Why is branding important?

That’s everything from your phone manor to the speed, accuracy and clarity of your sales communications and quoting. It embodies everything in between a lead’s first outreach through to closing the sale. And then beyond that to your customer care, advocacy (encouraging referrals) and upselling.

Included within this continuous communications loop are your visual design elements: logo design, website design, email communications, social media, signwriting, embroidery, print collateral…

So if you value your fundamental engagement with the people you’re selling to, then you will value the branding design elements just as highly. They’re all vital elements that make up a cohesive whole.

In short, Branding is your company’s DNA.

Branding will tell your audience what to expect from your company. That all-important first impression can be the difference between attracting new business or… well… indifference.

In the graphic design industry, we refer to “tone of voice” (and this time I’m not talking about your phone manner!). This concerns the impression one gets from looking at a piece of graphic design work or web media. To use an obvious example, let’s compare a Lawyer to a Childcare centre. For each business, there is a generally expected look and feel – one tone of voice is highly professional, the other is much more playful.

Yet, a design’s tone of voice goes much deeper than that. There are subtleties to a design that trigger more subconscious feelings. Things like:

• font selection;
• colour combination; and
• the size and spacing of various elements

…all contribute to a viewers sense of what to expect from a company. Getting the balance wrong can present your business in a negative light.

Crafting a brand

You’re offering a professional service or a great product, and you have that special something that sets you apart from your competitors. You’re proud of your quality and stand by your goods and services. This means your Branding is halfway there! Our role as graphic designers is to fashion a visual message from this nebulous swirl of virtues.

Just like your sales pitch, the visual message should be true to your business, clear, consistent and engaging.

If all of this is starting to sound a little too ethereal then let’s bring it back to the real world. Check out a few examples of our recent Branding work. These case studies offer an insight into how we craft Branding for a variety of businesses.