Brand Strategy Design
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”
– PAUL RAND
Whether you’re just starting out or are realigning your organization, strategically building your brand is a critical step to success. A brand strategy design helps you develop an signature visual identity system for your organization to help you create a strong framework for marketing and sales initiatives and stand out in the marketplace.
With the advent of our glorious modern technology, it has become so easy to start a business. Unfortunately, that also means there are more businesses than ever, and it has become harder to stand out amid a growing sea of competitors. Developing a brand strategy will deliberately and clearly define your brand, which will in turn: enable you to communicate your message consistently and easily across all mediums, help you become more recognizable to your audience, and provide the tools to distribute and align your brand internally across your team.
Most standard brand design strategy engagements include:
Brand tenet definition
Logo design or redesign
Signature color palette development
Signature typeface specification
Development of one or more key signature design elements, such as motifs, patterns, textures, photography, illustration, or iconography styles.
Advanced brand design strategies may include additional verbal and messaging strategy elements, such as audience personas, verbal style, voice and tone, messaging frameworks, sample words and phrases, elevator pitch development, and tagline development.
The Brand Strategy Design Process
01
Brand Discovery Homework
We’ll send your brand questionnaire to you to complete approximately 1 week prior to our kickoff meeting date. We request that you complete the questionnaire at least 2 business days prior to our kickoff meeting so we have time to review.
We’ll review your completed questionnaire and compile follow-up questions to discuss in our meeting.
02
Brand Kickoff Meeting
This meeting is approximately 60-90 minutes long
We'll discuss your discovery questionnaire responses and dig deeper into areas of interest. This is your main opportunity to relay your vision and any ideas you have to us before we get started developing your brand.
03
Creative Brief
After our meeting, we will review our meeting notes and distill them down into a Creative Brief Document that recaps the key brand insights and criteria from our kickoff meeting. We typically send this document within 2 business days from our kickoff meeting.
Upon receiving this document, please review it carefully to confirm we understood your vision and provide feedback or approval using the commenting functionality built into the document. This is a pivotal moment in the process for you to provide your feedback, as our work will be built on the principles outlined in this document. We request review and feedback or approval of this document within about 2 business days.
04
Design Concepting
This phase typically takes about 4 weeks, depending on the complexity of the brand.
Upon approval of the creative brief, we begin researching, collecting inspiration, and sketching ideas for the brand. Typically the clarification gained during our kickoff meeting clearly guides this process, but occasionally we may reach out and ask clarification questions or ask for your review of inspiration materials to confirm our vision is on track.
After completing our research and ideation, we begin developing your logo and brand elements. Once we feel we have fully explored our ideas, we refine them into a final recommendation that we believe will most accurately reflect your brand and compile it into a detailed Brand Strategy Guide.
We will present our recommendations to you via video in order to thoroughly explain the details and rationale behind the brand. We find this video presentation method enables us to communicate with you with the fluidity of a conversation, but removes any pressure to respond immediately. We will also attach a .pdf proof of the Brand Strategy Guide for your further review after watching the video. We request review and feedback within about 2-3 business days.
05
Refinement
Most of our brand strategy engagements do not include revision because iteration requests can span such a broad range. Instead, we prefer to handle iteration as a second phase that will be estimated separately. If you have feedback or concerns about the brand strategy concept once it is proofed, we can discuss those concerns and provide a quote to refine the brand strategy design concept according to your feedback. Due to our in-depth process, most of our clients do not end up requesting iteration.
If iteration is desired, it typically takes 1-2 weeks to complete, depending on the magnitude of the iterations that are needed. Upon presentation of the revised proof, we request review and feedback within 2-3 business days.
06
Finalization
Upon approval of your brand strategy, we collect all of your new brand elements and send them to you in a single .zip file.
Upon receipt of full payment, full ownership of the assets will be released to you.
Seeing is believing
View a selection of our past brand strategy projects to get an idea of what we might be able to do for you, or view our full portfolio.
“Strong Design is so easy to work with, organized, accountable, and of course, unbelievably talented. They created branding and a website for my business that perfectly reflects me and reinforces my brand at every touchpoint. I get compliments on it all the time, and several clients have even hired me specifically because of my website and collateral.”
SHAINA ROZEN, SIDETONE
Think we might be a good fit for you?
Let’s talk about how we can design your future.