What is Branding?

Karen Post defines brand as “a mental imprint that is earned and belongs to a product, service, organization, individual, and/or event. It’s a story embedded in the mind of the market. It’s the sum of all tangible and intangible characteristics of that entity. A brand is what an audience thinks and feels when it hears a name or sees a sign, a product, [service] and/or a place of activity. It’s what customers expect when they select an offering over a competing one.”

Miletsky and Smith define brand as “the sum total of all user experiences with a particular product or service, building both reputation and future expectations of benefit.”

How does branding function in the field of design?Designers help companies to build the foundation of a brand through the development of a business or product’s identity. The identity allows the customer to make a connection between the company and the products it offers.

Identity includes: logos, symbols, taglines, advertising campaigns, package design, promotional materials (t-shirts, pencils, stickers), information-based brochures, websites, phone apps, service design (how users are treated during the customer service experience), material quality control (the quality, safety, self-life, sustainability and durability of materials), etc.

Target Market The group of consumers who are most likely to buy from you. To establish a target market you must determine your customer’s age, gender, location, socio-economic background and ethnicity.

Ebony Magazine Play-doh Snuggie

IdentityA visual aspect such as a logo that forms part of the overall brand, identifying one product from another. Successful logos are: Scalable, stampable, significant, memorable and unique.

Logo: History

Numerous inventions and techniques have contributed to the contemporary logo, including (left to right): watermarks, coins (c.600 BCE), coats of arms, silver hallmarks, cylinder seals (c.2300 BCE) and the development of printing press.

The current era of logo design began in the 1950s. A paradigmatic contemporary logo is the Chase Bank logo, designed in 1960 by Chermayeff & Geismar, considered pioneers of Modernist graphic design in the United States. The Chase symbol was “the first truly abstract logo” of the contemporary era.

As would happen with many subsequent corporate logos, mass media advertising was used to link the logo with the bank in the public mind, while its simple, distinctive form, free of specific cultural or other connotations, was well suited to represent a complex, multinational corporation.

BrandingThe perceived ethical and emotional corporate image as a whole that is shaped by the perception of the audience. These magazines brand themselves within the field of journalism as purveyers of different narratives, exploring different aspects (sometimes of a single story, and using different methodologies:

Logos

Logo: A mark or symbol created for an individual, product, service, or company that translates the impression of the company it is representing.


Logotype: Any alphabetical configuration that is designed to identify by name an individual, product, service, publication or company.

Logo + Logotype:

Often logos and logotypes are used interchangeably because they so frequently appear together, however they are different, and they frequently function in tandem but they also perform different functions. It is true that sometimes they actually are inseparable and in these cases the type or text is completely integral to the overall design:

Logotype (text only) Symbol (image only)

TaglineThe key phrase that identifies a business by capturing the essence of its mission, brand and promise to the customer.

Applications:

A logo and a logotype can be paired or not depending on the context of the communication:

Semiotics and significance:

The logo or symbol is a non-verbal sign but it can also sometimes reference the company’s name in some way, look at the logo for the French supermarket chain Carrefour below, and notice the embedded C in the logo:

Logos often use negative space to create a second layer of meaning in the symbol, and a third layer can be added through color. The Carrefour logo gives us two positive shapes with the larger blue shape pointing ahead like an arrow, the negative space gives is the letter C, and the colors correspond to the colors of the French flag: red white and blue.

Successful logos are semiotically rich, that is they are multi-layered, and one form may have be able to communicate two or more meanings:

In this logo the book signifies both word and, through it’s shape, it also becomes a refuge or a shelter. It is this ability to have the same form do more than one thing that distinguishes many successful logos for the simple reason that they communicate very efficiently and, through their clever manipulation of signification, they become memorable.

Sometimes a logo evolves over time and often this evolution or refinement aims for simplicity. The two Citi logos below demonstrate this idea as the umbrella form gives way to a simple curve that is suggestive of an umbrella but is not restricted to umbrella in it’s interpretation:

Sometimes a logo or logotype is intentionally not clever, but it aims to capture a feeling. In the case of Nestle, a food company, the metaphor of the mother bird feeding her young is heartwarming, but it also captures Nestle’s product line which includes baby formula, cocoa etc.

Less well established brands often try to compete on cleverness, but a well-established brand often deviates very little from its core communication strategy. In the timeline below you can see the relatively slow evolution of Coca-Cola, the logotype was established by the 1940s and the colors by the 1950s:

Coca-Cola uses its status as a heritage brand in its advertising by mining its archives of historical advertising:

Branding is the representation of the character of a corporate entity to a specified audience of potential users. Successful brands invite the user into a relationship with the product or service by indicating what the user can expect from the relationship. A brand should not mislead the user but accurately reflect and communicate the corporate entity’s identity to the user. Questions to consider when developing your brand include:

1. What does the corporate entity do? What are its core offerings?

2. What are its core values?

3. Who are it’s customers (users)? What do they do? What are their core values?

4. What design languages are appropriate in communicating 1 and 2 to the user 3 in a way that will accurately reflect activities and values.

5. What design languages develop (and create new) customers and users.