What Is a Brand?
It’s not logos or colors; it’s actually a feeling you get when you think of a company. The more you showcase the product or services you provide, just your name alone can invoke certain emotions in clients and customers. Everything from how you market, what you say / how you say it, or even the people and company culture, play an underlying role in a brand, and is what differentiates you from others. Given the value, quality, and personality you provide, a brand can rise or fall based on the collective opinions of their customers.
Using Design To Bolster Your Brand
If a “brand” is the result in people’s heads, what are you doing as a business to paint that picture? Take advantage of design–it can drive the results and impressions people have about your business. Specifically, for startups, first impressions are everything. In fact, research suggests that it only takes a tenth of a second to form a first impression, and in that time, trustworthiness is the primary attribute associated with just one quick glance of a complete stranger. If you think of a product as the “face” of the brand, what does this tell people about the entirety of a business? For example, we associate Apple with iPhones: clean, sleak, and easy to use. And now, our expectations have become so high that customers are often disappointed if the newest Apple product doesn’t live up to the hype.
People always say, “Dress for success.” With design, we can single handedly change the entire direction of a brand. During my time at Sol Republic, I learned to understand that it wasn’t just about designing the product; we design for the entire customer journey. It is understanding how marketing, point of purchase, the product, and product experience all play in the same sandbox: brand.
Design Is Branding
As previously mentioned, your brand goes further than just the logo. We are a small, yet mighty team of designers, who specialize in physical design, and understand how nuances like form language and CMF aid with brand identity. We love to hold branding identity workshops before actually designing the product because it helps our clients (and the team) mutually understand the objective of what a customer should have in their heads when they think of your business. It makes the difference between a customer looking up the company’s name on google versus the product. Which would you rather be?
In order to bring delight, engagement, empowerment, and satisfaction to your brand, make sure to hire the right product development team that understands the entire ecosystem of a business: it goes beyond functionality, features, and logos. Anyone can design and input a feature, but not everyone can design a brand holistically and consider the nuances of the ecosystem the business lives in. Ultimately, it is what creates a tribe of customers that will be the foundation to keep your startup afloat.
The Hatchery 