The scope of branding and identity is enormous.
With applications ranging from your company’s logo to animated motion graphics and printed collateral. The basis, however, derives from the necessity for consistency in your brand’s depiction, which plays a significant role at every stage of the branding process.
Let’s take a step back first. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the different parts surrounding branding. Not to mention all the graphic design lingoes paired with it. Here’s a simple breakdown of the standard terms used.
Brand
This is the public’s overall perception of your company.
Branding
These are the actions taken to build your brand towards a certain image.
Brand Identity
Includes the tangible expressions of your brand (logo, typography, colors).
There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to your brand, but it all begins with your logo. This is the visual foundation of your brand, branding strategy, and brand identity. It’s one of the very first interactions customers and clients have with a company, and that’s why it’s important to set the right impression.
Your mark should be a source of pride of ownership — and you should feel excited to share it with friends, family, and especially customers and clients. And the process should be equally exciting. So let’s jump right into it.
Table of Contents
Where it all begins — the logo
Some people are shocked to hear how long a powerful logo can take to create. Especially because the design seems small and contained. However, getting one to that point is a highly involved process. Simply put, something simple to understand is usually pretty difficult to conceptualize.
The reason for this is that every successful design, whether from the ground-up, or a redesign/refresh of an existing brand — will always involve the same steps. There are no shortcuts to designing a powerful mark, short of an unlikely spark of magic. And although designers may be compared to visual magicians, as professionals, we don’t have the luxury to gamble with magic. Instead, we have a process. Following this process allows us to achieve results every time without fail.
- Information Gathering
- Design Research
- Sketching & Idea Generation
- Concept Development
- Recharge & Review
- Finalization & Approval
- Branding Guidelines & Moving Forward
Information Gathering
Any good creative agency knows that this is one of the most important and potentially time-consuming stages of logo creation. The reason for this is that, naturally, designers will not know your company as well as you do. That said, we take the time to learn your company inside-out first, to visualize it in the way it’s meant to be envisioned.
Naturally, the goal for designers doing this is to get as close as possible to understanding your company as the owners do. This is so that we can create a mark that functions well and is aesthetically representative of the business.
To achieve this, it’s commonplace for clients to fill out a questionnaire known as a Design Brief. A design brief is essentially a document with questions about your company. It includes multitudes of questions, such as “Who are your competitors” or “Who is your target market”, for example. Of course, we understand that filling out detailed, in-depth questions may not be the most exciting part of the process.
That said, it’s absolutely pivotal in helping the designer familiarize themselves with your company. This is what enables us to properly diagnose solutions for your branding identity, and also helps us understand what the tone and style should be moving forward.
Design Research
Now that we know about who you are directly from the source, it’s time for us to dig deep and do our own research. This research revolves around learning more about your industry, history, and the perception it has from its clients. We figure out how we can make our clients have a mark that stands out among the competition. A common strategy used is building word maps—connecting related thoughts and ideas about the industry and the objective of branding and brand identity.
The visual idea generation process always begins on paper. We explore potential avenues, drafting out rough potential directions. We iterate and iterate until we get it where it needs to be.
Sketching & Idea Generation
Finally, this is the moment pencils and pens come in contact with paper. We begin exercising our curiosity and creativity. Based on what we’ve learned from the design brief and our own research, we begin sketching out every potential idea and direction for the design. Every idea, big or small, successful or not, is jotted down. No stone is left unturned. We cover our bases and try out as many ideas as possible—flexing and bending the limits of whatever direction they may lead. Lastly, we choose the ideas that are worth pursuing further.
Concept Development
Now we start to take things to the next level. First, we take the successful ideas generated on paper and move them to the digital screen. By recreating and finessing what we’ve sketched, we can begin drafting out polished, vector versions. During this effort, we take into consideration a plethora of design best practices. From ensuring it works at any size, or that it’s flexible enough to work in a variety of different color formats — we have it covered.
Additionally, we do extensive research when deciding on what’s the best typeface and color to use. We take into consideration the type of style our client is going for, or what helps them stand out from your competitors. Simply put, we tailor each of these decisions to the client’s bests interests and desires.
Reflection & Review
After we’ve pushed the final concepts to where they need to be, it’s time for a little R&R (Reflection & Review). This is an easy step to overlook or dismiss but is absolutely crucial for creating the best version possible. We take this time to step back from our work and let things settle. This allows us to come back with fresh eyes, so we can objectively analyze and review our work. After we have reviewed our work, we move on to finalizing the design.
You can view the case study here.
Finalization & Approval
Once we reach a direction that we can be excited about, we finalize it by ironing out all the rest of the details, and make our final adjustments. Once we have final approval, then it’s time to celebrate a job well done.
Branding Guidelines & Moving Forward
Although the logo is completed — we don’t just stop there. From there, we create the branding guidelines, which is a document that details the fonts/typefaces, colors, applications, and a general visual style guideline to help your branding stay on track. It’s essentially a rulebook for your logo and future branding efforts.
This document is great to have because it reinforces how to keep your brand consistent across all campaigns. If you need to work with another creative firm, you’ll be able to pass along your branding guidelines, and the transition will be much smoother. Since they have the rulebook, they will be able to understand the ins-and-outs of how to stay consistent with your existing visual branding.
Most importantly, this saves time and money on your end because it takes the guesswork out of the equation. Designers will know exactly how to best utilize your brand and create content in line with what you have already.
Final Thoughts
Your logo is the hub of all of your branding efforts, so it’s important to make sure the process is done correctly. Skipping the proper development process is risky because you may end up with something that doesn’t perfectly suit your needs — which leads to a very short shelf life, and the potential of having to revisit it sooner.
Ensuring the proper procedures are followed ensures that you end up with a modern, flexible, timeless mark, that will suit your needs for years to come and ensures your branding stays in line with your vision.
Here at Mighty Fine Design Co., we’re not rocket scientists or magicians, but we do know a few tricks — like when to go big and when to lay low. Let us know if we can help bring your logo to the next level.
