Designing Brand Identity

Here are some keys to successful brand design (as taken from Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler):

Understand the Business
Requesting the right information from a client is key: what's your vision? What's the mission and values? Where's the organizational chart? Have you got business plans, marketing plans and annual reports? Any strategic planning documents? All these will form a picture of the business. Interviewing key stakeholders can also be useful.

Market Research
Primary research, secondary research (demographics), qualitative research (listening and observing), one on one interviews, focus groups, competitive intelligence, quantitative research, online surveys, usability testing, eye tracking, mystery shopping, segmentation (special interest groups), global segmentation, brand equity research, name awareness research, and reputation research can all build a good solid base from which to launch a new brand identity.

Marketing Audits
A look at what has gone before and how they've done it can be extremely useful. It's important to look at their existing brand, business papers, any electronic communications, sales and marketing, internal communications, environmental applications and any retail work. It's also a good idea to audit the competition, the stakeholders and even the language (content) to see who they are up against, what might work better? All of this research can be presented to the client to give a clearer picture of what's going on. Often times it's better for someone outside the organization to do this because it might reveal new, unforeseen problems. Presenting this information can help focus the leaders on the possibilities, jump start conversation, identify gaps, make sure things are done right in the future, uncover inconsistencies, reveal needs for more differentiation, add a sense of value and urgency, inform the creative team, and unearth brilliant and forgotten ideas!

After all that work it's time to settle into the clarification of the brand strategy. This might lead to a need to narrow the vision in order to better position the company for success. The objective here will be to sign off on the brand brief and then write the creative brief (a road map for the creative team). This brief will include team goals, communication goals, a critical application list, functional and performance criteria, mind map or SWOTs (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), brand positioning, protocols, confidentiality statement, documentation system and benchmarks and presentation dates.

Last but not least come up with a name, and make sure it's not one that's already taken!