB colors. Definitions PMS Pantone Matching System used for ink colors – for example, if you are only printing two colors on your business cards, your printer will probably use your two PMS color inks CMYK
The formula for creating the color using a combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink during four-‐color printing
RGB
The amount of Red + Blue + Green used to replicate the color onscreen
COLOR
COLOR NAME
PMS
CMYK
RGB
PRIMARY
SECONDARY
TERTIARY
TYPESTYLE/FONT Fonts are potentially even more important than your colors because they’re used in every written piece that your company delivers, and fonts can convey an enormous range of personalities. Choose a font that is consistent with your branding. The first decision is whether to use a serif or sans serif font. TYPICAL CHOICE TYPE EXPLANATION EXAMPLES ASSOCIATIONS
Serif fonts
Classic fonts that look like they
Classic
Book Antiqua
were created with a calligraphy
Traditional
Bookman
pen; the line widths may vary and Elegant
Garamond
the edges have a bit of a flourish.
Georgia
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Palatino Times New Roman
Sans Serif
These fonts are simple, have less
Modern
Arial
fonts
variation in the line width and
Simple
Century Gothic
don’t have flourishes at the end
Tahoma
of the letters.
Trebuchet Verdana Calibri
Now determine how your font(s) will appear on various sales tools and literature: FONT APPLICATION
FONT TO USE*
POINT SIZE
Printed materials (can be in any font)
STYLE (bold, italic, etc.)
Materials that will be transmitted electronically (must be in standard fonts used by most computers)
Website (must be a web-‐safe font)
Employee email font* (must be a web-‐safe font)
*Make sure all of your materials and employees are consistently using your company’s fonts rather than their own personal favorites!
2. MATCH VISUAL REQUIREMENTS TO EXISTING BRAND LOGO REQUIREMENTS Your logo should reflect your brand promise (the one thing you stand for) and your brand personality traits. LOGO CHECKLIST
STATUS
Is it consistent with your brand promise? Is it consistent with your five brand personality traits? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Brand Strategy Define Your Visual Requirements
Yes
Needs work
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Needs work Needs work Needs work Needs work Needs work
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If you already have a logo and it doesn’t meet these requirements, use this process to develop a logo that does: LOGO DEVELOPMENT STEPS
NOTES
Agree on your brand promise
Agree on your brand personality traits
Select a designer to create your logo. [Vendor Selection and Copywriting and Graphic Design can help] Develop a Creative Brief (template provided in Copywriting & Graphic Design) for your designer. [Copywriting & Graphic Design can help]
Insist that your designer provide all concepts in black and white only. Color plays a dramatic role in design, and you need to select the right conceptual logo without being swayed by various colors they may present. In addition, the logo needs to hold up in black only. Review first round of black & white comps and provide direction for the second round.
Select your final logo in black & white
Have the designer incorporate your colors and choose the final logo.
Get final artwork and move forward in designing business cards, letterhead and other corporate identity items. [Corporate Identity can help]
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