Brand Design Complete Guide – Principles, Process, Case Studies and Inspiration

Last Updated on October 12, 2023 by DesignerPeople

Brand Design fattens more considerable and indefinite with every single passing day in our current, modern world. It’s not just logo design anymore; the concept extended to colours, fonts, tagline and other elements. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a marketing expert, or just a layman, brand design relates throughout every outlook of our lives.

If you look into any organization or product, they already maintain a brand. The part of understanding, interpreting and shaping these brands are, anyhow, a continuous process. These organizations invest in developing solid brands as they believe investing in a brand is an investment, not an expense.

 A unique or distinctively designed brand pursued by the engaging strategies certainly makes the company direct a particular position in the market. Indeed, a well-designed brand should represent the nature of a brand, its core values, and it can be a dominant tool in shaping customer attitudes towards your brand. The outline of a catchy logo, colour pattern, tagline, and many more give an enduring impression on the consumers.

So before getting into the broader terms of brand design, we can understand what does the term brand design means:

What is Brand design?

Brand Design is one of the prominent marketing strategies of creating the brand name design, logo design, and other design elements that make a brand create a unique brand identity design. A distinctive brand makes you stand out among the competitors in the market. 

It is one of the primary or foremost executions of the branding process. It plays a vital role in the organization’s branding strategy as it provides a significant margin in the competitive trade market. 

However, brand design is not only about creating an engaging logo, tagline, or other components in a more big way, but it also incorporates every utterance of the brand where the employees or other management deals with the consumers or external people and exceeds their perceptions towards the brand.

Also Read: Brand Extension Guide for Indian Brands

Elements of Brand Design

When you’re developing a consonant brand design, certain elements can’t be compromised. Below mentioned are some of such features which help in generating a good brand design for your business:

1. Logo:

A logo is one of the essential components of a company’s brand design. The symbol denotes a graphical wordmark or character that represents the entire meaning of a company. However, the pattern or trend of logo design keeps changing with time; in the present era, good organizations always approach a creative brand design agency in creating contemporary logos. A good agency always builds a brand that has high brand recall and recognition value.

However, if you create a wordmark for your company, make sure words should be perfectly designed and use a font that favours your brand. Indeed, it’s always good to make a revised option of your logo or wordmark both on a dark and light background.

2. Colour Palette:

Colour is an inherent part of our daily experiences that most brands presume for granted. According to studies, 85% of customers say that “colour” is their core reason for purchasing a particular product. Therefore, it plays a great decision in the success of a brand. 

Many of the major brands are consistently associated with particular shades as a part of their brand design. Just imagine the golden arches of McDonald’s or the golden colours that represent the GOLD of Tanishq. From such examples, we can perceive the importance of colour in a logo.

3. Shape:

The third most prominent element is the shape of the overall branding strategy. The shape can help build a direct emotional or psychological connection between your brand and customers. Therefore, it’s not just the shape present in your logo, but the packaging and even your other stationery. Triangle, Circle, oval, square or any abstract shapes of brand design make it unique and different from its competitors. 

As you develop your brand design, regulate which shape is the best for your brand’s persona. Thus, it’s essential to understand what each shape conveys about your brand and how you can efficiently integrate it into your design.

4. Tagline:

Taglines help in highlighting a brand to the public. The essential feature of a slogan is to make sure that it is memorable. A brand tagline design can help your company to stand out in the market. Indeed, if you create a significant tagline, you will perceive how much of a substantial impact a short phrase can make.

For example, the famous “DAAG ACHE HAI”, “THANDA MATLAB COCO-COLA”, “FEVICOL KA JORR HAI TUTEYGA NAHE” and JUST DO IT – NIKE brand conveys to their users that don’t hesitate on anything, just take action and do it from this tagline. 

5. Tone of voice and vocabulary:

A brand tone of voice is the best method for communicating with their targeted audience, including the formulation, expression, and emotional tone. Each brand has its own personality associated with its market segment, audience and core values. So, the tone of voice is an essential part of defining a creative brief.

For example, the famous coffee brand Starbucks; there, you can’t get a small coffee. But the exciting part is that you can get the smallest standard size if you want, but the name of that size is “tall.” 

The main reason for this is because Starbucks developed their own ideal branded vocabulary to differentiate their product differing from other competitor brands. (source) 

6. Fonts:

The font is a vital part of the design, but it is not well executed in most cases. You might create a magnificent design with better imagery and other graphic elements. Still, if your font is not appropriate for your products, you can’t get the attention of your consumers.

In simple words, font is the style and method of presentation of the text. When an organization is developing a brand design, a determined font should be used that has an appropriate reason. Font even enables you to generate a specific context and have a definite personality.

7. Imagery:

Brand imagery is a hybrid combination of images that atones the feel of your company. Your users need to get the feeling of supreme quality when they look at your visual imagery. Repeated exposure and uniformity will build trust over these imageries. As words limit understanding the exact concept, organizations use images instead of words to let the customer ensure that your organization is the best one for their requirements. 

It would be good to think of patterned backgrounds, packaging or banners – you do not have to need tactical imagery to convey a brand clearly; you can straightforwardly utilize conceptual imagery through your shape and colour choices.

8. Positioning:

One of the essential factors in brand designing is positioning, a niche that a brand fills up in. When you define your brand’s persona, you discover what it gives buyers and how it suits other brands in its space. Are your costs higher, same or lower than your competitors? What makes your offer more engaging than your competitors?

However, a brand’s positioning has a direct effect on its branding. For example, an economical brand that aims to convey that they are the most economical might choose bright, value communicating colours like orange and yellow and pursue a brand voice that’s straightforward and optimistic.

Now, after getting a whole idea about essential brand design elements, Our next point is the successful brand design process that a good brand design agency should follow.

