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Open up as many ways of communication as possible
Make your brand develop in line with your intention
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What does branding mean to us?The word branding originally comes from ancient times. In order to show property rights, red hot iron would be used to brand the body of slaves with a marking, and this practice was known as branding.
Nowadays, branding is usually seen as a method of presenting a product. This includes naming of products, logos, exclusive colours and words, as well as ways of communicating with an audience. No matter how diverse branding methods are, there is ultimately only one goal, which is to make people able to recognise our products in the blink of an eye. Thus the purpose of branding is to stamp our products deeply in the minds of people. The job of the designer is to form a complete world view of a product, and make people able to recognise our products using every kind of sensory perception, be that visual, auditory, touch or even smell. This is what branding design is. What is the value of branding?When we have unique and recognisable branding, we find that marketing and even business development all become much easier.
Through a clear branding narrative, customers can see the advantages and future development of our products, making appropriate purchases or investments on account of it. For instance, Netflix created a product which continually streams videos, but marketed itself as “Unlimited movies, TV shows, and more.” In the mind of the consumer, this built a picture and habit whereby if you want to spend some time relaxing, you can just go watch Netflix. Coupled with a “Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime.” consumption model, Netflix called out to the large number of users looking to satisfy their need for an easy way to watch videos, thus becoming the market leader for streaming video services. This is the extra value that good branding brings to a good product. What two things have we done in 2021?This year we focused on two things: creating new brands, and updating and perfecting existing brands.
What do we do when creating a new brand?This task is easy to understand, but there are many challenges in carry it to fruition.
When forming a new brand, the main task is to design a good visual identity, including a logo, colour scheme and typography. For a brand design to be successful, however, it requires much thinking and exploring behind the scenes. For instance, what is the personality of the brand? What values do you want to uphold? What is the brand’s vision for the future? This thinking should align closely with the beliefs of the branding manager. The job of the designer therefore is to use every kind of branding tool to investigate the product, to find a direction for the brand to successfully grow, and use visual and written communication to present the brand to people. What is the purpose of updating and perfecting a brand?Many brands in the early stages of establishing themselves, either because of a lack of resources or for some other reason, are not able to properly form a brand.
Subsequently, they become stuck in a “we’ve already used this brand for a while, but it could be better” type of situation, leading them to search for a branding designer to help them. In this instance, the role of the branding designer is to clarify what problems the brand currently has. Maybe it is that the image and values of the brand do not align, or maybe the branding is not clear and thus hard to remember. Brands can run into all kinds of problems, but the methods for solving these problems are all roughly the same. Find the core of the brand, and grow the brand from here. At this moment, we need to think carefully about the brand. What are the existing long term values of the brand? What do customers already like about the brand? What is the most important aim to achieve in the future? Using comprehensive conclusions from these questions as a starting point, the brand can begin to be built anew. The following are the details and thinking of three branding cases conducted this year, which can help everyone better understand how branding works. EMILY.RPA|Explaining precisely user scenarios using illustrationEMILY. RPA is a robotic process automation software which can be installed on personal computers, and can help you automatically carry out tasks according to your needs.
For those who have never interacted with RPA before, this product can be a little difficult to imagine. Therefore, in the early days of product promotion, we often encountered users who didn’t understand the product. “Is this a physical robot? What can she actually do? Does someone not need to watch her?” For brands like EMILY.RPA, initially the most important thing is not how striking the logo is, rather what will this robot actually do in everyday life. In order to help people better understand what kind of a robot EMILY is, I began to design the appearance of the robot. Although it is software, we still hoped that everyone could imagine a robot called EMILY living inside their computers, and that she can help assist in tasks. Thus its entire appearance was designed to look hard working yet optimistic, with dimensions similar to that of a computer.
At the same time, in addition to the robot itself, we also need to convey how people will feel when using it. How can we demonstrate the feeling of ease that people have after using this robot? The founder of EMILY who also loves coffee said, “let EMILY help you with your work, so that you can go relax and have a coffee.” So relaxing with a coffee thus became the image of easy work for us. Finally, we created this illustration of a robot working for you, dealing with your Excel PDF, email and other tasks like this. You just need to glance at it, so that while you are having a coffee, you can focus on the things that require more creative energy.
This illustration later came to be used more widely on websites and at exhibitions, becoming the brand’s first impression for many people. One visitor at the Meet Taipei 2021 left this feedback: ‘As soon as I saw your illustration, I knew what your product was. I didn’t need to read the text’. This is an example of a brand using illustration to communicate with its audience. By contextualising the image, you can make your audience understand your product effortlessly. RE:DREAMER| Intense visuality makes everyone rememberRE:DREAMER is a whole new brand which offers to assist in consolidating the validity of NFT transactions. This is a rapidly growing industry, and many new products are competing with each other in the market. Therefore, at this stage, being able to lead the conversation and first impressions are both very important. Thus, we adopted a “rebellious leader” branding strategy, using eye-catching and difficult to ignore designs, in order to leave an impression of the brand etched in the mind of the user.
Therefore, the logo of the brand uses intense contrasting colours, a bold rectangle with cut oblique edges, as well as a heavy typeface, deepening the brand’s presence and ambition.
The brand also uses a yellow and purple graded mix for the elements of the picture, to outline the flow and exchange of the image. In the early days of promotion of the brand, all of the customer touchpoints included this design. The reason for this was to deeply plant the brand’s visuals in everybody’s minds. One time, the team shared a story with me about an investor who they had been speaking to for half a day. The investor didn’t seem to have any particular interest, until the moment they exchanged business cards, when his eyes suddenly lit up and he said: “I remember this! I have used your product before.” This is exactly the advantage of maintaining consistent visuals in a brand; when you least expect it, it will strengthen the impression of the brand in the minds of the audience.
On the new website, we also suggested「Redeem Your NFTs and Revolutionise eCommerce」as a way to strengthen the image of the brand as leading the audience from Web2.0 to Web3.0.
Currently, this brand is still being built, but it will be shared with everybody further in the future. BAY-YUEH|Sort out brand materials and make the brand identity betterBay-Yueh is a community brand. Many people have been customers since they were young, and are now bring their children or grandchildren when they go shopping there. Thus it was difficult to avoid the fact that the visuals of the brand was outdated, and difficult to apply to the world of modern media.
A good example was the logo and typeface, which did not look consistent, and the brand's colour scheme also did not match. After years of change and the work of many different designers, the style of the brand was entirely inconsistent.
Since the brand had already accumulated familiarity within the local area, the brand manager stressed that this was a modernisation rather than promoting youth. At this point, the job of the branding designer was to sort the materials, and plan what visuals were most suitable to use for modern media. Therefore, contracting down the visuals became the most important thing. We initially tidied up the logo and straightened out the original random and slightly childish lines, so that it had the feel of a logo, and simplified the image.
Next was a more difficult task, which was to combine into one two logos which had been used for years. The challenge here was that because both logos already had some presence, to lose either was a negative. Therefore, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff in the visuals of the brand, we kept the triangular picture, because many of the company’s products were connected with hiking, and we thought that the shape of the character for the mountain was the most important image of this brand. We also made the typeface and font style standard.
We matched the Chinese lettering style with the English typeface, solving the original problem of there being no English logo. At this point, the updating of the brand’s visuals was almost there.
How can we use the power of the brand?Deliver a consistent brand impression to the audience through all the touchpoints, and gradually build up the familiarity and intimacy of the brand to them. In further, the audience would become a supporter of the brand, and then stand together with the brand.
An influential brand can send your products to farther places, get more awareness, and win more business opportunities. In addition, these benefits are growing with compound interest. Let's build a brand together! |
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