What is branding REALLY?

There is nothing wrong with starting out by just buying a logo. Starting is what is important. 

That said, a logo is not a brand. 

I say this gently, because I see it constantly, and in many cases it genuinely hurts businesses that deserve better.

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Here's what a logo actually is: it's a mark. It's a visual shorthand for something people already know and trust. Nike's swoosh doesn't mean anything in isolation. It means everything because of what Nike has built around it. The logo is the symbol of the brand. It is not the brand itself.

Your brand is the full experience someone has with your business. It's the feeling they get when they land on your website. It's the words you use and the ones you deliberately avoid. It's your colours and your fonts and your imagery,  but more than that, it's why those things were chosen and what they're communicating. It's the promise you're making and the story you're telling and the reason someone chooses you over every other option available to them.

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When we do branding work with a client, before a single design decision is made, we spend time asking questions like: Who is the person you most want to serve? What do you want them to feel when they first encounter your business? What do your competitors do, and what do you want to do differently? What are you building this for? Most importantly, why are you building it?

The design comes out of that. Not the other way around.

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The logo, the colours, the typography, those are the translation of your strategy into something visual. When it's done right, your ideal client sees your brand and thinks "yes, this is for me." They don't know why. They just know.

That's the work. That's what branding actually is.

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Isolated logos are fine for some stages of business. But if you're serious about growth, at some point you need a brand, not just a mark.

What's your brand saying when you're not in the room?

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