What does your visual brand communicate?
John Maeda, former president of RISD and author of “The Laws of Simplicity” once said, “While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.”
In other words, art is about asking questions and design is about communicating ideas.
This holds true for your visual brand, as well. You don’t develop a brand because you want to make something beautiful. You build it to communicate a message.
What is your visual brand communicating?
I recently worked with a mother-daughter team whose business (Next Trip Travel) books unique travel experiences for people who want to do more than simply vacation someplace fun; they want to reconnect with themselves and with the world around them.
As we developed the brand message, the words “light,” “joy,” “community,” and “connect” kept coming up. “Reconnect” became part of the mission statement because it’s the reason they do what they do. Reconnecting people with their mental and emotional well-being as well as reconnecting them with the world is their driver, the thing that gets them out of bed in the morning.
When I began collecting imagery around this idea of “reconnect” in order to create some preliminary marketing, I knew the image would have to carry the emotion of the message. I kept the marketing text short and to the point. When I showed the “ads” to my client I didn’t have to explain anything because the brand message spoke loud and clear.
Show your “why”
A couple of years ago I redesigned a service sheet for a bookkeeper. The original version had several design problems but the most noticeable one was the feature image of a calculator and a spreadsheet. I don’t think there’s any mystery to the fact that bookkeepers use spreadsheets and calculators. That’s showing your “what” or “how” which, to most anyone outside the business, is boring.
What was going to allow this service sheet to connect emotionally with its intended audience was showing the “why.” It needed to show an outcome; a happy client looking directly at you and saying with their smile, “I was in deep shit before my bookkeeper worked her magic and took an enormous burden off my shoulders.”
It starts with the message
The key to a great visual brand is the brand message. And a great brand message starts with developing a mission, a vision, values, and determining who your audience is (spoiler alert: it’s not everyone). Developing your brand message isn’t going to happen in a single afternoon but it’s worth the time and financial investment.
If you don’t have a compelling message to communicate that will distinguish you from the competition then you might as well start looking around for images of calculators and spreadsheets.