DESIGN YOUR
BRAND WITH ME

Designing a brand with me means designing a brand that withstands the test of time—if you’d like to learn more about my process, please follow along below or get in contact with me.

CREATING A BRAND IDENTITY FOR YOUR BUSINESS

As a graphic designer and creative director who has helped launch brands from scratch, I do not advise creating a logo on day one. Instead, I advise using strategic branding. Strategic branding is successful branding—working through a brand strategy is key.

For this case study, we will briefly go over the initial branding steps, with our focus emphasizing on brand identity.

BRAND NAME
name here

YEAR
01/01/000

BUSINESS TYPE
enter here

LOCATION
city | state

EMAIL
email here

PHONE NUMBER
01/01/000

ADDRESS
if applicable

BUDGET
$XXXX.XXX

BRAND STRATEGY
EXPLAINED

A brand strategy is a roadmap, guiding the journey of a business. It's a powerful tool crafted to define what a brand stands for, its values, and how it distinguishes itself from competitors.

In simpler terms, a brand strategy is the heart and soul of a brand, outlining the overall plan for how it wants to be perceived in the market. It helps in shaping all aspects of a brand's identity, from its logo and color palette to its messaging and customer experience.

STRATEGY
QUESTIONS

Take some time to think about the following questions pertaining to your brand strategy.

  • Think about the foundation of the brand and what sparked it? Explain the backstory of it all.

  • It’s important to understand where this brand is going to live and who it is going to target, because in the future, this could be a community of loyal customers.

  • There needs to be a significant reason why a customer would adopt this brand versus a competitor.

  • The brand needs to be influenced into the proper areas of business so consumers can associate the brand with the market it lives in.

  • Brands need personalities to communicate with audiences to show a human side; that’s how a brand gains trust and loyalty. The more a consumer can feel something familiarly human, the more likely they are to trust the brand.

  • This isn’t only about what platforms the brand uses to reach audiences but also the messages the brand sends. Stay consistent with tones; the messaging needs to remain consistent with the brands ethos and mission and vision as well. Work in storytelling with the brand’s personality to truly create a sound brand strategy.

  • This is the fun part—the visual elements of branding. This is where the graphic designer is brought in and brought up to speed on all of the previous aspects of the brand strategy. The designer can then create the logo, submarks, brand colors, and other visual elements. From there, the designer creates a set of brand guidelines to distinguish the brand in consumers’ minds.

BRAND IDENTITY

As I said before, we are going to focus on this area—brand identity is the face of the company, this is a crucial step of the brand strategy.

WHAT IS BRAND
IDENTITY?

  • The main visual representation of a brand. The primary logo should identify your brand. This logo is the cornerstone of your brand identity.

  • A variation of a company's primary logo that is designed to be used in specific situations where the primary logo might not fit or be legible. It typically retains key elements of the primary logo for brand recognition but is simplified or rearranged to better suit different applications.

  • A submark is a small yet powerful graphic element that represents your brand in a concise and memorable way. Often derived from your main logo, a submark is a simplified version that retains key design elements such as colors, fonts, or symbols.

This step refers to creating the logo(s), submark(s), choosing swatch colors, setting typefaces, creating the brand guidelines, other digital assets, and more. At this point, you should be working with a graphic designer.

WHAT WILL A GRAPHIC
DESIGNER DO?

Their job is to work through a design process with you, focusing on your brand strategy’s information.

It’s important you give all design information up front (colors, ideas, design concepts, drawings, pictures, fonts, moodboards, etc.) so you don’t waste your time or money, and so you don’t end up with a product you don’t like.

WHAT IS A DESIGN
PROCESS

The design process is where the graphic designer collects information and begins doing research—this information is strategized for what fits the brand best. From there, concepts and illustrations are created and presented to the client. Once a concept is selected, critiqued, and edited, the finalized visual elements are produced and delivered.

