Think about a business that you frequent. Got it?
When you think about something like this, your brain goes to work. It will instantly access information, images, and feelings that are associated with the subject of your thoughts.
The impression that arose in your mind, combined with impressions of all the other people who frequent that business (or know of it, or drive by it, or avoid it), forms the collective perception of that business—its brand.
Your slice is yours. They can’t control how you feel about it, but you should expect them to try.
Influencing brand perception
Influencing your perception is in the best interest of that business. They may run radio ads scripted to make you laugh and smile. They may run coupons in your zip code. They may sit on the board of your chamber of commerce. They may run TV ads to make you see them as the solution to your problems. They may sponsor your child’s baseball team.
Unfathomable amounts of time and money are spent to shape our brand perception of the services and products in our lives. And it works.
We refer to these influence activities as “brand-building” or, when that’s just too many syllables, “branding.”
Design’s role in branding
Design, in its many forms, turns up all over the place in this quest to influence perception. For our purposes, though, let’s narrow our focus to the graphic disciplines (e.g., visual identities, logos, websites, and print). This kind of design influences perception through your eyeballs.
At its most basic, the near-instant visual and emotional evaluations of design (our reactions) open or close the door to opportunity. The wrong business branding will immediately close that door. The right branding and graphic design will keep it open long enough for more rational evaluations and decisions to be made.
In more complex forms, graphic design and branding are used by a business to influence our behavior and reinforce our perception, making it harder and harder for another business to dislodge. Here are a few broad examples of that:
Visual identity
Visual identity provides a visual vocabulary of logo, form, color, typography, photography, illustration, and motion. These are carefully designed to present to the desired audiences in exactly the right way.
Visual advertising
Visual advertising of all forms trains and convinces us to recognize and choose, and then continually reminds us. It creates familiarity, and the familiar almost always feels safer.
- Digital display ads
- Email marketing
- TV spots
- Billboards
- Print ads
- Direct mail
- All the social media posts
Business collateral
Business collateral is generally a little more passive than visual advertising, and more often serves to inform or educate us, or to create a branded environment.
- Brochures
- Presentations
- Websites
- Tradeshow displays
- Retail spaces
- Signs
- Uniforms
- Vehicle fleets
- POS displays
Package design
Package design might reference all that advertising. Even without advertising, it offers cues to us shoppers about how well something aligns with our preferences and values.
Continual and mutual attention
Business and audience change over time, branding changes to follow suit, and design tastes and trends are their own thing entirely. For these reasons and more, the perception of your business is never fixed. Your brand is always in flux.
How about an example:
Your baked goods company is making the leap from local, specialty retail to national distribution. Amazing! This change in business and audience will surface business problems that may include staff, supply chain, quality control, facilities, cash flow, co-packers, and distribution, to name a few. It may also reveal branding problems—inadequate visual identity, strong national competition, complete lack of awareness in new markets, and so on.
What got you here—the personal relationships and the recommendations of those local retailers—will not help you compete in the big box grocery stores across the nation. Your business will have a lot more eyes on it, and will be competing on the shelf, visually, next to the established national brands. New branding efforts will be required.
Of those, package design is going to be a critical component. Done right, its visual cues will align with the needs of the right audience as they move down that aisle.
How do we get a grip on all this?
First, recognize that these three ideas—business, brand, and design—are intertwined. They each affect and are affected by the others.
Second, do the research and make a plan. Strong, research-based brand strategy reveals the paths to aligning business and brand goals with branding and design efforts.
Third, keep watching and reevaluating these three. They need continual attention and regular adjustments. If the baked goods company above ignores quality control, the competitive branding landscape, or its packaging, things may not turn out so well.
Applying this to your business
Branding your business is one of a handful of ways to influence how your audience perceives it. Get the recipe right, and it can pay dividends.
You might be thinking, “We’ve already done this, and it hasn’t moved the needle.” There are lots of possible reasons for that. Below are a few we see regularly. These scenarios sabotage the work as it happens, making it less effective…even when it’s beautifully executed.
Branding is anchored in the past (or even the present)
Design for where you’re headed. If you’re trying to grow your business to serve ever bigger, ever better clients, the sooner your branding is ready for them, the sooner you’ll get there. Anchoring your branding to the clients and competition of today (which becomes the past very quickly) means it won’t be ready when you enter that future arena of bigger clients and bigger competition.
Skipping the strategy and research
All of this works better with strategy and research. Running your business? Absolutely. Brand-building efforts? No question. Design? Ditto. Making any business, branding, or design decisions based on assumptions about your audience is just guessing. You might be a really good guesser, but you might be a little off. And a little off over time can mean missing the mark entirely.
Being too price-sensitive
Yes, it’s gentler on the bank account to let AI write your marketing plan, hire a cousin’s daughter to design your logo, and design that website in Squarespace. But these budget solutions also won’t fill your bank account as well as hiring experts will. You get what you pay for. And if you don’t pay for results, you may not get them.
When you are finding the right expert fit, if the price isn’t making you at least a little uncomfortable, you’re probably not paying enough. Doing it right will be more expensive, but it doesn’t have to be unreasonable. Different experts serve different markets at different prices. Find the “just right” size for your business. That’s where the needs of your brand and graphic design budget are in alignment.
Where to go from here
If you’ve gotten this far, there’s probably something nagging at you. A problem (big or small) that you want to fix. Our most important advice is to find the right help to solve the right problem. The right problem is closest to the root. And the right team has the expertise to solve that problem.
The right problem might be, “Our brand is unfocused; we’re trying to be everything to everyone.” The right team will need to have research and strategy expertise. If they bring design expertise as well, that ties together the core branding and design functions, which will bring some efficiencies to the work.
If you are unsure where the problems lie, or what expertise you need to bring in, we’d be happy to talk with you. Our brand audit & assessment is designed to find the gaps and opportunities, and might be a good place to start.
A few ways we work with clients
Brand assessment
This diagnostic is our lightest engagement and easiest entry point for those who aren’t sure about what’s working or not, and where to start.
Strategy and design
With big changes to the business—new leadership, markets, and direction—a big change to the brand will follow. We develop brand strategy and positioning, and then move into design.
Logo & brand design
Our core creative service, brand design is for those who have strong business strategy in place, and a clear, documented understanding of their audience and competitors.