Branding: A Deeper Dive

When most people think about the word “branding”, they think of logos, color palettes, typography, etc. Naturally, the visual elements of a company’s brand come to mind, but why did they make those design decisions and what inspired the themes and visuals they chose? Hopefully those decisions were thought through more carefully than just looking to see what was trendy at the time.   

Creating an effective and attractive branding strategy will require you to answer certain philosophical questions BEFORE making those design decisions. A company’s branding strategy and guidelines should be inspired by and reflective of its identity, story, targets, vision, and strategic messaging. There should be a clear understanding of who you are, what you value, what you do, who you do it for, where you are going, and how you communicate those things.

If your branding has already been established, but you find it to be outdated, ineffective, or unappealing, perhaps it is time to take a step back, gather key voices from your team, and go through an exercise of evaluation to determine if and how you should evolve your brand in order to take your company to the next level. 

Companies also go through lots of change through years of existence. Teams change, strategies change, markets change, technology changes, and sometimes companies have to evolve to stay relevant and meet new demands and desires of their customers. 

Before diving into evaluating the visual appeal and effectiveness of your logos, color palettes, typography, and other style choices, you first need to have some conversations on the following topics:

These conversations are the filter that you should use to evaluate your current branding and guide the decisions you make regarding the development or evolution of your branding strategies as you move forward.

After answering these questions, the answers should also become the filter for many of the other decisions you make as a company, not only for branding, but in almost everything you do. In each Area Of Practice (AOP) or Department within your company, take these topics and craft a strategy to make sure everything you do top to bottom is aligned with the company’s identity, story, target, vision, and messaging. 

Whether you go through these sets of questions in one long meeting, or if you break these up into five different conversations (recommended), take the time to answer each question and get a variety of valuable voices, personalities, and experts from different fields involved to make sure you receive feedback from every viewpoint.