BRANDING THE MISCONCEPTIONS
By Phelim Webb
Critical Studies Graphic Design - HND - Year 2
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Branding Misconceptions
The misconceptions of branding in the graphic design industry! Why is it so important for me to learn about this topic? Well, as a graphic designer when clients come to me they may or may not understand what they are looking for and its important for me to be able to educate them on this in order to be able to create solid work for them. I have had many experiences where someone has wanted some design work done and ask for it to have a particular tone of voice or personality. But it may become difficult to then reach the target market they choose as if the branding isn’t constant throughout a company, it is hard for the consumers or audience to really understand what a company is about and what their message is. This then leads to the misconception that both designers and clients have.
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he huge misconception that people have, including designers, clients and consumers have is that a logo, communicates the message and brand of a company. However they are wrong. It is branding that creates and communicates the message of a company and gives a company its personality. Without branding or even with bad branding companies can fail instantly. Although many people think that a good logo, packaging
or even just a good website will be enough to create a strong message for a business they are wrong. Don’t confuse a logo as a brand. There is a lot of things that a company needs in order to be successful and the combination of these things is called branding. Within the graphic design industry many designers claim to be brand specialists and be able to create a brand for your company, However they are just designing the logo and look of your company. Just like many companies come to
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graphic designers looking for a logo or visual identity when in fact they are looking to create a brand. In order for me to learn more about this topic is I will need to research a lot on the topic of branding. Not only will I have to research about this topic, but I myself will have to learn how to create a brand. Learning to create a brand will not only help me write about this topic but it will help me in my future career as a graphic designer. In order for me to learn and research this topic I plan on going to the library in college and reading both graphic design and marketing books that talk about creating and developing a brand. I also plan on finding as much information as I can online, such as articles about this topic too, as many people online discuss this regularly as it causes so much confusion and misunderstanding. But in order for me to discuss this topic, on the misconception of what branding is you will need to know what a brand is. So what exactly is a brand? Many people think a brand is just another name given to a company or a type of product, but that is
another misconception. As I stated above a brand is a promise. It is the emotional connection a consumer has with a certain product, company or organisation. A brand is a persons gut feeling about a product, service or organisation. It is a feeling, and although a logo can instantly give you a gut feeling about a company, that is because the company has previously created a brand for themselves and this is now how you see the company. A brand has to have a personality, and a voice, you must be able to feel a connection with a brand. According to Walter Landor, “Products are created in the factory. Brands are created in the mind,� (Alina, 2003) So what does this tell us? It tells us that products or companies are physical things, and that brands are an emotion. Brands are what we feel when we see a certain product or even a logo of a company. Branding is about the emotional connection people have to a company or product. That is why people fall in love with brands, why they trust them, develop loyalties, buy them and even believe they are superior to other companies or products.
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Branding Misconceptions
A great example I am going to use of this is Apple. For instance what would you feel if you saw the latest Apple iPhone? Many people feel the need and desire to want one and buy it. They think it’s the best phone ever created, but are they right? Sometimes they can be but in recent times other companies have created phones which in fact have better features then iPhones, so what is it that make people believe in Apples superiority? It is the strong brand that Apple have developed. Throughout the years Apple have constantly developed their brand and led a huge majority of the population to believe in their superiority. It has even created a consumer loyalty. I have seen many people who constantly have to get their iPhones fixed or buy new ones! But why do they return to get another iPhone? Because of their brand loyalty. This loyalty is created through branding.
Although you would think we become brand loyal over time after using a certain product for so long and having great experience with it, that is not necessarily true. From a very young age we develop brand loyalties, we are as I like to call it brand-washed. We are brand-washed from listening to other people talk about how certain things are so much better then something else, or its cooler to have such a brand over another. Brands are created to connection with the emotions of their target market, no matter what the age. Think about children for instance. If you were to bring a child into a toy shop to buy building bricks such as Lego, and you gave them the option to get the Lego brand which has 50 bricks for ten euro, or a non branded set with double the amount for the same price that was imported from china. Although children might not have an understanding of money, They will nine times out of ten pick the branded Lego. Even though they know they are getting
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less bricks they will still choose the smaller box. This is a result of branding, and how Lego has created a sense of superiority in the market. This example shows that brands effect everyone even if we don’t realise it.
This is why I love going into shops to look at different items and ask myself what is it that attracts me to a certain product over another. What is it about this product that pulls at my emotions a makes me want it more then another? What are the invisible traits that make me desire it more? These traits are called branding. I once listened to a designer who spoke about branding. He was the designer behind the branding of Keelings strawberries. Although he wasn’t boasting about how good his branding was, he spoke about how it effects people. He stated that the strawberries Keelings grow on their farm are also packaged and branded by Tesco. Yet when people choose to buy them they would prefer to buy the strawberries branded as Keelings. People even go as far as saying Keelings strawberries taste better even though they are produced on the same farm.
