How to Achieve Clarity in Branding

A few tips on Getting Started

Over the years of working with a number of industries and businesses of all sizes, one thing is certainly clear. Without clarity in your branding, it is essentially impossible to have a clear and concise brand message. A number of individuals and companies have approached us simply with an idea while much fewer have arrived with a developed concept. There seems to be an underlying expectation that the marketing specialist or logo designer will magically know how to bring clarity to your branding. And the thing is, no one knows your brand the way you do. You should be the one to work out those finer details, as not only will your branding be concise but overall brand presence becomes unified.

The Start of an Idea

It is awfully fun to jump into the pretty and showy side of building a brand. It creates a flurry of excitement and optimism about the prospective future of a brand. So one focuses on the thrilling elements rather than all the elements. Where branding truly requires your full attention. In light of that I wanted to share some tips on what to do in your first stages:

• At the spark of an idea write down or record your thoughts and come back to them during your development of the idea into a workable concept.
• When you come back to the initial idea, write down a short paragraph answering the following questions: What will I offer, how will I offer it, and where will I offer it?
• Then take a moment to think about who would use this offering. Write down an age group, work seniority, and any other defining elements of potential customers. This becomes your target audience.

Developing an Idea in a Workable Concept

Now that you have taken some time to look at this idea in a simplistic format we can work through the finer details. We can move onto the perspective of branding and brand message. This stage takes time and effort to really bring it all together so that the branding will be concise.

• Place the paragraph you have written in front of you and highlight the most important words or the ones that stand out. On a new clean page, write these words in a column.
• Underneath the column with the important words on the new page, write down the 3 most important elements of your target audience.
• Right, here we have our keywords that will define the offering. Next to this column of information, write down the following: We offer/provide ____________________________ to/for __________________________ on/at _______________. Use the words you have available to you in the column to fill in the open spaces. Test out a few options and tweek the sentence until it speaks to you. This will be the start of clarity in your branding. (Example: We offer minimalist graphic design to international medium to large companies on our website)

Before Approaching the Logo Design

With some structure brought to the concept of this new brand or company, you can begin to look at what that visual branding message could be. A logo sets out the groundwork for the tone, voice, and colour palette of the corporate branding. Though a logo design should always be simple and easily identifiable in plain black and white print. Here are a few things you can do before approaching your chosen designer:

• Have your target audience and offering written out clearly as this will help the designer understand who you are trying to appeal to and what visual elements would be of interest.
• Pick two colours you want to be associated with your brand (no more than two), decide on a style you prefer such as what we offer, minimalism, and lastly choose two visuals that would be able to represent your brand (no more than two).
• Decide on two name options, keep it short and sweet as they say. You want the name to be easy to remember, spell and look good on as a url.

In conclusion

you want to ensure that you are using the expertise of the experts rather than relying on them to fill in the gaps. I hope this information has given some clarity to you and your branding. Contact me directly at giulia@ontwerp.ch for any queries you may have.