We all have come across a poor product and service experience: a marker pen that works only after scribbling with it thrice, connecting flights with restricting schedules, an advertisement with only images and no contact details or CTA, a confusing book cover, etc.
Amongst these, it is refreshingly wonderful to come across well-designed products and services such as a double-braided charging cable, a short and clear user manual with a product, and a post-it note that actually sticks.
These products and service experiences make you want to associate yourself with its brand more than you would think.
While it may seem like product and service experience is the only and most significant ‘make or break’ factor for your brand’s success, there are several elements of design (also known as brand assets) that play an essential role in the growth of your brand.
What are Brand Assets?
Before understanding what are brand assets, it is important to know what they aren’t:
- Brand assets are not merely logos or taglines that you come across on a hoarding or a business card of that brand.
- Though often mistaken, brand assets are not only visual cues.
Instead, brand assets are a collection of elements that are strategically brought together to make a brand recognizable and memorable to its target audience.
Though there is no rigidity as to what brand assets should precisely be or how they should be used, we hope to provide a framework for your brand to leverage its brand assets to their best.
Please note that brand assets do not only comprise design elements, it also includes jingles, tone, voice, etc.
Nonetheless, design elements are quite a substantial and deeply embedded part of brand assets. So in this article, we focus on design elements that are widely used to create valuable brand assets.
Design Elements in Branding: Start Inside
Many great brands understand the importance of integrating design into their branding efforts. However, only a few brands get it right.
Brands such as Pepsi and Gap have proven that a brand could have aesthetically pleasing designs and multiple campaigns but that does not always equal successful results in terms of branding.
Instead of defining (or redefining) brands only through a logo or a major branding campaign, powerful brands dig deep into their work culture, customer preferences, product qualities, motto, vision, and every other internal component that makes a brand unique.
It is only when you know your brand inside out that you can express your brand to your target market via exceptional design.
1. Color Scheme
Color psychology shows us that colors trigger a wide range of emotions amongst human beings. In fact, theories suggest that color perception made a huge impact on our evolution.
In the recent past, researchers and marketers have taken a microscopic look at the importance of colors and realized that it truly affects us in profound ways.
Read more: How Marketers and Branding Gurus Apply The Secrets of Color Psychology
To get an instant understanding of it, I suggest you unlock your mobile and the number of apps with a blue-colored icon will surprise you. It is because the blue color is known to stir feelings of security and reliability (which helps many brands in the health and finance industries).
As colors have such a foundation, it is understandable why colors play such a major role in branding. Thus, having a well-thought and carefully designed color scheme can make your brand easily recognizable and help with brand consistency.
Even with no understanding of color psychology or its importance, when asked about a combination of blue, yellow, green, and red colors, most of us would think of Google.
It uses a combination of primary colors in the RGB system and the color green to express that though Google is versatile, it is also unique.
2. Logo Design
Your brand’s logo is the direct representation of your brand. The importance of a logo is so high that the word ‘logo’ is often used as a synonym for the word ‘brand.’
Those who are close to the field of branding and entrepreneurship, know that though a brand is much bigger than its logo, there is a reason why these two are so closely related.
In most cases, your logo will be the first impression of your brand for your target customers. So it is best to consider your logo as the face of your brand.
While there is a very wide area for you to explore and design a logo that fits perfectly with your brand and audience, it also means that you will need a combination of decision-making skills that lead to creative and analytical results; making your logo unique and relatable.
The logo design of FedEx is known by people who have not even used its services yet. From its lettering to its use of negative space, it is a perfect logo.
To take it up a notch, I suggest you notice the letters E and X, there you will see a white arrow that is supposedly a representation of the brand’s accuracy, speed, and strive for perfection.
3. Packaging Design
Most of us judge a book by its cover. While browsing through a supermarket, we all have been persuaded by the products with unique packaging designs, vibrant colors, etc.
However, it can go another way around as well. With a large number of products on a shelf or online, customers have the option to explore products brought to them by different companies.
Unless your product packaging design is research-based and not gut-feeling-based, your product will not turn out to be reliable. Similarly, unless your product packaging is clear and unique, it will not reel your target customers into buying your product.
Before even getting to the product, customers get to experience product packaging. It is safe to say that your product packaging design is your gateway to earning customers’ trust; If your product is packaged securely, with key information made available on the packaging, and a hint of authentic marketing through your brand logo, you are already using design elements to your advantage. By including these design elements in a packaging guideline, you make your brand stand out efficiently.
Apple’s products are recorded when unboxed because it is satisfactory to come across Apple’s product packaging.
We cannot help but agree that it is one of the cleanest and most sensory-stimulating product packaging designs most of us have come across.
Conclusion
These design elements are just the beginning of showcasing your brand’s identity through design. As you move along, I suggest that you explore all elements of brand assets such as:
- Brand name
- Tagline/slogan
- Songs or jingles
- Mascots
- Typography
- Videos
The best (as well as convenient and organized) way to align your brand assets with your audience and the authenticity of your brand is by creating a brand guideline that is focused on providing a consistent and unified experience to all your customers.
Head of Design at DesignBro and is responsible for UI/UX Design, managing the global designer community, and ensuring quality levels of both designers and designs remain high.
