1
Research
Questions
20 questions won’t be nearly enough. But don’t worry, I treat this as a conversation to deeply understand what problem we’re solving, who we’re solving it for, and why you love what you do. It happens in two inquisitive phases over almost 40 q’s: Background & Branding.
What problem are you solving?
Who are you solving for?
What are your businesses?
What are your current business objectives?
Who are the competing orgs?
Background
By which expressions do you intend to be recognized?
Are there expressions you don’t want to be recognized/known for?
Who is our audience?
What is your current brand perception?
How do you want to be known?
Branding
Audit & Trends
To kick things off after we have a full consensus, I’ll deeply research trends on a generational scale, then keep digging into macro and micro trends, so the last 5 years up til about the most recent 20 inclusive.
Whatever is happening surrounding and concerning your business, we’ll suss it out. And with that research comes strategic implications and opportunities.
Then, I’ll investigate, archive, and present competitors both direct and indirect across visual identity systems, stories and naming etc.
Design Target
To truly have the most strategic advantage and brand architecture, you need to know your design target.
Your Design Target, if creating a new brand, is a research-driven understanding of brand positioning down to a tagline. If you are rebranding, it is the same albeit driven to a conclusion different than the one you think is true. Either way, you need to know what problem you are solving and who for.
Consumption Audience
Aspirational Audience
Design Target
Influencers
2
Strategy
Architecture
This process boils down to your brand on a page, a one-pager covering everything from positioning, promise, a rally cry and a killer tagline.
Story
How do you really define the story of a brand? Why do you need to?
Is it narrative alone? is it something more intangible, like thematics, plot, the characters and more?
Or is it perhaps the summation of all these things…and it is my favorite part of branding.
Pictured here are 500 Names…
just the beginning.
The story, the naming, all of the magic of words boiled down to a few words if need be, but ultimately the culmination of countless hours of work all dedicated to your story.
Futures
There are multiple orders of futures thinking in terms of the wheel:
Preferred Future
Direct Impacts
Indirect Impacts
Nebulous Future
4th Effect
There are also ways to think about possible and preferred futures in terms of the futures cones.
Whatever is best for your brand is the futures thinking that will be performed. And whatever we execute will be strategically sourced and thought out so that we are aligned in what can happen to your business, what we want to happen, and then, most importantly, what we need to do to make it happen. Go futures thinking!
3
Craft
Design Language
This spans your logo, graphics, imagery, layouts and more. Language is the sum of communicative elements, and as far as branding is concerned, that returns to the beginning of this process - everything by which you intend your brand to be recognized.
Design language is complicated, but we simplify it by iterative processes that culminate in brand guidelines - more on that soon!
Applications
One of the most fun parts of branding, this is where you put the pedal to the metal and really start creating, which is to say you stick to you brand drivers and architecture to create strategically sound executions of brand touchpoints.
Brand Guidelines
Everything you need in one deck, or website, or what have you. How to use you writing, your design language, and more in a one stop shop. For more details, please request the full brand strategy playbook.