This tuesday our euskalgiri designer, Joseba, was invited to the University of Arrasate-Mondragon to give a two hour talk about branding to Masters design students. It was a really fun time to present, share and answer questions about branding.
The Oxford English dictionary defines branding as “a particular type or kind of something“. Wow! Very profound! This isn’t good enough, and for something in which we invest so much time and money, we need a better understanding of what it means. I like the way that the Design Council defines branding: “a set of associations that we make with a company, product, service, individual or organisation.”
These associations can take various forms: smell (Chanel no 5 perfume), sound (Nokia ringtone), form (Vespa scooter), symbol (nike swoosh), touch (Apple’s iphone), colour (Orange telecommunications), or typography (Harrods).
Brand is active, it moves and changes. We are brands. We brand ourselves on facebook all the time. A measure of branding is to assess the associations that others make with ourselves/objects/companies/services etc. Brand has personality.
When we think of people like Steve Jobs, what do we think of? Apple, clean-cut, straight-talking, black/white, he has a good understanding of what the end-user wants, they make products that work… He (and Apple) has been branded this way. The way that they present information to us is controlled, with the objective being to ‘control’ how we perceive Apple. This is how I view branding.
A good brand uses many elements to convey the core values, vision and personality of a company/product/service/person. The various elements that make up a brand appeal to different senses. (Sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing, even a subconscious sixth sense perhaps).
Owen
2011/11/11Yeah, too right. Branding is often thought of as its lowest common denominator – a logo. But there’s so much more to it than that if people bothered to invest in it!
Great to see you getting out and doing this Joe, very impressed.