How a full-pack brand design will pay you back

There is a proverb “Clothes make a man”, and we can continue it with “And the design makes a company”.

What is a brand design?

Your branding design is the face of your company. The term “brand design” includes every visual element your business uses in decorations and advertisements. Complete brand design is a way to create your business’ visual identity. All the elements — logo, colors, font, website, or app design — form the image of your business. An obvious example — how would you imagine Apple, as a company? Silver logo, white plain background, minimalistic graphic elements, and motion. Such design is manifested in everything that concerns the company — products, stores, website design, etc.

Why well-put-together brand design is important?

Every detail in branding is essential for creating the right perception of your brand and stable business growth. So, even a small company should make some efforts to create an adequate design for the entire brand to create a unique image and create a strong connection “image-brand” in people’s minds.

The brand design creates not only a unique and recognizable image of the company, but sends a message, telling what the company is, and what its values are. Taking the Apple example, as a consumer electronics and software manufacturing company, they declare simplicity, minimalistic elegance, and usability as their main design principles, the leading conception. The average person won’t realize this in such words we wrote, but on an unconscious level, the brand design of Apple will be associated with these concepts.

The human brain can catch and process images in a fraction of a second. In a quarter of a second, the brain will analyze it and give you a meaning of what you saw. So, your potential customer spends less than a second watching your logo, and here comes the question — will this person recognize your logo? Will your logo create that immediate connection with your audience? It all depends on your branding design, the harmony of color composition, and the distinguishability of visual elements.

How to create brand design right?

When you are dealing with brand design, one of the first problems you face is uniformity. Let me explain. At the start, you create a logo. This logo should be designed and encoded in a universal format. You need a high-quality picture or better — SVG vector graphics file to have the possibility to scale your logo anywhere — from your website to large billboards. Who knows, maybe one day you will need such type of advertisement.

You hired a designer and got the logo with your brand font and taglines. It is used on your site, on your social media pages, and maybe in some presentations. You think it’s enough, but then your business, hopefully, starts growing and developing. After a while, you may need brand decorations for your shop, possibly some animations for your video ads, some custom design for documents, and printed materials. Or even such a trivial thing as mugs for your office. You could buy default mugs, but, more likely, you want to represent your brand to everyone as much as possible. Your guests will drink coffee during business meetings and unwillingly will memorize your logo. All these little things will help you to promote your company. All the trivia will work as an advertising space.

So, what’s the issue here? One of the most common mistakes of newbie entrepreneurs is unnecessary saving on design. Of course, in the early stages, every penny counts. But, as it’s said, “miser pays twice” — you will pay the hired designer for your “starter pack” (logo, fonts). Soon then, you will be forced to search for another designer, spend time explaining the concept and pay the second time for all the additional graphics and layouts for all of the above.

As a result, you will have to spend your and the company’s resources again on what you have already partially done. Although, it was possible to do everything at once. If the entire design for all possible types of visual design was done initially by one designer, the integrity of the brand design concept is preserved. Two different designers are two different visions, two different perceptions. Another thing, of course, is if you really want to change the concept over time. But that is not our case.

Each entrepreneur has to have a vision of his/her business from a long-term perspective. At least for a couple of years. Maybe, a speech about 10 years’ perspective from a businessman with 2 weeks’ experience could look like fantasizing. But having a clear plan is always good. So, in that case, why not assume, that sometime in the future your business will need a large banner, flyers, or, possibly, pens with your brand design? And the best step you can make here is to order a full set of graphic materials from your designer from the very beginning.

Code Harbor’s experience

At Code Harbor, we have an experience in not only web development, but also in creating a brand design for a company from the scratch. Of course, except for our own brand design. :)

A big part of our experience regarding brand design is a case of a multifunctional manufacturing company — MOPS. Detailed info about all the services we provided for the MOPS, you can read on our site. This case was a real challenge for Code Harbor’s team. In a 4-month term, we created all the necessary web and digital infrastructure with all essential components. Simply put, we provided a full business restructuring.

Starting from setting up processes, highlighting positioning, developing services, and establishing sales, we digitalized the entire business. And one of the things that we did with enthusiasm and undisguised interest was we developing a brand design for the company from scratch. Created a unique and expressive logo and visual style for the company’s web resources, and selected corporate colors and fonts for all the graphic materials.

MOPS case was practical confirmation of the issue we wrote above — about the importance of centralized comprehensive development of the unified brand design. The company got a huge benefit of not bothering about design issues anymore. During the development of web services, any idea could be created without interruption. An idea for a new page for the website appeared? No problem, the design is ready. Need to create some brochure or magazine for the showroom? All the assets are ready to use, and the company could use them not only during development but also in everyday work and for future projects.

Such a reserve of premade graphic materials allows one not to waste time coming up with something new. And what’s more important, all the graphics look in the same style, which won’t look monotony. It looks harmonious, like a real corporate design.

Summary

As we said before, brand design is the face of your business. Let’s be honest, people tend to pick the more pretty-looking brand, either some inconspicuous one. Even though the second one can provide a better product or service. Every marketer in the world knows that and uses this feature of our perception. But there is nothing bad in trying to catch your customers’ attention with expressive visual design if you provide a truly high-quality product. It’s like an expensive suit –it’s better to order it in the atelier than to collect it piece by piece in different stores. And also, it’s better to meet a real rich man in such a suit, and not some poseur or swindler.

Speaking of good suits — the proverb we used in the beginning — “Clothes make a man” — has a double meaning. People judge things and other people based on their looks. But also, the deeper sense is that a classy look forces a person to behave accordingly. A professionally designed website, app, presentation, or store should provide relevant benefits. Otherwise, people will think that you spent all your money on design and didn’t bother leaving it for the rest. Let the professional create a full set design for your company from the very beginning and save yourself from worrying about how good your company will look.