Branding

Branding is more than your logo, or the colours and fonts on your website or packaging. It’s about your reputation — how consumers perceive you. Brands largely control this perception through their products, associations, messaging, advertising, social platforms, and of course through their logo, colours, fonts, website, etc.

Every aspect of your brand needs to be carefully thought out and adhered to so that it’s consistent and conveys the message you want associated with your company.

When auditing an existing brand, or designing a brand from scratch, there are some important steps to consider, such as:

Look at brands in your category, and outside of your category, to determine what you like about them, and why you like them.
Determine what you want your brand to stand for. Simon Sinek calls this your “why” – why does your exist? What is your mission?
What is your personality or voice – how do you want your brand to be conveyed?

Start to pull together inspiration on a mood board and start to make decisions about colours, logo style, tone, fonts, imagery, messaging, etc.
If you have existing customers, ask them why they choose to go with you. Customer insights can be incredibly enlightening, often revealing things about your brand you may not have been aware of.

Building a Brand Series

In this series, we take a brand from conception to completion, doing everything from brand strategy, social strategy, consumer path to purchase mapping, logo and package design, brand guidelines, website design and builds… This series allows you to peak behind the curtain to see how we think about brand building so you can apply these frameworks to your brand. Where applicable, we look to disrupt traditionally ‘boring’ categories through creativity, strategy, and execution. If you’re not disrupting, then you’re being left behind.

Building a Brand Series: Skybar

Building a Brand Series: Ever

Building a Brand Series: Wudaya Nuts

What is your Brand's Essence?

Brand essence is the core of a brand’s identity and encapsulates its fundamental qualities, values, and personality traits. It’s the intangible attribute that differentiates a brand from its competitors and creates an emotional connection with its audience. When thinking about brand essence, it’s helpful to imagine it as the soul of your brand, guiding all its expressions, from visual identity and messaging to customer interactions and experiences.

One engaging way to conceptualize brand essence is to ask, “If your brand was a car, what kind of car would it be?”

Continue Reading:

What is a Brand Wheel and How is it Used?

Circle K Brand Refresh

While visiting Taiwan, where convenience stores are on another level, I wanted to try my hand at doing a complete rebrand of a North American convenience store – I chose Circle K. Here are some concepts I came up with. You can read the full blog for more details on what I would do to transform this company, not just the colour and logos, but the entire ethos of the brand.

Read the Blog: Circle K: A Mock Rebrand Concept

See more CPG package designs

Continue Reading: Building a Brand: Ever Beverage Co.

Continue Reading: Building a Brand: Skybar

Building a Brand Series: Wudaya Nuts

View more website designs

Logo designs

When it comes to logo design, the real talent is in coming up with simple, yet memorable designs. Think of logos from Nike, Apple, Amazon, Target, Twitter, Adidas… none of these complex or difficult from a design perspective, but they work.

So when designing logos for brands, we think very deeply about trying to come up with the next iconic logo that people remember and reference for the next 100 years. No easy task, but we’re up for the challenge!

Original

My Revision

Infostrux Solutions: A Case Study

Existing brand

Infostrux’s branding used simple cartoon characters, lots of purple, bold typeface, and didn’t showcase their people and expertise.

As a new company, they were looking to convey more maturity and market-leadership when compared to other brands.

Brand refresh

Taking inspiration from high-end luxury brands, we brought in darker tones, replaced the cartoons with actual images, and used a sleeker and more modern font.

For the logo, we adhered to their existing mark, but updated it to match the rest of the modern and sleek typeface found on the site. By capitalizing the word mark, our aim was to convey more maturity and authority.