VISUAL BRANDING

Strategic approach workshop

School of Design and Built Environment, Faculty of Arts and Design

Basics of brand imaging
Few important lessons from brand management
What isn't brand
FIRST: A brand is not a logo.

IBM – monogram

Nike - symbol
What isn't brand
SECOND: A brand is not an identity.
What isn't brand
FINALLY: A brand is not a product.
So what exactly is a brand?
So what exactly is a brand?
A brand is a person’s GUT feeling about
a product, service, or organisation.
So what exactly is a brand?
Each person creates his or her own version of it.
While we can t control this process, we can influence it by communicating the
qualities that make this product different than its competing products.
When enough people individuals arrive at the same gut feelings, a company can be
said to have a brand.
In other words…
IT S NOT WHAT YOU SAY IT IS.
IT S WHAT THEY SAY IT IS.
Why is branding important?
Why is branding important?
People have too many choices and too
little time.

How do one decide which one to buy

Why is branding important?
Modern society is information-rich and
time-poor.
People base their buying decisions more
on symbolic cues than features, benefits,
and price.
Why is branding important?
They are more interested in how product
look like, where is it sold, what kind of
people buy it, which tribe will they join if
they buy it, and finally
Who makes it. Because if they can trust
the maker, they can buy it now and
worry about it later.
Trust
Trust comes from meeting and beating
customer expectations
Trust = Reliability + Delight
Does a brand have a dollar value?
Does a brand have a dollar value?
The main purpose of branding is to get more people to buy more stuff for more
years at a higher price.

Bang
Success =
Buck
Bottom line
There are no dull products, only dull brand.
Five disciplines of brand
building.
Five disciplines of branding.
1.Differentiate
2.Collaborate
3.Innovate
4.Validate
5.Cultivate
Differentiate
Our brains filter out irrelevant information, letting in only what's different and useful.

Differentiation has evolved from a focus on "what it is", to "what it does", to "how
you'll feel"' to "who you are".
Collaborate
Over time, specialists beat generalists. The winner is the brand that best fits a given
space
The law of the jungle? Survival of the FITTINGEST.
Innovate
It's design, not marketing strategy, that ignites passion in people. And the magic
behind better design and better business is innovation.
Bottom line: If it's not innovative, its not magic.
Validate
Feedback, i.e. audience research, participation, can inspire and validate innovation.
Use focus groups to FOCUS the research, not BE the research. Focus groups are
particularly susceptible to the Hawthorne effect, which happens when people know
they're being tested.
Quantitative research is antithetical to inspiration. For epiphanies that lead to
breakthroughs, use qualitative research.
Cultivate
A business is not an entity but a living organism. Ditto a brand. Alignment not
consistency, is the basis of the living brand.
A living brand is a never-ending play, and every person in the company and
consumers are actors. People see the play when ever they experience the brand, and
then they tell others.
Brand and design
Looking good must be good: Halo effect
People that were viewed as physically attractive
were assumed to possess more socially attractive
traits than those that were viewed as unattractive.
(Dion, Bercheid, and Walster, 1972)
Halo effect
The most obvious or salient characteristic is perceived first and tends to bias
perceptions and inferences that come after.
Furthermore, social psychology research reveals that initial perceptions persevere
even after presentation of contrary evidence (Gilbert, Krull, & Malone, 1990)
Halo effect: Works both ways
iPod halo effect: The increase in the
sales and perceived prestige of Apple
products based on the massive
popularity of Apple's iPod digital music
player.
Apple has commissioned research to try and
determine if the much-discussed 'halo effect' -- the
notion that people who buy its wildly successful
iPod music player are more likely to subsequently
purchase a Mac -- actually exists. –
www.itwire.com.au
Brand and design
Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel
Kahneman discovered that people
remember only two things during an
experience, how they feel at the peak
(either best or worst point in the process)
and how they feel at the end.
Brand and design
Satisfy the most important needs of your customers and highlight your brand values
at the positive peaks, this "branded" experience deposited in each customer's
effective memory drives positive behaviours.
On the other hand, when the most important needs of customers and your brand
values are reflected in the negative peaks, this "un-branded" experience deposited in
each customer's effective memory drives negative behaviours.
First step
Value proposition
Define
Age of disruption by design

Define who you are what you bring to the table:

§Is the approach you are taking worth pursuing?
§Do you see or project yourself trying to fix current shortcomings in current situation?
§Is your proposal disrupting current popular establishments?
Value proposition
Define who you are what you bring to the table:
§Is the approach you are taking worth pursuing?
§Do you see or project yourself trying to fix current shortcomings in current situation?
§Is your proposal disrupting current popular establishments?

