Chuah Kwai Pin / 0348376
Advanced Interactive Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 1: Breaking Brand
INSTRUCTIONS
LECTURES
Lecture 1: Introduction
Brand Corporate Identity focuses on the visual integrity of a
brand.
This module introduces students to the basics of identity design and
the effective use of symbols in the area of visual communication.
"A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is
understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship."
This module aims to introduce to us students about the basics of
identify design. It will be covering the breaking down of an established
brand, and the mastery of the processes involved in brand
creation.
Lecture 2: Brand
When it comes to the word 'brand', there seems to be a lot of confusion
in describing it. While many brand and marketing experts and senior
designers have a basic understanding of what a brand means, most
designers may find themselves confused.
What is a Brand?
|
| Fig. 1.1 Livestock Branding |
The term itself derives from the Old Norse word brandr or "to burn",
and refers to the practice of branding livestock, which dates back to
more than 4000 years to the Indus Valley. Over the centuries, branding
evolved from farmers claiming their property, to artisans claiming
credit for their work, to factories claiming their products, to
companies claiming their products were better than others.
What we brand, how we brand it and why we brand it has changed.
Branding in the twenty-first century is still about taking ownership,
and not just for property and products. It is about owning what your
company values and represents, owning up to your shortcomings, and
earning customer trust and loyalty through your words, your actions and
your stories.
What is a Brand Identity?
When people talk about brand identity, it is commonly referred to the
"gut instinct" where the image or messaging is associated with the
product, service, organisation or person. While the gut feeling is one
aspect of the brand's identity, the other is its 'visual identity'.
Visual Identity is what helps to manage the message or image or gut
feeling. Brand identity is the collection of all elements that a company
creates to portray the right image to its customer.
What is Branding?
"Branding is the process of giving a meaning to specific organisation,
company, products or services by actively creating and shaping a bran in
consumers' minds. It is a strategy designes by organisations to help
people to quickly identify and experience their brand, and give them a
reason to choose their products over the competition's"
Branding can be achieved through:
- Brand definition: purpose, values, promise
- Brand positioning statement: what your brand does, who is your target, etc.
- Brand identity: name, tone of voice, visual identity design (logo design, colour palette, typography)
- Advertising and communications: TV, radio, magazines, outdoor ads, website, mobile apps
- Product design
- Sponsoring and partnerships
- In-store experience
- Workspace experience and management style
- Customer service
- Pricing strategy
Benefits of branding:
- Helps to standout in a saturated market
- Gives you credibility
- With a clear brand, you can charge what you are worth
- Leads to customer loyalty
- Leads to returning customers & referrals
- Consistency
- Helps to attract your ideal clients
- Save money and time
- Give you confidence in your business
- Easier to introduce new products / services
- Gives you a clear strategy for moving forward
What is a designer's role in branding?
Designers are part of a larger network of individuals collaborating
to give voice and form to the brand. There can be no brand without the
skill-sets a designer brings to the table. The visual identity that a
designer creates constitutes the face of the brand.
A designer's role is to give form to the content, strategy and
messaging. For the designer, this means researching about the history
of client and product, and understanding the target market and more as
well as the development of a trademark.
To achieve consistency in a message, a 'design programme' is
necessary to ensure that a visual identity is developed and is
coherent and cohesive in its application across products and services
of the organisation or person.
Lecture 3: Types of Marks
Term: Logo
The term 'logo' is short for logotype. It was used because it sounded
cool, but most of the time what people really mean is trademark,
whether the term is a logo, symbol, monogram, emblem, or other graphic
device.
What is commonly understood is that a logo is a symbol made up
of text and images that identifies a business / service/ product/
person.
|
| Fig. 1.2 Logotype- Coca Cola |
A logotype, also known as wordmark, is a logo centred
around a company name or initials.
|
|
|
A logomark is a logo centred around a symbolic image or icon.
A signature is when a word and a symbol is combines, it is also known
by its other term "combination mark".
|
|
Fig. 1.4 Combination mark- Pepsi |
Term: Monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more
letters or other graphemes to form on symbol. They are often made by
combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as
recognizable 'symbols' or 'logos'.
|
|
Fig. 1.5 Examples of monogram |
Term: Heraldry
Heraldry is a broad term, encompassing the design, display, and study
of armorial bearings (known as armoury), together with the study of
ceremony, rank, and pedigree. From this comes related terms like
Crest, Coat of Arms, Insignia, etc.
|
| Fig. 1.6 Liverpool Football Club's crest |
A crest is a distinctive device representing a family or
corporate body, borne above the shield of a coat or arms or separately
reproduced, for example on writing paper.
|
|
|
|
| Fig. 1.8 Royal Malaysian Police Insignia |
A insignia is a distinguishing badge or 'emblem' of military rank, office, or membership of an organisation: a khaki uniform with colonel's insignia on the collar.
