8 Best Steps To Translate Brand Strategy Into A Design

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Why do you think a business needs a clear brand strategy? Aside from giving a definite purpose, planning, and detail of the business, the strategy will help you build up a brand. In other words, you can work around the brand's visual design by taking notes from the planning. But how to do that? The answer is very complex, considering you need to turn ideas and words into visuals. 

When you're going to translate brand strategy into a design, you have some steps to work with. The idea is to turn the details into a visual communication project. It can most likely appear as images and graphics, which include packaging projects, identity, brand personality, and many more. If you already have the planning in mind, here are the next 8 things to do: 

1. Consider The Brand Promise 

One thing that will have a lot of effect on your visual design is the brand promise. What is it? So in brand strategy, you will need to pay attention to how to make your product stand for whatever it has. In other words, the idea of having a brand strategy will help you design the proper business plan, purpose, and product positioning. 

Again the idea is related to how the business puts the product in public. Who does the brand serve? Do you know what kind of product that the brand brings to the audience? And how important is the brand for people? As you know the promise, you will learn how to build the appropriate trademark and make design from it. 

It is also safe to say that you need to translate brand strategy into a design based on empathy. Empathy refers to the thorough study of the target audience (you will find it in the later point). With brand promise, product detail, and empathy, it will ease your way to build a product design. 

The underline is that it is difficult to stay true to the product's emotional impact. At some point, you might stray away from the initial promise or strategy just to portray the product. That is why the promise and standpoint will be the core of your brand strategy. It is a beacon that guides your way, which also turns into guidance that helps you build brand-appropriate products.   

Created by Marka Works | https://www.behance.net/gallery/74266443/Flavia-Botanicals-Branding

2. Pay Attention To Target Audience 

As said in the previous point, you need empathy. In many brand strategy designs, you will always pay attention to the target audience. That is why you need to use empathy for your design. Why so? The main reason goes to the fact that you want to reach the proper audience. Thus, you need to ensure everything is interesting for your target. 

That is where you have to work with empathy. Understanding the audience is also part of the product positioning consideration. Along with the market and goals, you have to ensure the strategy copes up and has a clear understanding of who you want to sell the product for. After that, you can translate brand strategy into design easily. 

How to do it? Make an underline that you need to make a plan that resonates with your target audiences. Consider using all the details to create a draft. So, you are not creating a product design based on personal or CEO approval. What you need is to create everything based on the target audience strategy. So, how did you make it? 

One of the information of this brand target is demographic and psychographic. Demographics refer to the audience's details, such as ages, gender, occupation, and others. Meanwhile, psychographics helps you define the perfect representation for your brand target. Thus, you can have a guideline to translate brand strategy into design. 

But, working with an audience or target is not an easy feat. As you want to model the product, you need to figure out all of the problems your target has to deal with. It is also important to have empathy, which guides you to learn what kind of emotions they go through. From those details, you will find the best solution to satiate and appeal to the target. 

One of the best examples is a project for physicians that is currently in demand. The target is people that tend to get stressed out due to their super busy life. So, the best strategy to reach the target is to create a cleaner, simplistic, and legible design. It will help them stay out of the busy and stressful marketing. 

Another idea for the design is to draw some insight into your brand. You can help the strategy target to learn quickly and get hooked with your brand through keywords. Be creative, and you will be able to work around visual representations for the product. All the matter is how to design and hook up the proper target. 

Created by Ariel Santos | https://www.behance.net/gallery/122893421/RNB

3. Working With Brand Personality

One of the most vital points in the brand positioning strategy is the market. If you got the target to make a resonation, you would also need product personality to project what you serve. Some professionals try to put the idea and consider the brand as a person. In other words, translate brand strategy into a design that has traits and characteristics. 

A product design project is not only about choosing color and font. You have to ensure that it has a personality that resonates with the target, the product, and the purpose itself. In this case, it is best to consider the brand strategy to choose whether you want to make a friendly, fun, or approachable characteristic. Or you can also create a design that shows professionalism. 

However, one of the challenges of creating a product model is how easily you can get distracted from the focus. It can later potentially make people confused with your brand personality. To avoid that kind of problem, you can work with an archetypal mix. It is a method that highlights the pattern of human behaviors. 

The method has been used to learn thousands of years of human behaviors, which help reach the best design product for books, movies, or branding. You can take an example of 10% creator as secondary archetypes, 30% caregiver, and 60% sage from the archetypal mix of Medihuanna. The design idea should take that note and make the best strategy for visual presentation. 

From that percentage, it is also easier to notice that each percentage tells about the target consideration or focus. So to get the best design, you can find more information about each of them. You can put some details such as the favorite color, desires, what they want to learn, what kind of likes or dislikes, and so on. 

After you get all of the details, it will be easier to make a more informed decision. Yes, you are now ready to translate brand strategy into design. With the proper color that appeals to them, the character, personality, tones, or position, it eventually elevates your draft. So, what kind of personality is it? Again, learn about your target and get the best character that fits them.  

Created by Maria Maldonado | https://www.behance.net/gallery/94178581/Summer-Camp

4. Reflect Your Tone Of Voices 

Since you are paying attention to personality and character, it is safe to say that you will learn how to reflect your brand tones. How can a visual design make a tone of voice? Don't underestimate the capabilities of text or type. Your text can have a tone of voice depending on how you write down the message. 