Process of Brand Design

The different stages involved in developing a good brand design. For your easy understanding we illustrated the brand design process in below given infographic

Stage 1: Business goals and brand personality

It’s not a designer’s part to set the objectives or goals of an organization or define its personality as it is the foundation of the branding process. To acquire the expected results, the organization has to position its priorities and values so that the team working on the branding can see which methods to use. 

Moreover, before designers commence working on a visible part, it’s essential that they need to recognize the character that the company or product wants to showcase. Designing a brand without this clarity does not give life to the design. 

Stage 2: Market and User Research

When the goals are regulated, and the personality appears clear, then designers do their research work. It is an essential part of all types of designer’s jobs, whether it is a logo or any significant design work. The research aids to engross the domain of the future brand and understanding the peculiarities which may impact its success.

Initially, they go with market research. Designers collect in-depth information about the market and prospective customers. Containing the essential data helps create an efficient logo and build a brand identity that will compete.

Stage 3: Logo Design

Most people used to underestimate the role of a logo design; though it is only one of the design parts, it is essential in getting the customers’ attention. It is the fundamental symbol of brand identity, the most prominent mark of brand image and the base of an efficient marketing strategy empowering its connection with the target audience.

One of the significant aspects the research examines is investigating the logos of the competitors. It helps to keep away from unnecessary equivalence with the other logos in the sector and creates an original brand identity.

Stage 4: Visual Elements of Brand

Apart from logo design, the factors such as mascots, typography or abstract artistic elements are the essential visual elements of a brand. 

Organizations often look for different ways of customizing a brand, and designers used to have a solution. Mascots are the custom design elements generated to represent the brand symbolically. They can be created as an element of a logo or even act as an individual brand element. However, such components or characters always can establish a connection with consumers.

Designers often generate custom fonts, abstract art, doodle art etc., for companies to be ideal in such minor aspects.

Stage 5: Corporate Brand Style

Once the logo design is executed, the colour palette is chosen, and other major visual elements are prepared, it’s time to combine them into consonant corporate style. The different kinds of branding items that are majorly used for companies are:

1. Business Cards:

In this present era, it’s a must-have object in business communication to have a business card as it helps in representing a brand properly.

2. Correspondence:

Business communications are always done in a formal style. To manifest a brand as a genuine partner and service provider, designers have to work on the company’s correspondence presentation. The forms like letterheads and envelopes also require containing brand identity components showing their professional level.

3. Billboards and banners:

They are a central part of branding and marketing; thus, users often ask designers to implement outdoor adverts and banners ideas.

Stage 6: Brand Manual

Once all the design works are executed, the visual part is done. Thus, finally, the designers need to ensure that the user will utilize all the benefits properly. A brand manual is a document contributing necessary instructions about the various graphics methods created for the brand.

Thus, you can see that branding is a complex process. Each step should be well considered based on the needs of the target audience and business goals.

Selection of case studies showcasing successful brand design projects by DesignerPeople

Good food co. :

Good Food Co. is one of the leading businesses in the food and beverage industry, offering the finest culinary experiences to consumers at affordable rates. They aim to empower Indian farmers and the entire farming community through fair trade practices and promoting the local communities.

We started with creating a unique and impactful brand identity to ensure that they reach the right audience base. Starting from the brand logo design to the brand book, packaging design, marketing materials and website development. We ensured that their brand image and website look captivating enough to attract a streamlined flow of clients and revenue in the forthcoming years.

Diabexy:

Considering the increasing cases of diabetes in India, Diabexy offers innovative solutions to diabetic patients to live a healthy and energetic life. Listed in Shark Tank India, they offer healthy and diabetic versions of products that we need in our daily lives.

Keeping their audience segment in mind, we have redesigned their entire brand logo, brand manual, packaging design and brochure design. We made sure that it was readily accessible and readable to their audiences. Next, we also ensured that their brand packaging stands out in the retail market amidst other products. This will give them a competitive edge against other similar brands to attract more sales and profits over time.

Some Inspirational Brand Design Samples

Though a logo design alone is sufficient for smaller companies, a successful brand design will create a solid look throughout your business while constituting your brand values. In addition to a brand logo design, brand design can include marketing materials, websites, and even the business space. 

We’ve composed some outstanding samples for inspiration on-brand design that will show you a diversity of applications and figure out different branding strategies typically used today. 

Brand design is majorly about creating a brand identity that magnificently reflects your brand. A brand design can create components that shape your company’s branding design and constitute your brand’s personality. Branding is a composite process with abundant elements that need to be considered when generating the exact brand design. However, it doesn’t be obliged to be disconcerting. 

Use the below branding design inspirations to help traverse the creative process of designing your brand.

Conclusion

Thus, brand design is one of the most vital surfaces of the overall branding procedures. Its strategic components make your organization engrave a distinctive recognition in the market, having an emotional attachment with the target consumers. 

However, during the brand design process, it is essential to manoeuvre the time, focus, energy and creativity in the right direction to get the intended result complementing the specific needs of the particular project. 

If you plan to start a venture or already exist in the market but don’t have a uniform brand design, you can reach the DesignerPeople team. We are one of the top brand designing agencies in India with more than 18 years of experience. You can definitely connect us, and our team will approach you and help you develop an excellent brand design for your brand.

Author: Anush Malik

Being a strategist’s head and a long term visionary personality aims to achieve excellence in branding, packaging and digital marketing field. My 15 years of design experience and masters degree ais my strength which keeps me motivated and keep me going positively. I have participated in extensive branding design conquests in India, USA, Australia and New Zealand with winning zeal. My objective is to encourage start-ups and hence involves actively in the articles which will act as a productive intake of knowledge for them. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.