So, the burning question you want to know is how is a strong brand created? Lets put it simply, a brand isn’t just created. It is developed over time, and keeps developing and changing
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Branding Misconceptions
throughout the lifespan of a product or company. Bart Crosby says that, “Brands, like children, need to be fed and nurtured in order to grow� (Alina, 2003) The ultimate goal of branding is to build trust in a product, service or company. Branding is like matchmaking. You design a brand that is attracted to a certain type of person and this person or target market is attractive to them. The first step in branding is the name. A name must be simple, memorable and attract a connection with the chosen target market. You must then give this name and brand a personality. The best way to do this is by thinking of the brand as a person that you get to build.
To create this personality you would then ask is this person fun? energetic? or bubbly? And give the brand these traits. You then move on to creating a tone of voice for the brand. So you have to think about something this brand would say if it was a person, and then ask how would they say it. Would they say it in a romantic way? sarcastically? or a witty way? You would then apply this to the brand which now gives it a tone of voice. For example if you were develop a brand for an ice cream company and the client wanted its personality to be bubbly and energetic. You would think about something this brand would say such as - Open Daily from 9 am to 5 pm - and then ask how would this brand say it if it had the traits of an energetic, bubbly person? This could then turn
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into - Swirling Daily from 9 to 5 - This is giving the brand a tone of voice.
After creating and understanding the personality and tone of voice for the brand you can then move on to create the visuals for the brand. The next main element of creating a brand is the logo. Like I mentioned before do not confuse a logos a brand. You must create a logo that portrays the traits of the brand such as it personality and tone of voice. The logo is just a mark that defines these traits in a visual way. This is where the misconception is in the graphic design industry. Many designers think that just a visual identity is branding. But the answer to this is no. And I like to think of a better way to understand this is by using a metaphor. Is an arm a part of a human being? Yes. But is an arm a human being? No. So is a visual identity part of a brand? Yes. But is the visual identity the brand? No. The visual identity is part of the brand that helps the consumer see the personality of a brand in a visual way.
Where does a logo fall into this? How does a logo create this personality? On its own a logo doesn’t create a personality. A logo is a mark that identifies a product, company or organisation. It is a basic visual design element that is owned by a company. Logos originated as far back as 5,000 years ago. Back all those years ago, trademarks were used as a mark of ownership. Over time they have been developed into logos or brand marks. Which to this day are still used a a mark of ownership, but today they tell a lot more then just that. Today logos still mark identity, along with the cor-
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porate identity of a business. They help use distinguish between brands, quality and even price. When designed right, a logo can tell us about the personality of a brand.
A logo is our first interaction with a brand so in order for us to understand a brands personality we must understand their logo. When a company is in the stages of developing their logo, they must think about what they want their brand to tell. Although it is not a determining factor in how a business is portrayed, if we don’t like a logo or understand we may not like that brand, as we are getting the wrong tone of voice and personality of the brand from the logo. In order to understand a companies logo, it must be paired with the visual identity of a company.
So what is a visual identity? A visual identity are all the visual aspects of a company that express the message the brand is trying to communicate. Many designers believe that when they are creating a visual identity that they are creating the brand, but they are in fact expressing the brand in a visual way. Visual identity includes everything that the customer see, from the logo, to the companies website, their packaging, advertisements right down to their shopping bags or colour scheme in store. If a designer doesn’t create a good visual identity, they
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may give the wrong message to the audience therefore portraying the business or brand as something it is not.
You may now wonder how do you create a visual identity? Visual identity must be functional and emotional. It must create an interaction with the consumer and give them a gut feeling about the brand. In order to create a visual identity you must first think about words that describe the brand. You then take these words, and if necessary, you may have to choose other more defined words that have the same meaning but are visual. For example, if a brand wanted their voice to be outgoing, you could choose a word such a bubbly as a visual word as a starting point.
The more words you have to describe a brand the more visual ideas you will be able to achieve however too many can sometimes get the message lost. Once you have a list of visual words you will then create a visual identity around these words. When creating a visual identity it is important to keep it consistent throughout. “Using tone of voice correctly will result in a brand experience that is credible and consistent.” (Mono. (2004) Developing these visuals is an important part for the interaction between the consumer and brand. If the visual identity doesn’t match the branding, the consumer will have a different view of the company and its brand. This is why as a graphic designer it is important to know and understand what branding is.
