Branding is quite a sticky business which involves lots of hype and fluff. We have lots of misconceptions about what branding actually is and how does it work. Branding is not only logo, colors and lots of designs but it is something more than that. Brand is an superficial ‘Persona’ of an organization. Branding always aims to play the role of a communicator between the organization and their target customers. Style of branding varies depending on the companies and their businesses or the product or service they offer and the their target customers.
When a particular company feels the need of having a brand identity for themselves but do not have an idea on how to do it they start looking for professional designers and go through their logo design reviews. If you are a designer and have to handle such client there are some trick which you can follow to satisfy them with your work. Do not just jump into the project and start thinking about colors, designs and slogans. First you need to have an idea about your client company and the type of products and services they offer and last but not the list is their target customers.
Collect as much information as possible about the company. It may initially seem unnecessary but you never know how this pieces of information will help you while you will start working on the project. The more you compile ideas the better you will perform later. It will offer a better framework based on which you can execute the visual layout of the ideas you have gathered. If you take your clients though the entire stage it will take less time to complete the task as you need less revisions.
It is better to break the entire banding process into a few small section to get the best result at the end. After a long research, lots of research and discussion finally the practical section of the branding gets a shape. Once the designs, colors, slogans, themes and logos are decided then the client starts going through the design and checking whether it is the same thing that they wanted. Therefore it is always better to know clearly what they want right from the beginning of the project including symbols, images, typography and all.
This is the stage where both you and your client see how the brand is finally taking a shape. The logo has been designed and the themes has been selected, and the typography used in the logo has already got emotionally attached with the brand or the organization. Now you have to check whether the entire layout will work fine with different mediums such as business cards, print ads, banner ads or online ads or not.
All these details are extremely important if you are working for a branding project. Starting from placement to designing to marketing and advertising all work together to make a brand successful. If you take care of everything mentioned above successfully then your client will not have anything to do. This will make them happy and they will definitely come back to you again and again in future with different projects. This will also help you to increase the number of clients as well who will come to you after going through the feedbacks and the logo design reviews by the others.
There are a type of client who thinks that the idea they provide is the best. But unfortunately most of the time the ideas they come up with seem crazy and extremely difficult to execute to the designers. But as they generally stick to their own ideas you have to manage them if you want to retain your client base. This is probably the toughest and the most challenging situation for a designer.
Sometimes working with these types of projects help them to learn more and enhance their creativity. While working with them show them some of your designs that you have developed on the basis of their instructions or ideas. If they flatly reject them then try something new. After working with them for some time they tend to become a bit flexible and you can convince them if not on the very fist but surely on the second attempt.
The above article is written and edited by Roxanne, who is a freelance writer for various blogs and communities related to logo and graphic design. In her free time she designs logos and creates graphics for some of her clients. Some of her works can be checked here: Logo Design Portfolio