Successful Branding Guide
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Successful Branding Guide

Can I do it? Yes you can!

Dan Petrenko's portrait
Dan Petrenko
Head of Customer Success
Successful Branding Guide

Before we actually start, let’s settle on this: your branding must be more than just a logo, colors and other sparkly things. It must be a story, something that will speak to your customers, and can very much answer, even scream. Scream of what you actually do, that is.

What Is Branding?

It’s quite simple really. Branding is like a toolset for promoting your brand. It includes your logos, colors, fonts and so on and so forth. It is something that communicates to your customers without actually saying anything.

What Is Identity?

Identity is a part of branding. To put it shortly, branding is an experience, when your customer gets in contact with your brand, he experiences your brand. It’s your idea, your concept, your problem-solving tools. Identity is the face of your brand, the visuals. That’s it.

The Process of Branding

Starting a new company? Going on a venture of your lifetime? Then it’s a good moment to think about how your brand will look. Clients often come to us with the idea, and it’s our passion (and job) to make that idea come true. But it’s not only the new companies that come for branding. Sometimes, your old everything needs reviving. We are consumerists in our souls, and we have the internal need to consume. Experience is something that we live for. We don’t just come to buy, we come to buy and experience. And if one of those needs is not satisfied, you guessed it, we won’t come back. That’s why it’s important to build your products in a way they will make people come back, and it’s important to do that from the very start.

How We Do It

Here at Movadex, we always work closely together. We have a dedicated team of managers, designers, illustrators, copywriters… But that’s not it. All of us are multi-talented, and we can actually do many things for our customers, because we believe that you should not be afraid to try and do more than your job title tells you to. I will lead you through the process of making a brandbook for Plan B — a vending machine app.

Stage 1. Research

Research Research always comes first. First, you need to clarify your vision, something that you can offer to a potential user. Plan B’s sounds like this: Plan B is an app for office workers. The idea is that there are special NFC-enabled fridges that anybody with a Plan B app can use. You order what you want to eat at work in advance, say, late in the evening you decide that tomorrow you want to have a fruit salad at work. You sign in and just order it! Specify the exact time you will be having your lunch, and Plan B courier will have delivered it by the time you even think of having a break. On this stage, it would be useful to learn something from your competitors (successful ones). Analyze them, what makes their brand recognizable and just good, and maybe you will implement those things later. So, the main steps are:

  1. Define vision 2. Define what you can offer to your customers 3. Research your competitors The most important and useful thing to do is make personas. Basically, you make up fake people with a problem that needs solving. You think of their pain points and how to solve them.

Stage 2. Brand model

Brand Model On this stage, you have to decide what the key factor of your brand will be. For example, Plan B’s key factor is the idea of always having a second plan. Don’t have anything to eat? There’s Plan B. In a nutshell, find something that will make people remember.

Stage 3. Design

Design Finally. It is time. You’ve thought everything through and over, made a research, defined everything that had to be defined. Now, you may start your design. On this stage, you should decide on and design such elements: Logo

Palette

Typography

Illustrations

Branding

Stage 4. Identity guidelines

Identity guidelines What defines you as a person? A certain set of characteristics unique to you. Now think of these characteristics, but imagine your brand instead of you. That is what identity is — it what makes it stand out among others, like logos, palette, typography, graphics, and this list can go on and on. Now, it’s very important to mention that our brains really like consistency, and can figure out even the smallest differences in design, even if you can’t really put your finger on what is wrong, you’ll still feel that something’s off. That is why having guidelines is important — you don’t want to ruin the consistency. We provide our clients with a brand book that contains all the necessary assets, and information on how to use them if necessary. Thank you for going through this journey with us! With love, Movadex team