Value proposition is a clear statement of:

§Who you are targeting
§How you differ from current alternatives
§How your product is unique/new
§How your problem solving capabilities/approach contrast with current alternatives
Building your identity
Visual projection of your brand
Warm-up exercise
Title: Me Myself and I

Process:
Select 2 words which best describes your character
Plug them in following sentence…
(My name is xyz and I love word1)
(My name is xyz and I hate word2)
Develop design concepts for each sentence based on following example
Example
Note: you should communicate the concept through manipulation of the letter in
your name.
Communicating with visuals
How we see
We don’t just see. We have to learn how to see and what to see.
We cannot focus our attention on everything around us, we select certain things to
look at.
What we decided to see is determined by what we know and what we believe and
what we want.
The more you know, the more you see
Seeing is thinking process. “What we see is partly what is there. It is also partly who
we are” - Berlo
Reading images
We read images more or less in three different ways:
Physiologically (optically): the best readers would have the most efficient and
extensive saccadic patterns
Ethnographically: the most literate readers would draw on the greatest
experience and knowledge of wide variety of cultural visual conventions
Psychologically: the readers who gained the most from the material would be
the ones who were best able to assimilate the various sets of meanings they
perceived and then integrate the experience.
Optical viewing

Saccade patterns: Note that the subject's analysis of the statue does not require foveation to every point of the
face; the subject is satisfied by only attending to the eye, nose, mouth, ear and outline areas. The subject only
foveates to those areas that are conspicuous, or those features which the subject is conditioned to consider a
priority. From only a small percentage of the visual field captured in high-acuity, the subject is able to
reconstruct a useful understanding of the object
Reading images
We read images more or less in three different ways:
Physiologically (optically): the best readers would have the most efficient and
extensive saccadic patterns
Ethnographically: the most literate readers would draw on the greatest
experience and knowledge of wide variety of cultural visual conventions
Psychologically: the readers who gained the most from the material would be
the ones who were best able to assimilate the various sets of meanings they
perceived and then integrate the experience.
"Such a complex world needs a good explanation."
Outdoor campaign for a newsdaily from Mexico
Visual language
Image as medium of communication:
Image is not a language but is like language.
It has no codified grammar, it has no vocabulary, it does not even have very
specific rules of usage. Yet it performs many of the same functions of
communications as language does.
Though it does not have grammar, it does have systems of “codes”. It does not
strictly speaking, have vocabulary, but it does have a system of signs.
Semiotics
Codes: Codes can be looked at as ways of making sense of signs, as systems of
conventions that we are taught or pick up from our culture.
Signs: A sign is a meaningful unit which is interpreted as “standing for” something
other than itself. Signs are found in the physical form of words, images, sounds,
acts or objects.
Signs have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when sign-users invest
them with meaning with reference to a recognised code.
A sign: a Stetson hat and a neckerchief - meaning: clothing.
As a code: we could interpret the hat and neckerchief as cowboy attire.
Semiotics
Signs have no intrinsic meaning and
become signs only when sign-users invest
them with meaning with reference to a
recognised code.

A sign: a Stetson hat and a neckerchief -

meaning: clothing.
As a code: we could interpret the hat and
neckerchief as cowboy attire.
Semiotics
Starting place for theories of semiotics are the two concepts signifier and
signified.

Signifier Tree
Signifier
Signified Signified
Signs
All signs, are partly iconic, indexical, and symbolic
The Icon: a sign in which the signifier represents the signified mainly by its
similarity to it, its likeness. A photograph of a tree resembles the tree, and so
it is an iconic sign.
The index: Which measures a quality not because it is identical to it but
because it has an inherent relationship to it. The smoke from a fire is
physically affected (caused) by the fire, so it is a sign of the fire
The symbol: a arbitrary sign in which the signifier has neither a direct nor an
indexical relationship to the signified, but rather resents it through
convention. The word dog denotes the concept dog because of a “law” (a
convention, an agreement); hence it is a symbolic sign
Signs
by resemblance – Iconic

by suggestion – Indexic

by convention - Symbolic

Realistic Abstract
Developing a symbol (Abstraction)
Degree of abstraction
Realistic
Photograph or realistic illustration
provides a high degree of fidelity to a
particular object, and is usually easy to
recognise.
Abstract
More schematic representations,
because they permit the selective
omission of detail, are better able to
represent a broader class of object
Let’s design your visual identity
Review your value proposition.
Conceptualise how you want to project it visually.
Create a representative visual identity.
1. Brand name
2. Visual style (colours, type, form etc.)
3. Logo