The top brands all have a few key things in common.

They provide an exceptional customer experience at every possible customer touchpoint. They keep their employees happy and they have a memorable brand.

Whether it’s Starbucks, Nike, Apple or Google, the best brands refuse to be forgotten. But how do they achieve such a successful brand presence? What is it about the branding behind these that work, and why does it work? What do all of these successful brands have in common? The answer (at least in part) is their branding design process.

Great branding doesn’t happen by accident.

The most successful brands ensure that they make their branding integral to everything that they do. Creating great brand isn’t just a catchy slogan or a nice looking logo, it is the embodiment of everything that your business or organisation represents.

In this sense, your values must be reflected in your brand and vice versa. In other words, while it’s great to have a set of core values and beliefs that your brand stands for, you need to ensure that you live up to these values through your actions, whether this be externally with your customers, internally with your colleagues, or in any other aspect of day to day business life. 

So where does your branding design process come into this? Here’s our rundown of what makes for a successful brand design.

Understand who you were, are, and where you are going

The key to branding design process is in the term “process”. Your branding design is never something that stays still. Like your business, your branding should continuously evolve to meet new challenges and new opportunities. Your branding design process will need to have one foot in the present, and one a step or two ahead to ensure that you are never standing still. If you plan to expand in years to come, then you’ll want your brand to be able to move easily into this new identity without being held back.

Take a step back

With any branding design process, it’s important to take a step back and try and view your brand from another person’s point of view. Hold a workshop with some of your employees, or hold a focus group and ask them to tell you what they think of your brand. You may be surprised by the results when you ask others what they think. It can be very easy to be unknowingly biased when you are so close to your brand, so getting an objective perspective can help to develop and breathe new life into your brand.

Create a few different initial designs

Once you’ve come up with some conclusions about what your brand represents, where it fits in the market, and what the future holds, it’s time to start coming up with some designs to bring this brand vision to life. The colours, fonts, style and content of your design, will be determined by the conclusions you have come to about these questions. Again, as your branding design is a “process”, it helps to come up with multiple options and designs and to whittle it down from there to the designs that best fit your brand. 

Commit to your brand

This tends to be the hurdle that most businesses and organisations struggle at. Committing to your brand and your brand guidelines is easier said than done. Committing to your brand guidelines means abiding by the rules that you have decided upon no matter what business pressures or deadlines you need to meet. It means living and breathing your brand values and using your brand to compliment this by integrating it at every touchpoint possible, be it for customers or employees.

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have helped numerous brands with their design and branding, and in helping them to integrate this into their own internal processes. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you with your branding design requirements, then get in touch via our contact page, or by calling 02895072007.