WHY BRANDING IS NOT (ONLY) GRAPHIC DESIGN
The term “branding” is often thrown around casually in reference to one’s logo, as though, to have a logo is to have a brand.
Certainly, a logo is part of a brand, and maybe even an important part, but a brand’s personality is more than just a pretty face. To be judged purely at face value is, well, insulting, which is why I wanted to explain that “branding” does not equal graphic design.
Well, not only graphic design.
Graphic design is the process of creating a visual statement to represent your brand. And, if it’s done well, that statement should bring all the different dimensions of your brand into one concise, and convenient, prompt that consists of what is called your brand’s ‘visual cues’; a logo, a library of preferred font types and a palette of representative colours.
In this way, graphic design allows for the visual aspects of your brand to be brought to life.
But what about all the other elements?
What you look like is undoubtedly part of your personality but as I’m sure you’d agree, it doesn’t define your essence. And in my experience, the same can be said for a brand.
In fact, one of the easiest ways to define the brand that you’re trying to build is by thinking about it as a person. What does it look like yes, but also what does it sound like and think like, how does it make people feel who engage with it and what is it’s signature scent.
When you start to think about all these different facets of a personality, you quickly realise that a logo is but the visual representation of a brand and loosely describing a logo as “branding” fails to capture all the other important qualities that make up your brand.
To help acknowledge these other important qualities, I like to reference our ‘six’ human senses because it is through our senses that we experience the world, and it is through your brand that your customer experiences your business.
Consider, Taste. Good, bad, expensive or otherwise, Taste is key to distinguishing your brand’s individual style and creating a signature ‘fingerprint’ that becomes something worth remembering.
Touch, allows consideration to be given to the kind of world you’re creating through your brand and ultimately dictates how you want people to feel. Your space, whether virtual or physical, needs to communicate authenticity, celebrate provenance and provide a context for real engagement.
Sight, which I’ve already referenced, is essential for creating those visual elements, pivotal for expressing your brand’s aesthetic and image.
Scent, one of the most formidable but under-utilised senses of all, is capable of calling up memories and inducing powerful reactions almost instantaneously, and so creates lasting emotional connections to period, person and place.
Sound in the form of audio, tone of voice and language are all essential communication elements that require consideration, consistency and a comprehensive strategy to ensure they deliver the correct message. Sometimes deemed transportative, sound is also responsible for triggering recall and so is crucial for inducing future action.
And then, not one of the traditional five, but a powerful, overarching ‘sixth sense’ that brings presence, intention and perspective is mindfulness. Mindfulness allows thoughtful planning, meaningful connections and a balanced approach that encourages the extraordinary, magical and memorable.
When you think about it this way, your brand is a promise that you make to your customers about the kind of experience they can expect to have with your business over and over again.
Consider a brand you know well – Chanel for example. You know that no matter where you interact with Chanel, whether it be on social media, inside a store, watching a runway show on IGTV or wearing one of their perfumes, that your experience will be the same. It’s an experience of quality, of service, of wonder. Of feeling special and inspired and amazed.
And so my intention is not to devalue graphic design, quite the opposite as we welcome our fabulous new Creative Co-Ordinator Rach in October (who will add an incredible new dimension to blancspace), but rather course-correct the conversation around what “branding” really is.
“Branding” or the process of defining a brand, reaches far beyond just the visual into the full ‘six senses’ and results in a deeply complex, well rounded personality that allows your customers to know, like and trust your products, just like your brand was an old friend.
Creating, defining and growing a brand is hence not a one dimensional process. Its a process that requires thoughtful attention over an incredibly long period. As I like to say, your brand is everything and there has never been a more important time to consider and build yours.