Looking for a sign to start incorporating strategy into your design process? Here it is!
In this week’s newsletter, I’ll walk you through the exact brand strategy process I use when designing visual identities for my clients.
And while I’m not a full brand strategist (I actually find it a bit dull), I do incorporate strategy into my design process because allows me to tackle bigger problems and ensure my designs are more than just “pretty logos.”
This means I can charge a lot more for my design services.
So what does this process involve?
Let me show you, using a previous branding project for a coffee shop in Las Vegas.
This wasn’t just any coffee shop, though.
They employed adults with disabilities to provide them with a purposeful workplace where they feel valued and experience a sense of belonging.
1. Strategy Call
The first thing I do during my strategy process is jump on a call with the client to gather information about the business.
During this call, we uncover their story, target audience, competitors, and design preferences.
Here’s a glimpse of some questions I asked and notes I took during my call with Dig IT Coffee ⬇️
Using these insights, I then conduct analysis and research into both the business and their industry, focusing on three key areas:
Brand Foundations
Brand Positioning
& Creative Direction
2. Brand Foundations
These form the core of the business and influence everything the brand does. It is made up of four key areas:
Purpose: Why the business exists, what it stands for, and how it helps others
Mission: What the brand does and who it serves
Vision: The brand’s long-term objectives and aspirations
Values: The principles the brand upholds and lives by
Establishing clear foundations makes it easier to make informed design decisions that align with the brand.
With Dig it, during the strategy call, they mentioned their desire to build a supportive community of like-minded people. I identified this as the business’s purpose, as it aligns with the reason the business was created.
This insight went on to inform my design decisions.
I used their purpose as inspiration for creating their brand pattern- a busy, imperfect, and compact design resembling a group of people interacting in a lively, bustling place. This pattern complements the purpose of building a close-knit community really well.
3. Brand Positioning
This next stage involves market research, analysing competitors, and uncovering the business’s target audience, as well as identifying the brand’s voice and personality.
During the target audience stage, I focus on segmenting the business’s audience and creating personas.
These personas represent the types of people the brand is trying to attract, and by identifying these, it helps shape the brand’s voice, messaging, and personality.
Here’s a look at Dig IT’s ⬇️
For competitor analysis, I conduct industry research to understand what other brands are doing. This helps me identify trends and determine how the brand can differentiate itself.
When analysing Dig IT's competitors, I immediately noticed the overuse of brown and cup imagery in the industry's branding. As a result, I made sure to avoid these elements entirely when developing the creative direction.
When it comes to personality and voice, one of Dig It's strongest traits is its unconventionality, which I derived from their mission. To incorporate this message into their logo, I customised the 'G' to stand out from the rest of the logotype.
This customisation was driven by several intentions:
To showcase their playful and fun personality
To emphasise their unconventional approach and willingness to challenge norms
To promote their mission of creating an accepting community for those who feel out of place
To subtly reference their product by designing the bottom of the ‘G’ to resemble a coffee bean, without being gimmicky
4. Creative Direction
In this stage of my brand strategy process, I use all the research and information gathered from the previous stages to develop a strategic creative direction for the client’s visual identity.
This involves creating two mood boards to present my ideas and thought process to the client, allowing them to choose the one that best aligns with their vision.
Here’s what that looked like for Dig It:
Incorporating a strategy stage into my design process has made designing brands so much more enjoyable.
It gives me confidence that the client and I are aligned on the creative direction, so I know I won’t receive a flood of revisions. Plus, all this strategy work generates so many ideas—say goodbye to staring at a blank screen!
If you want to implement brand strategy in your client projects, I’ve created a brand strategy presentation template to help you get started. It offers actionable prompts to guide you through each stage—from identifying target audiences to analysing competitors and beyond. You can grab it here.
Remember, you don’t have to be a “brand strategist” to start incorporating strategy into your designs. Just begin by being more intentional with your decisions—it can have a huge impact on your work.
Chat next week,
Abi 😊
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