At Bluetext we do a lot of branding and website design. It is a service area where we have achieved a lot of success for clients across many industries, effectively helping them leverage their brand and visual identity to more easily achieve their business goals through their digital platform.
For many of our clients branding and website go hand in hand. We either create a new logo and visual identity from scratch, or evolve a brand identity to update a design system that needs some love, and then design and launch a sophisticated website to bring the brand to life.
You never really know where this process will go until you immerse yourself in the client’s business, getting to know their leadership, sales teams, customers, partners, and other stakeholders that can add valuable perspective.
Over the last several months across a few major client initiatives some unique perspectives emerged that made me step back to think about some tenets of branding that continue to arise as best practices we preach.
1. Bigger is not always better. There is this false perception that the best way to represent the strength and boldness of a brand is to make the logo as big as possible on a website. This is simply not true. Rarely is the fix to a brand question to make the logo bigger. There is a trend toward simpler, smaller branding whereby companies let their logo breath. Beyond the fact that we are moving to a world with smaller screens and a reliance on mobile devices where icons need to stand on their own, bigger logos make it look like you are trying too hard and in fact make your business look smaller.
2. Stand Alone. If possible, a brand mark/icon should stand on its own. I was meeting with the CEO of a major corporate client recently as we were working through a very fast moving branding process. He looked at the simplicity of the Bluetext “BT” icon and said that he really wanted us to replicate that for his brand. While flattering, it is not always that easy. Corporate names can be clunky, but necessary. The Nike swoosh was not globally recognized when it was launched in 1971. So the best advice I can give here is to create a strategic plan for how long it may take for you to feel comfortable enough with brand recognition around your mark whereby people would recognize it without your company name attached to it. Creating an “iconic” brand does not happen overnight, but with careful planning and a commitment to success it is possible.
3. Be Simple. We are all visual storytellers, so if your brand mark can tell a simple story that is the ultimate success. The old adage a picture is worth 1,000 words is truer than ever. Look at how people consume content. Create a brand that simply explains who you are or what you do, or at a minimum provides a platform to easily explain your corporate story.
To learn more about the importance of a strong brand, read our latest blog post:
