Design for Operations

Your brand identity is the most powerful tool in building credibility. If it’s going to drive brand awareness, it needs to be distinctive. We’ll work with you to develop, position and manage your image

We believe helping brands better identify and connect with their ideal audience begins with a human connection. A big part of what we do, even before we begin, is getting to know brands and the humans steering the ship. That’s what makes us different. We don’t think you can really understand a brand via e-mail and slack. We prefer an actual conversation, preferably over coffee and sweet bread.

Through a workshop-based process we work with the client to define the Brand’s DNA. At the heart of Brand DNA is the brand promise or core idea. The brand promise is what drives a brand – an internal statement that captures the brand’s central organising thought. A brand promise should be sustainable over an extended period of time.

Further definition is provided through a set of distinctive brand attributes. Too often brand values are merely ‘corporate speak’ – values that one could rightly expect to find in any successful, sustainable business eg. innovation, integrity, teamwork etc. Clearly there is nothing unique or distinctive about these values – they are baseline values. Brand attributes can be both tangible or intangible and may reflect the personal or organisational aspects of the brand.

We explore and collect all the information about your project, your target audience and their motivation. We clearly formulate the objectives of the project and the technical requirements for the final result – such that it is convenient for you to use it. After which we search for insights and trends that could be used to address your needs. To develop a better concept, we draw up a complete picture of the brand’s competitive environment and adjust the direction of our implementation to the task of being better than the current number one.

With the conclusions of the research, we build concepts that represent the essence of the brand, and define visual territories that will be the base for the design. We develop different visual system proposals, until we achieve the one that represents your brand the best. To generate an image among target demos, the logo, or rather text/image branding, has to be embedded in an appropriate design context: from business cards, letterheads and invoicing templates, compliment cards and brochures to labels and packaging as well as all spatial solutions, e.g. in the form of a pathfinding system. A dynamic image, self-consistent and properly applied, can visually anchor communications with the observer and develop it further.

As stated above, authenticity in branding is vital. In other words: Behaviour = Brand = Reputation. “Living” the brand is the responsibility of every employee and the brand should inform and influence all aspects of an organisation including: Recruitment, Learning & Development, Remuneration, Policies & Procedures, Operations, Marketing, Product Development, Finance, Investor Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility. For this reason deep branding is often used as a company management tool.

A successful brand is not only well known, but also understood. While organizational awareness is certainly important, it is unlikely to translate into a meaningful relationship with the target audience if it is not accompanied by an understanding of an organization’s ultimate purpose or function. We work with our clients to gauge not just how many people can identify an organization by name, but what associations exist with their brand. We work to create a passionate connection between the consumer and the organization or product itself. Through our various research approaches we help our clients understand not just the awareness of their brand but how to move people from being consumers to becoming brand loyalists.

We believe branding is an ever-evolving process and requires maintenance and continued support. So, we build relationships with our clients to support them as they grow and their needs change.