How Design Impacts Your Brand Identity
- Lifestyle
- May 27, 2018
People in the business industry know very well the importance of marketing yourself right but for some reason; many seem to ignore the many ways in which you can utilize web designing to do so.
Even successful businesses do this. “Why does it matter what my website looks like, as long as it is functional?” or “ The design is just a small part of who we are, our work matters more.” And we wish that was truly the case.
But it isn’t.
It is undeniable that a visual appeal is an important part of your brand identity. In fact, a bad design is the main reason your potential clients are turning away. A bad aesthetic appeal of your business or a website of with poor interface turns away more people from giving you a chance that you would originally assume.
But before we get to why and how design impacts your brand identity, we need to understand what both these terms essentially mean.
What Do We Mean by Design?
Design can mean a lot of things but for the purpose of this article, we are talking about the visual appearance of a brand. A design of an organization, company, or institute refers to the visual aspect of that subject. Here are some of the questions that the design of the brand usually answers for an organization, simply at one glance.
- What does it stand for?
- What are its values?
- How is it different from its competitors?
- How does it communicate with its clients?
At first glance, these may seem like questions that dig a little too deep while a design is just a visual appeal but that’s exactly what we are trying to say as well – which is why we need to understand the concept of brand identity.
What do we mean by brand identity?
Simple speaking, brand identity is what people think of when they think of your brand.
Think of your brand as a person and the design of their clothes.
The way a person dresses, their punctuality, their tone of communication, the way that they get their point across, their table manners –all of these are things that you can get an idea of without even talking directly to the person.
The visual appeal of your company matters just as much as the physical presence of an individual does.
It says a lot about a person if they show up late, looking groggy and tired and do not put any efforts into their visual appearance. It makes them look lazy, and people are less bound to take them seriously.
The same is the case with your brand. If you do not put any efforts into polishing it, making it more visually appealing and aesthetically appropriate, you will lose clients and people will take you less seriously.
In Summation: The kind of design you choose for your brand makes up for your identity in the market, and ultimately decide the kind of customers and clients that you drive in.
But what constitutes the design of a company in the first place?
It is a few very simple, but very crucial factors.
- Name of Your Brand
- Logo of Your Brand
- The Colour Palette that You Use
- The Typography and Fonts
- The Communication Tactics that You Employ; the tone of the content on your website, the content in your subscription emails.
What Should Your Design Ideally be Like?
A design should ideally have the following key features
- It should be simple and user-friendly: You should not overdo it, because people do not like to be overwhelmed and rightly so. Try to use visually appealing colours, and do not mix in the wrong shades with each other. Make sure that the font is not loud and the graphics not too in-your-face. Make it as easy on the eye to the viewer as possible.
- It should be memorable: You want people to take something of your brand with them after they have closed the tab on your website, or turned away from your store in the mall. Something that they will identify as yours and something that makes them keep coming back for more.
- It should be timeless: Perhaps the most challenging thing about business in contemporary times is how quickly trends change. You need to make a design for your brand that withstands all tests of time and changes in trends.
How Design Impacts Your Brand Identity?
Now that both the concepts have been made clear, let’s talk about how they both overlap. What does it say about a company if they have a versatile, timeless, appropriate, memorable and a simple design all in one?
Designing can cost a lot of money, so what is the guarantee that this is money not wasted but an investment instead?
A Strong Brand Identity Sells
Research has it, companies who invest in designs do way better than the companies who do consider it an immediate priority. In fact, it was discovered that for every $100 that a company spends on their design, turnover increased by $225 –this is twice the amount returning back to you.
So if the only thing that is making you hesitate while investing in a good logo and design, maybe you should think again and explore all your options. If you are thinking of budgeting for your company, leave the branding side untouched –if there is anything that is well worth every penny then it has to be investing in the visuals of the brand
A Strong Brand Identity Means Strong Consumer Connection
In the contemporary digital realm, words simply are not enough. People are continuously bombarded with images, illustrations, one-second-click-and-capture real life scenario’s….words simply feel hollow to most of the audience. This is because they have been digitally conditioned into being more receptive to visual rather than written effects.
No matter how good of a business you run, if you want to speak and communicate with your audience, you best have that visual appeal that really seems to attract them to just about everything.
A Strong Brand Identity Means People Will Keep Coming Back For More
Enhancing and retaining your clientele is an important part of generating revenue you’re your business. According to a study, if a website or a brand is poorly designed, people will not only be less likely to read and put faith in it but will also stop visiting after the initial few times.
Just because your content is good, does not mean people will overlook the design –in fact, your design may just halt your entire business profits altogether.
Are You Interested in Designing Your Brand Image Now? Here’s A Cheat Sheet
Okay, so you have made the decision to design for your brand, and set out a budget to do it..what now? What do you look for? What colours, fonts, visual tools and content tone should you even be using? What’s going to give you that double turnover, and what’s going to mess up the entire process completely? You need to know!
Here’s a cheat sheet that you can use
The Research
|
The Design
|
Implementation
|
Rebrand
|
Additional Tips that You May Follow
- Use visual aids, vectors, illustrations, infographics, charts rather than plain old text; people are more receptive to ideas this way.
- Set yourself apart from your competitors –play with the human’s intrinsic attractiveness bias.
- Make sure to target the right market; your design will differ according to your audience. A children’s brand will have a different design than that of adults, and women will be marketed differently than men will be.
- Set yourself apart, yes, but keep your brand in the loop with the latest trends. This keeps your brand within the same circle where the masses are talking to each other. Participate in popular hashtags and trends and if you are smart enough, you can even capitalize off of them.
- Maintain a consistency of colors and style in all the different aspects of the design; online or offline. Don’t just go for slightly different colors; pick a theme and stick to it or else you will be easily forgotten.
In a Nutshell
A good design is not just how you look, it is who you are – make sure you are the popular guy that everyone loves.
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