Term: Mark
The word 'mark' alone means an impression made on a something, paper,
wall, wood, etc. However, when combined with other words such as
trademark, watermark, earmarks, farm marks, ceramic marks,
stonemasons' mark, hallmarks, printers' mark and furniture marks, it
signifies ownership or identification. They represent the quality,
ability and skill levels of its creator and with that comes a promise
of excellence.
Today, the term that we are most familiar with both in law and in
branding is the term 'trademark'. It is a symbol, word, or words
legally registered or established by use as representing a company or
product. The function of a trademark is identification.
|
| Fig. 1.9 Registered Trademark, Trademark and Service mark |
A trademark is also used as legal protection against intellectual property infringement or theft. A service mark is a trademark used to identify a service rather than a product. Both 'unregistered' marks (trademarks ™ and servicemarks ℠) are temporary until the recognisable sign, design or expression which identifies products or services of a particular source becomes a registered trademark ®.
TASKS
Week 1
During our first class, we were tasked to get into a group of 3 and do
a research about a company. All 3 of us were pretty passionate about
doing Disney as it was a big part of our childhood, so we went forward
with it to conduct our research.
|
| Fig 2.1 Part Delegation |
After looking through the research parts that we had to do, we began to split it up amongst the three of us. We tried to group the relevant sub-topics together as it would be easier to find the information while researching. For the information that I had found on the Internet, I would paraphrase them and leave the reference link below my part so that it is easier to refer back when needed.
|
| Fig 2.2 Disney slides |
FINAL OUTCOMES
Fig. 3.1 Task 1: Breaking Brand Disney- Google Docs PDF
Fig. 3.2 Task 1: Breaking Brand Disney - Slides PDF
FEEDBACK
Week 2
Our lecturer mentioned that we have to research as a group but the
slides are to be done individually. We have also asked to clarify about
the section under 3.2 target market which should include specific target
audience and elaborate more about how Disney relates to them.
Week 4
- Room for improvement in the breaking down of research into bitesize information. - Paraphrasing is also encouraged instead of quoting straight from research to reflect critical thinking ability.
- Room for improvement for brand communication strategy by showing more examples on how the character and animation was designed.
REFLECTION
Experience
While I was looking through the MIB, I was intimidated by the length
of what we had to research. It was a relief when I later found out that we
were required to work in groups of 3. I was glad that the three of us
were able to delegate our parts quickly and get onto researching about
our brand as quick as possible. I think we really managed our time
well with the research. However, I might have underestimated the
individual slides because it took me longer than I expected. While
compiling all of our gathered resources in the slides, I was also learning a lot as I read through and digest all of the information that the three of us have researched.
Observations
I realised how important it is to include images and graphs to help with visual understanding. It gives a better in-depth feel of the research we have done and it is easier to visualise when a reference image is present. Not only that, I also find that having research from as many secondary resources as possible helps to gather more reliable information. Despite the fact that the reference list was really long at the end, I think it shows that we have done a great amount of research for the task.
Findings
It was an eye opener to learn about the marketing strategies that Disney has, their unique selling points and how they differentiate from their competitors. I also learned something new about the history of Disney and adding all of the Disney characters made me feel like I was travelling down my childhood memories. Before I did the research, I was not very sure about the differences between Brand's Voice, Brand's Positioning Statement and Brand's Communication Strategy. At first, the three of them sounded the same to me in the sense that it is a way the brand presents itself to consumers, but later on it got clearer to me that
Brand's Voice- A distinct personality of your brand that you want to portray to your consumers
Brand's Positioning Statement- Defines what the company does, who it is for and what makes them different from competitors
Brand's Communication Strategy- A plan that companies come up with to identify the best and most effective way to share their brand's core message.
FURTHER READING
To help me understand a little more about brand positioning, I went to search for some articles and journal online. While scrolling, I found a website called "The Branding Journal" and the title to the article was "A Simple Definition of Brand Positioning"
 | |
|
The article has also provided simple steps on how to find a powerful brand positioning.
Step 1: Analyse
- What do your consumers want?
- What are your company's brand capabilities?
- How are each of your competitors positioning their brand?
Step 2: Choose a positioning statement that
- Will resonate with your consumers
- Can be delivered by your company (capabilities)
- That is different from your competitors
Step 3: Reflect this brand positioning onto everything
- Brand personality
- Packaging design
- Product
- Service
- Visual identity design, etc
References:
Marion. (2022, March 9th). A Simple Definition of Brand Positioning. The Branding
Comments
Post a Comment