WORKING WITH A GRAPHIC DESIGNER

After selecting a graphic designer you like, the first thing you should share with them is your brand strategy. This allows the designer to see from a bird’s-eye view. As they say “a good hunter always climbs the highest dune before his hunt.”

After receiving your brand strategy, you should receive a Design Questionnaire or something along those lines.

VISUAL DESIGN QUESTIONNAIRE

This is nothing more than a handful of questions that help the designer dial-in your logo design, so they can make your idea a reality.

Take a look at the example questionnaire, and think about what your responses might be.

WHAT DOES YOUR BRAND NEED?

Creating the visual elements in branding can be expensive, with low-end packages beginning at $2,500 and high-end topping out well above $50K. It’s important to understand what your business needs. For the most part, all brands need a primary and secondary logo—depending on the industry, the additional visual elements can change per brand.

Think about the scope of your business—how much visibility do you plan on having, and which forms of media do you plan on branding with?

For instance, a law firm would need the general visual elements along with letterheads, envelopes, document holders, pens, email signature blocks, and so on. The designer must craft a set of visual elements to fulfill all of these shapes and sizes.

Moving into the case study, let’s look at a real example as I work through the design process with a past customer.

CASE STUDY

Now we’re going to review my design process through a brand package I created for a past customer.

Remember, this is focusing on the design process—the client is working through their brand strategy and has reached the brand identity section.

EMAIL
jonsmith@js.com

PHONE NUMBER
999-999-9999

ADDRESS
if applicable

BUDGET
$1500.00

BRAND NAME
Reclaimed Roots

YEAR
06/01/2022

BUSINESS TYPE
Therapist

LOCATION
Grand Rapids | state

COLLECTING INFORMATION

A client has reached out to me in pursuit of a design package. They have their brand strategy; they know their brand name, and they’ve done a great deal of research. I extend them the Design Questionnaire, and we agree on a time to meet to review their answers.

Visual Design Questionnaire: Reclaimed Roots responses

RESEARCH THE
INDUSTRY

Now I have all the needed information—I begin researching their industry. I want to know more about the therapy industry. What kind of logos do other therapy businesses have? Which are the most successful? Then I’ll read reviews on some of the best competitors to see what people like/dislike. This will give me a lot of insight into the audience this brand will speak to and how to harness more of their attention. As this brand will live on social media and a few paper documents, I need to ensure I have layouts that comply with both of these forms of media.

Moodboard: I created this moodboard based off the information I was given. It’s simple, it’s messy, and it keeps my mind in the right direction. I have an idea of what the competition looks like, how to make my client’s logo standout, and some ideas for concepts and shapes. Behind the scenes, I have done thorough research of testimonials from competitors along with reviews from google.

STRATEGIC
DESIGNING

Strategic branding is successful branding—I’m taking all of that information and using it to create sketches and concepts, paying close attention to their brand strategy and visual design questionnaire. 

Sketches: this is a look at a section of sketches from this case study. I ended up pushing the bottom “R”, second from the left. The chosen concept was converted into vector art with Adobe Illustrator and then presented to the client. In this case, the client was thoroughly happy with the design and wanted to push to final products.

Vector Art: after I finished completing the primary logo, I moved onto adding the wordmark. The client wanted a circular emblem design so I created layouts to match their needs, along with selecting a typeface that complimented the brand.

FINALIZE & PRODUCE

We have worked together to dial in the desired designs through critiques and edits. We now have a final product. This is when the files are delivered, and depending on which products you have chosen, the brand guidelines and all extra designs are sent over.

Final Artwork Review: let’s think about the deliverables—the client wanted an emblem/pictorial logo with text and graphic. They wanted something that connected their brand with nature.

I delivered a uniquely identifiable logo that encompassed all of their requests, yet also strayed away from their industry norm. If you recall back to the moodboard, most of the industry’s logos were rectangular and flat with no familiarity to life.

The client was thrilled with the final result and as a designer, there’s no better feeling than creating something for your customer that they love.

DOES YOUR IDEA NEED BRANDING?

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