8 Easy And Effective Steps To Build A Unique Brand

A brand represents the perception of the customers towards a product, its advertisement, logo and service. Hence, it is vital that one designs a brand that effectively stands out in the minds of the customers. A powerful brand ensures a product, becoming a household name. Crafting a brand personality for a product can be quite a daunting task, as a lot will be riding on your designing a winning visual brand identity, but here are few steps that can help bolster your brand building process:

Understand the audience:

The primary step to any brand building is to understand the consumers. Drawing up a thorough definition of your audience is a vital step in your brand building process. The key is to understand who will buy and use the product, what appeals to them and cater the design in that direction. It is important to have a very low level of abstraction while defining the audience.

You want to be as specific as possible and this will help you pin down the parameters that will eventually make up the foundation of your brand. Once you’ve determined the target audience, it will give you a picture as to how best the brand identity can be tailored to meet their expectations.

Perform competitive analysis:

The market will always and forever be a competitive ground. Understanding the competition enables one to determine the factors that will help to make the brand stand out from the rest. The aim here is to be distinct, not blend in. This research will prove to be crucial in comprehending who the competition is and how they are perceived in the consumer market.  Analyzing the competition will give us an outline of the similarities and contrasts in their design structures. More often than not, similar products gravitate towards similar design features, most notably in terms of color schemes and themes. Find the linking threads can help in determining what you can do to make your brand distinguished.

Identify the key features of the product:

The brand identity must clearly highlight the product’s best features and key qualities. It does not involve blandly mentioning the list of exciting features, bust designing the brand in such a way that they subtly catch the eye of the customers. Comb through the intricacies of the product and separate out the features worth highlighting. These features must be effective in convincing the customers to choose your product over the others. The next step is to find ways to incorporate these features and traits into your design without being obvious. Place due emphasis on these key qualities that make your product interesting.

Establish a design process:

Every designer employs a unique design process. In a similar way, ever product might require a unique approach too. Being a designer, one must be willing to explore different avenues of methods and approaches to discover the one that best suits the product. The design and branding process is rarely a linear one, but a generalized flow must be established in order to give the design a form and structure. Establish all the ground rules, constraints, and methods applied from briefing phase to the sketching and presentation phases.

Exercise restraint:

The design process can often involve the exploration of multiple and myriad attitudes and viewpoints but it is essential that the focus never draws away from the business voice and client constraints. It is crucial to find a way to be creative and build around and within the boundaries of constraints. Constraints are not established and specified to limit the designer but aid them in understanding the tone and purpose that must be set.

Build product personality:

This is a vital step in ensuring that your product is a hit among the masses. A product when provided with a personality is essentially having life breathed into it. The branding process must involve weaving the nuances of the product features into the design. Depending on the product the brand identity will establish itself as fast, trendy or fun. The logo and design must speak volumes are the characteristics and essence of the product in a way that appeals to the customers. You must decide if the brand has a simple personality or a wondrously complex one. The personality of your product’s brand can be established in several ways from the colors, theme, messages to even the font used.

Maintain consistency:

The design process can be long and laborious one. It is important that the light never shines away from the product’s purpose and business tone. The design must be consistent at every phase. It is better to avoid ambiguity by throwing in a new attribute at each step, whenever the inspiration strikes. Establish the tone and color schemes and everything in between before the design process commences. This ensures that logo and structure never deviate and a consistent flow remains throughout the brand building.

“Brand building is not a task but a process, involving several phases and lots of time.”

Be bold and take risks:

Nothing extraordinary can be developed without taking a few risks along the way. Making the bold move of straying away from the conventional schemes that are popular in the market can make your product stand out effortlessly. Exhaust all resources and explore all paths to bring the best and the most unique design to the table. The subtle or brash changes and additions can prove to be a much-needed breath of fresh air among the customers and make them look twice. Being creative and innovative is the key to building a unique brand. Remember to avoid the industrial clichés that have run through the mill, a thousand times before.

Brand building is not a task but a process, involving several phases and lots of time. It is more than just a logo, a style or a theme. It is an effective and essential way to distinguish your product from other companies in the market. It is important to stand out from the competitors visually in order to stand in the minds of your customers.

Author: James Tredwell is a Technical SEO at Hopinfirst.com who works with unique problems and advanced search situations. Hopinfirst is one of the best SEO Company which offers best SEO Services with 100% genuine results.

Infographic: How to Design a Brand Identity