A guide to creating a strong identity for your business or personal brand

A guide to creating a strong identity for your business or personal brand:

Brief

Before start creating the elements necessaries for a successful branding, it is important to understand that more than your product or services, you must have a clear idea about the message that you want to communicate and your niche or ideal client, for example lets say you sell cars, what kind of cars do you sell? Used or brand new cars?  What about your clients? Are offering affordable prices or are you looking for a client based on specific preferences or income? It is important to give all the information necessary to the graphic designer to create the right branding that fulfill your corporate or personal branding , for that reason I have created a brand identity questionnaire, this powerful tool has helped me to create great brands concepts for my clients.

Research

This is one of the most important steps, it is obvious that if  you are doing an investment in your logo or complete brand identity, it is because you want to be recognized as the best in your industry and it should be reflected in your sells and profit, once your business experience and niche has been identified, the process will continue with a detailed research into your competitors. The designer should not be shy at this point, personally when a client hire me to create his bran identity, I use as a reference the biggest brands in his industry, for example, months ago a Real Estate Firm hired me to give a new image to the brand identity, TD Real State, my research was not based in small local competitors, my challenge was to create a brand identity to overcome large firms such as  REMAX and Rodeo Realty, no less than that.

Brainstorming

After the graphic designer is fully briefed and armed with relevant information, it is time to unleash the creativity, it doesn’t  matter how crazy the initial ideas could be, in this phase everything counts, personally I create mind maps to keep my ideas organized, it is important to understand we are getting through a creative process and the designer cannot get stuck in details just because the big idea didn’t come out at first try, it is important to start simple, usually small ideas open the door to great concept.

Sketching

Before start working in the computer it is always recommended that the graphic designer place the ideas on paper  for obvious reasons, when we are using the computer our brain is kind of busy manipulating the software, it doesn’t matter if we are experts or not we need to use different tools to draw lines and shapes and this could slow down the creativity, but when we are drawing by hand a pencil is the only thing we need to capture the emerging ideas, even the graphic designer doesn’t need to be a skilled draftsman, the sketching process is just to create some references and then continue digging until create the perfect idea to represent your business or personal branding.

Rendering

Sometimes on the sketching phase the graphic designer creates several options, it os not necessary to render one by one in the computer, that is why is recommend to go over the business brief again and identify which of these ideas are  accomplishing the client’s requirements, personally I prefer to select just one winner version, from there continue the process, creating variations and polishing the concept until I have the perfect logo to be presented to the client.

Presentation and feedback

Basically this is the first time the client has contact with the creates concept, usually I present the logo in black and white, no color selection yet, my purpose  is to get focus just in form and shape, then it should be easiest to analyze the concept and wait for the client feedback to alter or adjust elements of the design to suit some needs or personal preferences. Once the shape and form is approved by the client, I will present some color variations and typographic styles. At this stage the client may wish to choose a combination preference of colors and typographical style. It is important to remember that design is subjective and it is always important to advise the client at every stage with a professional opinion and recommendations before carrying out your requested changes.

Final concept and delivery

After approving the final concept, it is important to provide the client with all the formats necessaries to apply the logo or branding elements were required, the designer must keep in mind that those days the logos  are used in different format and sizes that range from small sizes such as favicon or app, to huge sizes such as billboards and outdoor advertising.