What’s the process of creating a brand?

A brand is more than just what you sell or do as a brand. It’s also about how you position yourself in the market to attract your target audience. Creating a brand is a vital element in this process. That is because branding translates all elements of your brand, your goals, your vision, values, and boils its essence down into attractive visuals.

The powerful thing about branding is that every element – from the logo, to typography, to the photography, are features that add to your brand’s recognisability. When the brand identity is skilfully created, all aspects of your visual brand, tie together perfectly and contribute to your brand’s recognisability, for years to come. That is the power of branding.

The visuals of your brand can be very simple, as long as they are strategically developed. Apple is the perfect example of this. Their word mark is super simple, literally just a font without any adaptations. Their brand mark on the other hand is really the game changer. The moment people see an apple with a bite taken out of it, everyone knows it is Apple. This also counts for their product photography: very simple, detailed shots with no distractions. This focuses on the quality of the product. Among other factors, this enables Apple to charge higher prices because it positions them as a luxurious product.

When it comes to creating a brand identity, a lot of elements and processes come into play. I will keep it simple because the majority of the tasks are doing research and developing the visuals.

Branding in 4 steps

Step 1 is aligning the goals, understanding the business. A brand identity is nothing without a goal and a target audience. First, we dive into your brand, all the business goals, who your target audience is, how you want to position yourself, what you sell etc. We go through all the essentials of your business so that we uncover your needs and desired situation.

By the end of this, we should both have a clear idea of where you want your business to go, realised what sets you apart, and have established personas for your target audience. They will serve as the backbone of the branding project, because we will create the branding keeping the personas in mind.

Step 2 involves lots of research. I will research your target audience, the market, the competitors, and start brainstorming for a visual direction.

Step 3 is where I will provide you with several mood boards that I created to decide the art direction of the project. These mood boards are based on all the information you provided me with and my own research. We will decide which direction fits your brand the best and move forward with that.

Step 4 is all about visuals, the best part! Now that we have decided the visual direction, it’s time to translate that into several logo concepts. I will come up with various concepts out of which we choose which one that suits your brand, future goals, and target audience the most.

Expanding on this logo, I will build your whole brand design around it and I organise it into brand guidelines. This document provides clear guidelines on how to implement the branding all across the channels and communications, to keep a consistent visual appearance.

Now your brand is ready to thrive and ace the game!