The Process
Image Development
Image Development
Image development is not just about a logo, fonts, or colors. It’s a strategic approach to setting your visual and psychological brand awareness campaign into action. It is your understanding that your company’s image relies on a wide range of topics and efforts aimed at creating long-term brand loyal customers. Your logo, choice in repetitive fonts and colors, and stylistic approach to building your brand are starting points in developing your product or service into a household name.
Define your industry and relevance. Place yourself in the mindset of a potential customer. Do you provide something of value? And why choose yours over your competitors?
Business Name and Logo Creation
Your logo is what people will recognize as your brand identity; it is a symbol. This makes its construction very important. Your company name and logo should match or directly complement each other. There are many styles of proven Brand Name strategies that can assist you in building your company identity. Here are a few examples to consider when developing your name and logo.
Using initials for your brand. This is simply taking a multiple name structure and only using the initials. We live in a digital world of “Shorthand” which makes this method very appealing. An example of this is in our name, SCG Branding Solutions. SCG stands for the origins of our organization back when we operated out of Las Vegas and our name was Sin City Graphix. The second portion of our name, Branding Solutions is an example of our next Brand Name example.
Using a company descriptive approach. This method essentially displays what you do. “Branding Solutions” is as straightforward as it gets. We deal in creating solutions for branding.
The hometown approach. This is using your geographic location in your name. Sin City Graphix is an example that combines a location, Las Vegas, and a descriptive approach, Graphix. This is a great method when you are marketing specifically to your region of coverage and helps with brand recognition because local customers are far more likely to remember where they are geographically speaking with the added feature of what you provide for them.
Funny or rhythmic approach. This is where you can get a little edgy, if it fits with your organization’s personality. For example, “Lick-em & Stick-em Door Signs” is rhythmic and a little humorous which runs a high probability of being remembered by a future customer when they want to customize a door.
Colors and Fonts
As basic and simple as it may seem, the fonts and colors you use will set the branded tone of your organizations overall image. Surprisingly, there has been exhaustive research conducted on the psychological perception of color and font and the conclusion is they are both massively important to your branded image. While deciding on fonts and colors, keep the concept of "clean and streamlined" in the forefront of your mind. Try to visualize every aspect of your upcoming exposure planning and how fonts and colors will compliment your message to your audience.
Consistency is key with colors and fonts as they relate to your brand. Brand recognition relies on this. If you decide on two to three colors and a specific font, make sure you stick with them for all of your promotional material, website design, social media posts etc. This will be a reoccurring theme as we continue through the process.
Here are some popular fonts to get you thinking:
Here is a Pantone Color Chart to get you thinking about color combinations:
Brand Identity
A corporate identity or corporate image is the manner in which a corporation, firm or business enterprise presents itself to the public (e.g. customers, investors, employees). The corporate identity is visualized via branding and trademarks, but can also include product design, advertising, public relations, etc. Your Brand Identity is essentially your organization’s reputation. Building a reputation of quality, trust in product, and a relentless devotion to consumer is what will set you apart from your competitors. Your Brand Identity allows the world, and more importantly your customers and clients, a greater understanding of your organization's:
Features: The product or service you provide in great detail. Featuring every element of what you provide removes any objections a potential customer may have. Transparency of product or service allows your audience to make well informed decisions while they compare buying decisions.
Benefits: Your organization's Features are directly aligned with consumer understanding of their benefits. It's the old "what's in it for me" mentality (WIFM). The Benefits of using your product or service must have a perceived value for your end user to truly understand how your organization can fulfill their wants, needs, or desires.
Character: Character is where we stand out from the pack. What do you and your organization value most? Are you showing your customers you are in it for the money, or you truly want to fulfill a need better or more efficiently than your competitors. The general public are professional consumers and will see through all of the fluff to the heart of your intentions.
Quality Focus: Your organization's Character will directly dictate your Quality Focus. If you value customer satisfaction above all it will show in your focus on providing a top-quality product of service. The level of quality you produce is seen every day through reviews and return customers. Begin with a quality first mentality and you will gain customer loyalty, positive feedback, and return business.
Devotion to End User: Your Devotion to End User is your organizations Features, Benefits, Character, and Quality Focus wrapped up and delivered to your audience in a methodically branded package. This is essentially your mission statement, your ethos, the standard of excellence you present to the world.
Build your Image with end-user Brand Awareness and Brand Recognition at the forefront of your mind. Thinking like a consumer while you develop your image will save you a lot of time and money down the road.
So, let’s start with the first step in the Branding Process, building your Image Development Profile. Think of this as your organizations image business plan. It makes your baseline image legitimate through documentation. You have already built your logo, decided on font(s), and zeroed in on a color scheme for your branded image. Now, we simply fill in the blanks and establish your online presence.
Constructing your Image Development Profile should be fun, after all, you are bringing your vision to life. Your Image Development Profile gives you a snapshot view of not just a logo and some colors, but the overall vision and structure of your business. The second page of your Image Development Profile gives you a visual perspective of your social media branding and the images you will use for profiles and headers. Placing them all in one place helps show you if your branded look is consistent in maintaining your vision.
Now that you have completed your Image Development Profile, it’s time to work on your Product/Service Development Sheet. Click Here to get started.