Why your brand design needs strategy to thrive
December 8, 2022
You know someone’s a primary school teacher when you spot their fruit-shaped dangly earrings, a small handprint on their overalls and colourful Gorman socks poking out of their Blundstones, right? Sure, we try not to judge a book by its cover, but the visual impression your business makes gives off certain signals. It sets the tone for your customer experience. It can help establish trust and authority. And it can ensure people remember you and feel good about doing business with you.
So what happens when your visual brand identity doesn’t match up with the signals you want to send out to the world? Well, it has less chance of doing its job well and you run the risk of looking like a primary school teacher when you’re actually a surgeon.
The importance of strategy in building a brand
The ultimate goal of brand strategy is to gain clarity around who you are now and who you want to become in the future. Without that clarity, your brand can be forgettable, weak or lack meaning. Before you start picking out the perfect shade of light blue for your website homepage, there are some questions you can ask yourself to make sure your visual brand choices aren’t just plucked from thin air without a purpose or direction.
- What values guide your business?
- What’s your unique value proposition?
- Why do you exist?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What is your brand personality?
At Taylor & Grace, we partner with clients to unveil the answers to these questions through brand research, brand workshops, brand evaluation, concept testing, CX audits and more. It’s the crucial, heavy-lifting you need to do first to ensure your design is built upon a solid, strategic foundation. It means that, when you create your logo or your website, they’re not just attractive – they’re intentional.
What about brand design?
Brand design is the process of creating your brand’s visual identity through a unified system of elements including logos, colours and typography. It’s the visual embodiment of your business’ personality so that, when people catch a glimpse of your brand, they know it’s you and they get who you really are. Ideally, they’ll love who you are, too.
Brand design is the ultimate tool for success when implemented strategically. More than just attractive shapes and colours, strategic brand design will help you achieve the results you want and help your business grow in the right direction. It should be intentionally connected to your vision, mission and your business goals because, if it isn’t, you’re just sittin’ there lookin’ pretty.
Brand design is always evolving
Read any branding or marketing blog post ever and it’ll say something along the lines of, ‘in today’s fast-paced world, it’s hard to stand out’ or ‘in order to keep up with ever-changing trends and customer needs, it’s important to [insert instruction]’. Clichéd? Maybe. True? 100%
Staying ahead of your competition, on top of current trends and abreast of customer expectations is one of the keys to success for any business – whether you sell bin bags or hair scrunchies. As things change all around you (because, believe us, they will), if you’re still holding on to a good-lookin’ visual brand identity that has a 10-year-old strategy behind it, you could be left in the dust.
The point is, once your strategic brand design is complete, it’s not set in stone. You should revisit your visual brand identity (as well as your overall brand strategy) as the market changes, as you change, as your target audience grows, grows up, or starts to value different things.
Ready to bring your brand back to life?
At Taylor & Grace, we’ve already saved hundreds of businesses from weak, outdated or unintentional brand design that is limiting their business growth. Are you next? Get in touch and let us sprinkle shower your visual brand with a big dose of strategy.
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