What we do and how we do it.
Strategy first - then we design. That’s the short version. Though every brand design project is unique, there’s still a method to be followed to get results. We’ll walk you through it.
Discovery
This is the get-to-know-eachother phase. We come around to your facility to meet the people involved. We’ll go over the brief, and hear from the horse’s mouth what needs to happen and why. We’ll ask a lot of questions, you can do too.
After this initial meeting we’ll delve into any reading material you have on your company. Your website, social media channels, brochures, business plans, notes from old strategy sessions, published interviews, corporate magazines, product folders… Whatever you have. We’ll read it. We want to understand your current brand as best we can before going forward.
Strategy
This is where we’ll lay the groundwork for all future design decisions. With everyone important present we’ll run a Brand Sprint. This is a strategy session that’ll take about half a day. Through a series of exercises and assignments we’ll gather info on your brand core. This includes setting up a timeline, formulating a mission statement, figuring out your core values, describing your target audience, determining your brand personality and charting the competitive landscape.
All this input is then distilled into a Brand Rapport. This contains a summary of the session, and our strategic advice for the brand. With your feedback and approval we have a brand core to build the brand identity on.
Concept
Only then, it’s time to design. With our strategy in hand, and our brand core determined we develop a number of stylescapes. These are extensive moodboards that contain visual directions for color, typography, shape, illustration, photography, textures, etc. These stylescapes serve as signposts to show you what directions we could take the brand. With your input, feedback and decision, we set out to create the brand concept. This is where we’ll bunker down in our studio and work for a couple of weeks to create, design and refine a fully fledged brand concept including logo or wordmark, complete visual identity, brand manifesto, tone-of-voice, everything. We also include a bunch of mock-ups to see your brand applied to real life situations. After this presentation there’s room for feedback and some refinement, if needed.
Production
Then we get to work to make your brand ready for use. The standard deliverables are the Brand Guidelines and all the brand assets such as all the logo files, color swatches, type files, illustrations and photography. Any marketing department with in-house design team could get cracking with these to pump out the most amazing branded content. Of course we can also produce any amount of deliverables ourselves. Stationary, presentation templates, print ad campaigns, branded merch and apparel, package design, billboards, signing, wayfinding, website design, webcopy, social media templates, online ad campaigns, newsletter templates, corporate or product videos, tutorials, podcasts, etc. You dream it, we design it.
Brand Management
Consistency is key in branding. So finally, we offer to perform a yearly brand scan. We’ll look at all the produced branded content and check if there’s any brand drift. We fully trust that every in-house design team or third-party production company tries their best to follow the brand guidelines, but mistakes happen to the best of us. We also follow the customer journey and check if every customer touchpoint is on brand.