What kind of tone is it? You got a lot to think about since there are many voice tones. You can find respectful, rude, casual, formal, fact, story, etc. Paying attention to the brand voice and making a strategy around it will help you accentuate your personality. So, there is a huge line between the brand strategy, personality design, and your tone of voice. 

The best example is when you see a cheerful person. That kind of personality might come with a more casual, fun, and cheery tone of voice. Meanwhile, a strict person tends to have a formal respectful tone in it. However, the tone is not only about how you speak. You will find that the choice of words and how to accentuate details will make your tone. 

In the case of brand design, the tone of voice should resonate with your product. If you are trying to sell a child or teenage product, it is okay to try the funny tone. The overall model strategy will need to match the tone. So, you can craft your message in the best way possible while also not losing your personality. 

In this case, you can take an example of the smartphone industry. The low-end product with the younger target audience works with a more formal tone of voice. Along with the more vibrant color, modern, and fun design, your plan might hit the real target. Even the product jargon and motto are also made to fit the target audience. 

It is different if you want to translate brand strategy into a design with well-educated and respected business professionals. The tone and voice go to the more professional and respectful wordings. The strategy itself also takes note that can be a helpful point in the later points. So, the point to take away that you can use is to refer back to your target audience. 

Created by Monga Design | https://www.behance.net/gallery/125342757/Fita-UP-Visual-Identity

5. Learn And Analyze Your Competitors 

Another practice that you will need to do is analyze your competitor. It is part of the planning that will help you make a different brand design from others. The strategy underlines the need to create a distinctive product from your competition. But, analyzing your competitor also gives you a vast insight on what to work with. 

Let's start with the first purpose, which is to make a difference. It is a very common practice that brand strategy will include analyzing the aesthetic design point. You analyze their work and design to learn how they work in the business. Again, you are doing so to learn not to copy it. It also helps to avoid getting sued due to the familiar design. 

Your strategy should underline that you don't want to confuse with other products. You want to be different in terms of design, product, and services. But being different should not make you out of the marketplace ring. You need to ensure your product is different but still portrays the real purpose, personality, and target. 

Another reason why you need to do this idea is to figure out what works and does not work. Did you find the common color in certain industries? Try to use the same idea but alter it with your creativity. How about using such a unique graphic? If you find the competitor tried the strategy yet fails miserably, then opt it out. 

So how to make a design that fits with your strategy, follow the successful path of your competitor, yet still be a distinctive product? In this case, try to find out the positioning statement of the product. It can be knowledgeable, fun, approachable, or anything. From that statement, find the perfect way to express it through different visuals. 

Yes, you can play around with the color design. You also got the right to work with typography. The primary takeaway when you are going to translate brand strategy into a design is to find the words that help you capture some ideas. It will eventually bring out the possible outline creativity ideas to work with your visual communication.  

Created by CH-LAB DESIGN STUDIO | https://www.behance.net/gallery/97742469/CH-LAB

6. Use Mood Boards 

After all of the considerations, points, and details, you will need a mood board. What is it? The idea is to help you capture some more creative ideas and work to make the best design. However, mood boards will refer to all of your visual references, such as graphics, images, or colors. Again, in this part, you are not designing yet. You are trying to learn the proper design ideas. 

Mood board is a helpful tool to map all of the details and ideas. It can be your result of researching colors, fonts, graphics, or photos. It does take time to find the perfect one, especially if you make it from zero. One good trick for you that wants a quick idea to translate brand strategy into a design is to browse on the design sharing platform.

There are tons of designers that share their works and ideas from that platform. Just like analyzing the competitor, your work is to learn and make it as inspiration. Go back to your brand strategy ideas, make notes, find inspiration, and work around it. The idea is also helpful to search based on the product's personality or style.  

Created by Feel This | https://www.behance.net/gallery/103009421/Realistic-Natural-Wall-Mood-Board-Mockups-PSD

7. Build Up Your Design With Mind Map 

Another good tool that will be your strategy guideline is a mind map. Just as how mood boards capture visual design ideas, the mind map will branch your ideas. The use of branches and symbols can simplify your ideas and see if all of the patterns will emerge in the design. Try this strategy, and you will get a helpful guide for the blueprint. 

The best example of using a mind map in your brand strategy design is to look at highlight keywords. Maybe you are trying to expand the idea of confidence. The product standing can be branched into synonyms with the same layout or strategy. It also helps you group some wild ideas into one pattern and cluster, which helps you translate brand strategy into design. 

8. Create Brand Identity  

The last part of the process is to create the product design concept. You can discuss the mood board and the mind map to tell your ideas for the drawing. Tell them the direction of the brand strategy. It is also a great way to explain the strategy and then proceed to create a brand identity concept, such as the logo project or anything. 

As a designer, you are bound to make more than just one concept. It is a great move that helps you align with strategy from diverse points of view or ideas. You can use the client's feedback on your mood board to start designing. Try to make everything have a unique vital point. You can use a font, color contrast, shapes, symbol, pattern, or anything that fits the product.  

The point is to make everything relevant, appropriate, and resonate with the strategy. You can also use the idea of three different concepts to convey a unique point of view. Maybe the first concept will translate brand strategy into a design that shows simplicity and fun. The second is the high-end modern, or the third one is the professional model.  

Created by Hui Tong | https://www.behance.net/gallery/130897663/peep-coffee

Conclusion

The main takeaway is to pay attention and work the best with the brand strategy. If you nail all of the planning down to the root, it will make the design process easier to do. You got to choose the style, color, voice, tone, and identity based on the item idea. The strategy also turns into your guideline to work better with your model in the future.