How to Build a Brand

Thank you for checking out our Branding 101 series. We’ve combined 12+ years of brand building into our resources, aiming to help you create, launch and evolve your brand.

Has the very meaning of ‘brand’ changed? Has the importance of ‘brand’ changed? We’re in a period of higher competition and saturation in most markets than ever before. It’s easier than ever to start a business but harder than ever to sustain and grow it. Businesses that do not turn a profit are, of course, unsustainable and eventually only go one way. When you start a business, your return on investment (ROI) is king. Brand strategy is simply the plan that covers how you plan your business to grow.

Ultimately, your product or service has to be great. Otherwise, customers will not return. Product is more important than brand. Period. So, you’ve got a great product/ service. This is the entry ticket to start building a profitable company. A great brand won’t save a bad business. A great brand, however, will help elevate a good business, into a great one.

Compelling brands build equity and market share. Branding enables differentiation, recognition, buy-in, and loyalty. Fundamentally, good branding helps build brand equity.

What is a brand?

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.” — Simon Sinek

A brand is the total sum of a person's experiences with your brand. Ultimately, your brand is what people think of your organisation as a whole.

Branding is the process of creating the graphic elements that help build a brand in the eyes of consumers. It captures the purpose behind a company.

Brand identity, or visual identity, is the combination of logo, colour, typography, and graphic systems, such as illustrations, required to build a visual language that your brand can communicate using. Designers discuss this when we talk about branding.

A brand identity is the combined overall aesthetic that defines the look and feel of your brand, encompassing, but not limited to:

• Logo usage, construction, incorrect usage

• Colour & typography specifications and systems

• Brand assets, such as patterns, illustrations, icons etc

• Brand touchpoints, such as stationery suites, packaging, social media posts etc.

• Brand guidelines, the rules behind the correct usage of the above elements

Purpose-led brands

“The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.” — Richard Branson

Purpose-led brands play the infinite game. Finding and following a purpose gives your market something to buy into, and feel a part of. Purpose-led brands grow 3x faster than competition. To build a purpose-led brand, you must first find the core of your business.

The core brand-building process

There are three core phases to branding, learn more through the series of posts.

1. Brand Strategy
— Learn to build a strong brand foundation through discovery, and the core phases of brand strategy.

2. Visual Identity Design
— Crafting your visual identity, from idea to execution.

3. Future-Proofing
— Ensuring your brand for the long-term.

1. How to Create a Brand Strategy

“Practice safe design: Use a concept.”
— Petrula Vrontikis

The brand strategy is fundamentally how you plan to grow your brand. It will consider the contexts in which your brand exists, considering competition, customers, vision and core values, then formulating your brand personality, and mission.

A compelling brand strategy is goal-oriented and actionable, often used as the design brief for the branding design process. A brand strategy covers the following:

1. Brand Audit – The first task is to take stock of where your current brand is, any existing logos, colours, and brand touchpoints.

2. DNA – Understanding the catalysts behind the company and past milestones.

3. Positioning – Looking into competition and customers, can you find a unique space in your market to position your unique offer?

4. Vision – What do you want your company to be known for in 50 years? What do you want to change in your industry?

5. Core Values – These are the foundations of how your brand should communicate to the world. There is only room for two or three values within your brand identity.

6. Personality – A brand speaks from its personality, starting with brand archetypes.

7. Tone-of-Voice – Tone-of-voice is your brand’s verbal identity. This is a hugely important part of ‘branding’ but often sits in the shadow of visual identity. The verbal identity is the language that your brand uses; it's about defining how your brand’s personality speaks to the world and to your customers.

8. Mission – Unsurprisingly, the biggest brands in the world have the boldest missions. Learn how to communicate your purpose by crafting your compelling brand mission.

Brand strategy is a subject with a lot of depth. As a branding design-focused practice, we balance our creative work with strategic thinking, yet this is also a profession in its own right. Our post, How to Create a Brand Strategy, will help you formulate your brand strategy.

2. Design Your Visual Identity

During the second phase of the branding process, we turn strategy and words into creative and visuals. Visual identity design starts with digesting the brand strategy and moodboarding visual metaphors and graphic language. We then ideate, craft and iterate.

Designing a visual identity first tackles the most central asset of the brand, its logo. We then build out the logo into the visual identity system. We make choices of typography, colour palette, grids, visual assets, illustration style, and photographic treatments. Our post, How to Design Your Brand Identity, goes into greater detail.

3. Strengthen & Grow

The final phase of our core brand-building approach formalises the visual identity with brand guidelines, launch and grow our brand by giving your audience consistent value and meaning. Learn more in our post Strengthen & Grow Your Brand.