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In a world overloaded with businesses, logos, websites and social media sites, good branding is more important than ever.
So what makes a good brand designer?
It is not only the singular creative thoughts of a designer that counts. If a designer relies on this alone, design for branded communication will lack in sense and lose touch with its purpose.
It is a designer’s ability to rationalise cognitive response to emotional stimuli through the eyes of another person that makes them effective. Only when a designer is operating in this area, are they able to position their own ideas and creative process to connect with today's consumer through their work.
Why is this important for brands?
This type of process helps designers to create work that disrupts overloaded markets, not drown in them.
To understand the importance of creating the right type of brand imagery, we must look at the conscious mind and how it interprets this type of visual stimuli. We can then understand why it is important for a designer to have an empathetic connection with another person, or people, cultures and so on.
To start, understand that we are driven by emotion. As humans, we work by rationalising our emotional response to different stimuli. It is our interpretation of our own feelings when provoked by these different stimuli that define the choices we make.
It is not just the ability to come across different stimuli that is important. This is something we do every day thousands of times. A lot of the time, we reject what we come across because it doesn’t fit with our own unfolding narrative or sense of self. To understand this is important.
Test this for yourself: when it comes to adverts for example, they are everywhere, online, on TV and in the high street are just a few places you will have come across them in their hundreds. How many can you recall from yesterday? Are you surprised with the low number answer you have provided yourself with? Perhaps.
Ownership of imagery in the conscious mind.
We have discovered that to come across stimuli especially visual imagery, in our every day lives is simply not enough to have impact on us. This is because the decisive step did not take place: Conscious image ownership. To quote neuroscientist Antonio Damasio: “The decisive step in making of consciousness is not the making of images and creating the basics of a mind. The decisive step is making the images ours, making them belong to their rightful owners, the singular, perfectly bounded organisms in which they emerge.”
When we decide to pay attention to something it is because it resonates with us on some level. It fits with our internal narrative so we seek to find out more.
Telling stories.
How does what we have decided upon consciously owning develop? We tell ourselves stories. This is part of our cognitive response to stimuli, and helps develop the depth of conscious ownership.
So it looks like it could fit. Time to analyse.
During this decision making process we gather new and existing information and work out if what we have come across is suitable. When coming across a branded product or service, the story of that brand, its communication and relevance comes into conscious play. This knowledge brings to light the importance of engaging brand communication across all touch points.
We will draw on past experiences and current ones as we begin to tell ourselves a story of how this product or service fits into our lives. If it is something we really desire, we will even tell ourselves lies to make it fit in with our narrative so that we can justify our decision to, make a purchase, for example.
An example of self-story telling: We know fast food might not be good for us, but ‘I’ve earned it today’ or ‘I haven’t got time to cook a meal, ‘I shouldn’t buy a 6th cup of coffee but I need it!’ It works all the way up; ‘My car is fine, but I think this one would be even better because...’, ‘That house in the country would be a great place to relax’. Your self-story telling creates the vision that the brand communication helped to provoke.
Consumers are in charge and are ultra-savvy.
Consumers have the world at their fingertips. They are more informed than ever and the branded products they buy have touch points everywhere: The high street, events, social gatherings, the internet of things; websites, apps, social media.
Consumers are likely to come across all types of brands several times, before making a purchase. This means that consistent brand communication across all platforms and environments is paramount.
There are a huge array of brands aggressively advertising, hoping that your conscious mind will interact with them. This is complicated because we have the consumers general dislike of adverts, they do not like them interrupting their lives - the use of ad blockers is rocketing which proves this.
It is not that people do not like adverts. To quote Mark Goldstein: “People hate advertising in general, but they love advertising in particular.” To quote Cindy Gallop on this statement: “If you ask the man or woman on the street; ‘So what do you think of advertising?’, they’ll say; ‘Oh I bloody hate it.’ But if you ask the man or woman in the street, ‘what’s your favourite ad?’ they’ll say: ‘Oh I really love that Nike advert...’ and so on.
It is not our knowledge about how we work as humans that is important – knowledge is a commodity. It is the ability to understand all the above and apply it to our creative process that is the decisive step. This is what makes a good designer.
Simon Bell.
Simon is the creative director and owner of Sensation Creative.
To enquire about Simon's branding services via Sensation Creative in the UK please email:
Simon(dot)Bell(at)SensationCreative.com
See examples of Simon's work, meet his team and learn more at: www.SensationCreative.com
