Brand design is a process of creating a distinct identity and personality in order to communicate and promote an organisation, person, product or service. Because the term ‘brand’ itself refers to a very broad range of attributes, this identity goes way beyond the purely visual, spanning many different aspects of an organisation and its products or services and harnessing many different communication and design skills.
As our free guide to The Power of Branding explains, brands are built around a holistic set of associations that people have with a company, product, service, individual or organisation. Developing and managing these associations is a complex process in which design plays a vital role, but which also includes other marketing communications disciplines, as well as the culture, processes and conduct of a company itself.
Brand design is therefore a much deeper and broader process than visual identity design, although graphics are often a crucial way of succinctly symbolising and evoking a brand and its associations. In fact, brands reach people via what many designers will call touchpoints, including:
- Visual elements, including corporate identity and other graphics
- Customer service
- Product attributes
- Physical environments
- Print communication
- Online/digital interaction
- Language/copywriting
- Packaging
- Materials and their visual or tactile qualities
- Form
- Sound
- Other marketing communications activity
Because brand design can involve work in any combination of the areas listed above - and more besides - the Design Council’s design industry research does not single out data specifically for a ‘brand design’ sector. However, the communications aspects of branding – corporate identity, graphics, print and information design – accounts for a large proportion of the design industry’s work overall, with around two-thirds of designers employed, at least partially, in this area.
Find out more about how the design industry is made from our latest design industry research
The business case
Why should businesses and organisations worry about brand design? What are the benefits of spending time and money on it? According to Rita Clifton, chairman of Interbrand, brands are a way of generating ‘sustainable value’ and ‘sustainable wealth’. ‘In the end,’ she says, ‘people die, buildings fall down and the things that really live on in, if you manage them well, are the brands.’ Strong brands can exist ‘independently of whoever is running the company at any particular time’, adds Clifton. ‘If you’re trying to add value to day to day processes and costs, you have to think about yourself as a brand because it is a way of specifying and generating long-term sustainable competitive advantage.’
In other words, brand design is a careful and deliberate management of all the ways an organisation reaches its end users or customers – and that includes its own processes, innovation and culture. Spending time on this can help a business achieve greater impact in the marketplace, improve perceptions of the company and position it more effectively against competitors so that its products and services are clearly differentiated and understood. Importantly, strong brands gain a competitive edge which is not dependent on commodity price, something which can (and will) always be undercut.
Achieving all these things can have a demonstrably positive impact on a business’ performance, as seen at South Yorkshire fruit farm McCallums and waste management company Serious**. Some larger businesses have even recognised this value by appointing a permanent, in-house head of brand.
Branding in a recession
Is investment in a brand an expensive luxury, something to be cut during tough times? One argument says that because consumer behaviour is disrupted – and purchasing habits are reassessed – during recession, it can present opportunities for businesses to secure new customers if they invest in their branding and marketing.
An example cited by Interbrand’s Rita Clifton is Nike in the early 1990s. The company approached the economic downturn by increasing its brand marketing budget threefold. It then emerged from the downturn with a globally recognised brand in a business that was nine times more profitable.