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Branding Misconceptions
During my studies and career so far as a graphic designer I’ve have developed many different corporate identities. But in order to create these visual identities I had to first understand the brand of the business or help my client develop one. For instance, in order to create the identity for The Brush Boy, my client had no idea of the importance of branding. At the beginning stages of our meetings my client had an distinct idea for this logo however after advising my client of the importance of developing their brand, they then understood the importance of creating a personality for their brand. Like wise with my work for Drag Hens Den I have been trying to tell my client of the importance of creating a brand, and have been helping them develop this throughout the years I have been working with them. When they first began this was their identity, (not my work), as you can see it doesn’t really tell much about their events company. However, since hiring me as
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their graphic designer, throughout the years I have developed a brand for them and their company and events.
As a graphic design student, branding is not something that we are taught as a separate topic, even though branding is the core elements of any business or company that we will be designing for. We learn how to create a visual identity and how to show the tone of voice and personality of a business but not the branding itself. As a student who’s ambition is to one day have my own creative agency I feel that it was very important to research this topic. In the future as a graphic designer and creative director of an agency it will be important for me to know as much information I can as possible about creating a brand. When clients come to me they sometimes don’t know that they are actually looking for a brand. They may ask for a simple logo, but how am I meant to guarantee business success to them if they don’t have a brand or idea of a brand for the their business. They may then blame their failure on me or my agency for creating a bad logo. So I feel it is important for me to understand what branding is, how to create one and be able to advise my future clients on the importance of having a brand.
As I hope to begin my path to success in the graphic design industry, as soon as I finish college, researching and learning of this topic has been of great help to me. Not only has it helped
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Branding Misconceptions
me understand the true meaning of what branding is and how I can ultimately help my clients. It has also helped me think about my own business. It has made me think about the voice and personality I want to give my business, and how this affects and attracts the clients I want to work for. It has also made me more aware of the world around me, in order to be successful I need to be aware of how brands speak to me, how it looks and what it stands for, in order to be able to create brands that speak to others.
So to conclude, is visual identity design branding? No! It doesn’t matter what the logo looks like or what the colour scheme is, if the “A common mistake organisations company doesn’t have a brand personality. make is the assumption that once a comYou’re not buying the Apple iPhone because pany has a new brand identity, the hardthe logo looks good. You are buying it for est work has been accomplished. In realeverything the company stands for. What is ity, the whole process is just beginning branding then you may ask? Branding is the and the hard work is ahead.” message, the personality and the tone of voice a business has. It is not the visual identity that graphic designers create. The brand then grows over time. “A common mistake organisations make is the assumption that once a company has a new brand identity, the hardest work has been accomplished. In reality, the whole process is just beginning and the hard work is ahead.” (Alina. 2003). The visual identity is a visual way to get the companies brand, personality, tone of voice and message across to the companies audience.
Before you can create or develop a visual identity for a brand you need to ask yourself, what sort of company do I want it to be? What is our message? What clients do we want to attract? Branding is a lot like match making. You find out who your customer is. What they like, what their hobbies are, what are they visually attracted to and find compatibilities. Then you go create your brand as a person. You give it a personality, you make it look a certain way, give it these compatibilities and this will attract the customer. You make the customer fall in
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love with a product for the reason they would fall in love with a person. In order to create a successful brand, you must take everything boring about that company and run it through the brand filter to give it the voice of the brand. It is only once a company has a brand that a successful visual identity can be created for a company. The visual identity does not create the brand! It only brings the brands message across in a visual way.
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Evaluation
When I first learned about this assignment I was a little worried. I wouldn’t say my skills in writing are the best and could do with a lot of improving. 3,500 words scared me and I don’t think I have wrote that much since my leaving certificate and I dint enjoy that.
Although I was nervous at the beginning, when I found out the essay could be about I topic of my own choice this made it a little easier to see it being accomplished. Once I began my research for this topic I really began looking forward to writing it. 3,500 words still scared me but I knew it was achievable.
When I began researching my topic I realised that it was was such a big topic and so important in the industry that I felt proud I chose such a topic. I also felt it quite enjoyable to have a different type of project to do apart from the regular design ones and it was very refreshing.
I am very happy with my final essay and feel I accomplished my goal that I had set out. The only challenge I had while writing this essay was finding visuals to add as the topic it self wasn’t very visual but more theoretical. I also reached the word count with no major struggle and at one point I thought I might go over.
This essay not only improved my writing skills but I feel so much more confident going out into the graphic design industry and being able to successfully work with brands and bunnies in the beginning stages of branding. I have gained so much knowledge of branding that I feel it has made me into a better designer. It has also made me more observant.
The End