Brand image design and execution
It’s been an arguing question among business owners “What is brand image?” Within a world full of choices, it’s getting harder to build an eye-catching brand image to attract consumers.
General recognition to brand elements are mostly visual - Name, Slogan, Sign and Symbol. But it is actually more than these. Brand image plays a communication role to deliver the value, to manage people’s expectation and to differentiate it from competitors.
Brand image is just like a person’s image. It represents personality, appearance and inner value of a brand.
01
How to develop brand image?
Before you visualize a brand image, give a deep thought to “ Who am I?” After you know the vision, value, personality and positioning, it is time to develop brand image and tell them who you are!
There are three key factors to structure a brand:
- Typography
Typography is crucial to brands. Some brands use redesigned typography to create unique impact to its users. For instance, do you know the brand behind “This is 4 the players?” It is PS4! Easy. Why? Because the linear and thin writing of Playstation 4 has already build its recognition in the market. Appropriate typography is just like a spokesperson of a brand.
- Color Palette
Color can affect people’s emotional connection to a brand. Fedex used to apply colors palette like purple and green, purple and red, or purple and grey on its logo. Each palette represents different department; however, it didn’t make sense to consumers. Fedex realized that it needed to simplify its color palette and took the highly recognized purple and orange combination as its major color palette.
- Shape and Patterns
Pattern is usually overlooked by brand owners, but it is a very effective tool to reinforce the brand image. Nowadays when we see the colorful stripes, Paul Smith comes to our mind. The stripes on men’s suites hints his style as a designer - British flavor, humor, and a bit of rebellion. By applying brand patterns, the work speaks for itself.
02
Illustration
Following up the three factors, we can now develop various application to make the brand image even more coherent in different aspects.
As a young and energetic platform, Airbnb (once rebranded) uses illustration bring about a warm flavor to connect its global users. The hand-painted logo is called “Belo,” a created image conveying People, Places, Love and Airbnb. And it is so easy to draw that Airbnb even encourages users to paint their own Belo, just like the way they share their own stories.
By using colorful illustration, Airbnb expresses the brand image of “ freedom, community, experience and share.” It not only allows people to create but also takes the creativity back to its ads, graphic design, brand videos… etc. Those fun Belo images shows the personality of the hosts, the travelers and Airbnb itself.
03
Packaging
If you go to supermarket quite often you should be familiar with the iconic bottle of ABSOLUT VODKA. The transparent and neat packaging stands out on the selves and shows the features of Vodka - plain, pure, perfect.
Though a globally recognized wine brand, the brand image of ABSOLUT VODKA is not as serious and as its fellows; on the contrary, it is fun and creative. Using the concept ABSOLUT and the bottle, its packaging is vigorous and artful. The brand even held annual competition ABSOLUT ART AWARD inviting designers to create the labels.
During marriage equality campaign, the brand used slogan “In An ABSOLUT World, There Are No Labels” and a plain bottle as the main image. By wisely applying its packaging into campaigns, consumers are more aware of the brand.
04
Photography
Speaking of luxury perfumes, most of them are product line of high fashion brand. However as a specialized perfume brand, JO MALONE creates its segment with its scents and its unique brand image.
While the competitors are struggling finding their own visual style by collaborating with celebrities, JO MALONE masters it. By simply transferring its core advantage - natural materials into visual images, it delivers the value of simpleness.
In the posters and images, the perfume bootle are surrounded by the key natural materials. We can even “smell” the scents before knowing the product names! It is the power of photography, which is extremely important in the social media era.
05
Brand Video
Swiss bag brand FREITAG is known for recycled truck tarps and car seat belts. They cut and sewed colorful truck tarpaulins randomly to make bags. The color contrast, green concept, durability and creative design give FREITAG a rough and cool image. Due to its sources, you can not find the same FREITAG bag anywhere else. Its uniqueness urges the fans to collect some special designs.
Besides its materials and patterns, FREITAG is functionally smart. And it presents how the bag works in interesting frame-by-frame videos which are filmed on FREITAG’s factory. Rough and fun!
FREITAG - F253 KOWALSKI (https://vimeo.com/222789828)
FREITAG -F90 DELGADO (https://vimeo.com/50634930)
Conclusion
It might be easy to grab people’s attention, but it takes time and efforts to stay in their minds. You need a carefully crafted, long-term plan to introduce the brand to the market, to show them who you are and what you can do for them. There is no one rule, but the point to to find the core concept, stick to it, and be coherent throughout all the communication media.
