Anastasia Dunaeva
Muzli - Design Inspiration
8 min readSep 12, 2018

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Time For Brand Identity

When you need to think about your brand identity and to stop procrastinating your brand development.

In this article were collected the most frequent situations, when you need to think about the design strategy in building your business. Knowing and recognizing this or that situation will help you save thousands of dollars in the wrong building of a corporate brand. Here you can read about 5 most general situations you could struggle with and how to overcome them.

PHOTO BY JOSH OLINS FOR HOLIDAY MAGAZINE

You are a new player

You are just have started new business. Trying to put out new product or run a startup. Maybe you have a small work team only 5 people around you or you are a bigger one with more than 15 people working with you. Your main goal is to produce a great quality product.

BUT, after that you need to think about your visual presentation. How your brand is looking? What feelings it has? What people think about it when they firstly look at your social media profile?

Maybe you’ve already thought about this and have some ideas but don’t know how to start. Or maybe you didn’t even think about it! In all these cases, you lose your time. The time when you could already have new clients, get new sales and grow faster.

People first of all pay attention to the picture. They are looking at your website, logotype, your colors, photos you use. Then they go deeper into your accounts and get emotional association with your brand. If you did everything right — they associate your brand as themselves. In this case, they trust you, because your values are similar to their. They are ready to buy your product or service you are producing. The trust grows out of an emotional connection, which grows from what they are seeing.

So how can you build this trust? I can say it for sure — with your brand identity. Branding is not just a nice logo you can put on your Facebook page. Branding is more about core values of your company, consistency, tone of voice, creative direction, strategic plan and lot’s of more. This thing is so important if you want to build a huge audience and be the one trustworthy.

PHOTO BY GREGPRY HARRIS FOR ZARA

Stuck in one place

Next situation you need to think about your identity is when your business is stucking in one place. You have reached your first 1000 customers and already made sales but now you see that things don’t change. Your client base not growing and those extra sales are in the past. So you sit down with your team to brainstorm.

When did you turn the wrong way? You’ve got account manager, invest money in promotion, already paid for a logo and website, and for salary for a copywriter who making your everyday posts. Sales are stopping and now your profit decreases and you rather go to zero than make a hard work and earn money.

I tell you what the point is.

The main reason for that is that your brand looks not really good. And what I mean by that? These first sales may be cause not because you have rightly packaged your brand. Maybe it’s because your google advertisement works well these month and this is the only cause. Maybe people bought your product only because they didn’t know where to find another product or place where to buy it.

I hope this is not the thing that you want to be your business known for? I hope no. You want to be known as a best brand who gives quality product, the one who is really attractive for people, the one who brings them value and awesome customer experience.

If you want to be known for these qualities then you should treat your business as an amazing being and package it well! Right creative direction, choice of visual communication and social media look make the difference in this situation.

CARMEN DELL’OREFICE FOR MONTAUK SOFA AD

Too old for this game

Your business is and oldie one and well known in your niche. You may be in this game for 3, 5 or 10 years but something starts to go wrong some time ago. The people interest is getting low or stuck at the same page.

To grow successfully further you need to open a new breath for your business. If you want to be on the game for next years then you need to adapt to current market conditions and have a refresh.

For you it is the time to think about rebranding. It should not be absolutely different things, something 100% original from your branding, of course no. You need to understand what works really well in your current identity, what things people like the most in your brand look, what attracts them the most and what can remain in the past.

Maybe it is your strong typography works so good and make you known even from the 10 meters. Or maybe your corporate colors bring you the unique look like it works in Starbucks.

If you want to pay people’s attention at your brand, make them again talk about you. If you want to take a new niche, attract new clients and therefore grow your sales then rebranding is absolutely for you!

Make your brand more modern and fresh in your target audience eyes, make them talk about you through your new brand look. Communicate on different visual language and see how the results are grows fast!

BEAUTY STIL LIFE BY CARRIE LOUISE

Crowded niche

Let’s be realistic, all the time the mass market or whatever is super overcrowded. When you are starting doing something there are already many people on the planet doing something quite similar.

At this time, you’ve got several options to do. The first one is so simple, you could compete with them with quality. But you can do it and rely only on it only if you have a lot extra money for it. Because quality Is always depends on your investments in materials, people to work with and etc.

But what should you need to do if you are just started out. If you for example a young high fashion designer. How could you compete with titans of high fashion brands? Absolutely no way. You are to young for it, you haven’t got these useful connections and probably you haven’t a lot of money to invest in your growing business.

So what to do in this situation when you are in crowded niche with your own product? Make a BOOM effect. Sounds strange? I don’t think so. Remember the things, which become popular so fast. They are most of the time are super crazy and unique. They could not be as qualitative as their competitors, but they are sky rockin’ and this is the fact!

Think about how you could represent your brand to attract as much people as you can right now. And think what means could help you to achieve this goal? The answer is — your visual communication, your branding. Make a courage with your business identity, use outstanding color palette, play with imagination, and think about your advertising company as an art house thing!

You can play with your company presentation as wild and crazy as you can. And it will always be a good idea, because we are all tired of similar things. So be the one who doesn’t afraid to be you and attract new audience easily with something outstanding in your niche.

COS SUMMER/AUTUMN CAMPAIGN

Attract right clients

How people see your brand? Is it familiar with them? Are you elegant and feminine or cozy and warm? What objectives describe your business? You need to keep all it in your mind when we are talking about branding.
Your brand identity could tell your story without any words from your side. You need to be understandable for people, what is your mood, product, your target audience.

Sometime you could stuck in one place and don’t growing because of your visual communication. Let me explain it a bit more. Your brand look doesn’t attracts the right clients. What I mean by the right clients? The clients that you are looking for, their interests, their personal opinion, their life slogan.
For example: you’re a natural company which produces cosmetic line for women in premium segment. Your target audience are mid aged women with their own business, they are always on the go and want to look beauty no matter what happens, they treat organic food so well as their body and health.

So you want to connect with them and sell your gorgeus natural line to help solve their problems. But what are you doing? Your package doesn’t connects with them. Your advertising posts too. Your logo more associates with hipster fashion brand.

So the mistake is that you’ve got wrong positioning. You don’t understand the importance of creative direction. How to improve this situation? Not as difficual as you may think! All those things come to the right place with strategic plan for your visual communication.

No matter how your selling texts are good, how your website is amazingly responsible on web and smartphones.

If you didn’t think about your brand appearance, didn’t think about consistency and quality design you could lose thousands of dollars because of wrong positioning.

To attract right people you need to look in accordance to their interests. Right typography, colors, images, illustrations, right message going through your design. This is the key.

Don’t waste your time to do something similar like the other brands do! This is not the path to succeed. You’re unique and your business too. Don’t try to be like the others. Find your strong sides, what makes you different, why you are the best choice. Answer those questions and then connect it all to your design strategy.

The magic will starts here!

Thank you for reading!

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Also, lets keep in touch:
Follow me on instagram where i share a lot of my process and more stuff about graphic design :) and to look at my projects check my behance.

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Designer & Art Director at Studio Stacie Co. Founder of Taste Creative Education & Design Shop. Instagram: @stacie.co