So far, we’ve looked at what brands are, what they stand for and looked at the tools they employ to communicate with their audiences. Here, we’ll look at how professional help from a qualified and enthusiastic professional can help you to create a brand identity that will become a valuable asset to your company.Кровли крупных торговых центров. Особенности конструкции и специфика монтажа.
Please note the distinction between ‘brand’ and ‘brand identity’. Your brand embodies the totality of what your customers experience and the expectations they have (which you set when building the brand). In short, a brand is a promise. A brand identity simply shows what your brand looks like – how it presents itself to the outside world. This usually encompasses the corporate logo, colours typefaces, imagery and copywriting style.
For many years, almost everyone that owns a computer has possessed the facility to produce documents and illustrations of acceptable quality, through various desktop publishing and graphics applications.
OK, if I can do all of this myself, why use a designer?
Applications can help you to make things look good, but they cannot give you ideas or turn a poor idea into a better one. Software does not come complete with the ideas, knowledge, experience and 3-4 years’ training necessary to help you to create and develop a brand and establish a credible and vibrant visual identity.
For me, it comes down to professionalism. Trained and experienced brand designers have the ability to interpret the vision you have for your company and transform it into something special, visually interesting and, most importantly, marketable.
This does not mean, however, that you should merely hand over a design brief to a designer or agency, sit back and expect work of true genius to magically appear. Communications design requires communication. A designer will ask you searching questions about what your company does and what makes it special. You, as business owner, should ask or define how you would like the designer to work with you and together agree the basis of that relationship.
In order to produce your new brand identity, you will need a plan. A thorough, informative and inspiring design brief is required. It can be written by you and or the designer or agency you commission. Regardless of the source, it should contain information on these important points:
– what does your company do and what does it stands for?
– what makes the company special?
– where will the brand identity will be seen, and by whom?
– how should the brand be positioned, relative to the competition?
– what are the specific deliverables (logo, brand guidelines etc)?
– what is the timescale for implementation?
– costs
The brief exists to help you and the designer to stay on track throughout the process and gives you a means of measuring the appropriateness of the work. Always remember that you will be using the identity, long after the design work has been completed. It has to be right for you.