Identity Designed

The Definitive Guide to Visual Branding

David Airey

• Publisher: Rockport Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781631595950
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Graphic Design

Ideal for students of design, independent designers, and entrepreneurs who want to expand their understanding of effective design in business, Identity Designed is the definitive guide to visual branding. Written by best-selling writer and renowned designer David Airey, Identity Designed formalizes the process and the benefits of brand identity design and includes a substantial collection of high-caliber projects from a variety of the world's most talented design studios. You'll see the history and importance of branding, a contemporary assessment of best practices, and how there's always more than one way to exceed client expectations. You'll also learn a range of methods for conducting research, defining strategy, generating ideas, developing touchpoints, implementing style guides, and futureproofing your designs. Each identity case study is followed by a recap of key points. The book includes projects by Lantern, Base, Pharus, OCD, Rice Creative, Foreign Policy, Underline Studio, Fedoriv, Freytag Anderson, Bedow, Robot Food, Together Design, Believe in, Jack Renwick Studio, ico Design, and Lundgren+Lindqvist. Identity Designed is a must-have, not only for designers, but also for entrepreneurs who want to improve their work with a greater understanding of how good design is good business.

Case studies

Lantern

London
www.lanternlondon.com

Project: Primal Roots

Primal Roots is a woodland-based fitness and well-being boot camp rooted in the pursuit of both external and internal strength, endurance, and natural movement. Working closely with homeless charities and local authorities, it offers fitness training to help the recovery of those who would otherwise not have access to such services.

When we’re approached by clients, we always start with a quick call or face-to-face meeting to get a sense of why they do what they do, who their audience is, and what they’re trying to achieve. We need to have that conversation, regardless of whether we go on to collaborate. Depending on the quality of the inquiry and the amount of information we’re given, we can get a sense of whether they’ll fit with what we generally charge for the work. We could waste a lot of each other’s time if we go through the proposal stage and they’ve only got £100 ($130) to spend on a logo.

Rather than asking a specific set of questions, we try to get an understanding of the business, the ambitions for the project, and the key deliverables. We normally discuss the process of one of our previous projects—the brief, the creative routes we presented, the route the client chose, and the guidelines we developed. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to grasp the tangible items they’ll get at the end, so rather than just show them five nicely Photoshopped projects, we make it about the process and how we get to the end point.

Early conversations with Primal Roots were more straightforward than normal because we’d already worked with them on another social enterprise called Growth Rings. So, they had an idea of how we work and what we tend to charge, but our proposal still went into detail on the cost breakdown, process, and deadlines to help convince everyone we were the right fit. We did our due diligence on the company, too, because we weren’t familiar with everyone involved.

A lot of what we do is based upon the messaging and the attitude, character, and personality of the brand.

Project deliverables

We were hired for the naming, branding, and positioning, and for providing strategic insight to help promote their holistic approach to everyone from local authorities and healthcare commissioners to the general public. We position ourselves as the brand attitude agency, and our selling point is that we focus a huge amount of the process on tone of voice and creative messaging so our clients come away with a suite of ten to fifteen powerful phrases that speak to their audiences in the most appropriate way. The verbal side of a brand is as much a part of things as the visual, so one of the key deliverables was that library of creative messages.

The verbal side of a brand is as much a part of things as the visual.

The brand development included two different design routes from which the client could choose, and we delivered logo artwork, guidelines, and sample applications, such as what an ad or brochure cover would look like. Although the client might not necessarily run a traditional ad, our sample applications can still be used, for example, in the form of a post on social media, where an image of a billboard or a brochure cover is uploaded.

The company came to us known as Nature’s Gym. We renamed the brand as Primal Roots to give it a bit more attitude. Nature’s Gym was very functional, and although it positioned what the brand is about, Primal Roots is much more about the emotional side. There was also the challenge around using the word “gym” because some of the audiences don’t like them.

We launched their Squarespace website, and set up their Twitter and Instagram profiles with header images and avatars, before preparing social media posts to kick things off.

Relevant iconography helps to create a more cohesive identity even in the smallest of applications.

Design pricing

We charged £10,000 ($13,000) for the Primal Roots work. That’s significantly less than we normally price those deliverables, but we tend to reduce our rate for one or two special interest projects each year, such as charities or social enterprises. We try to work with people who we know are prepared to take their brand in a brave direction, or where we think there’s a real value in the business itself. It depends on an individual basis who we work with at that price, otherwise we’d not make any money.

We set our prices based on the time it will take to create the deliverables. Timing is often driven by a deadline, such as when a client might have an event to prepare for or launch a website by. One of the challenges with being a designer is that if you’re particularly passionate about a project, and if there’s a specific execution you really want to do that might take twice as long, you embrace that as part of the process.

For some projects we might suggest an illustrative route that needs to be done externally, which can affect the timing. Obviously, there’s an additional cost for the client, too. We caveat that in our terms—illustration, photography, and so on will be extras if required.

For a typical identity project, we estimate it takes about ten to twelve weeks to deliver brand guidelines. The amount of time can vary greatly depending on how many stakeholder reviews need to happen. We’ve had projects that lasted eighteen months due to the number of people involved in the project reviews. So, we give our initial estimate, but we also mention factors that might affect the duration—e.g., a decision maker being unavailable for a week or two.

As a design firm, be mindful of the value you offer as you grow in credibility and awareness. With a back catalogue of great references, we’ve increased our rates year after year since opening our doors. It can be tricky if you’ve worked with a client in the past and they come back and want a similar job done, or they’ve recommended you to someone and told them how much they paid, but that’s something you just have to deal with.

If a client ever wants the price reduced, we’ll reduce what we deliver instead. Perhaps certain clients don’t need as comprehensive a guidelines document, or they can get someone local to create their social media assets once we’ve developed the branding. Occasionally we might hear that the client wants to see one creative route instead of two. So we negotiate based on the deliverables. We won’t arbitrarily say, “Okay, we’ll do it for that price,” because we’ll get caught in a cycle and it’ll happen on every project. There’s a risk of existing clients recommending you to someone where the same thing happens.

Some studios charge based on value, but with the type of clients we work with that’s quite a hard sell. It would be nice to be in a position to do that, but even then, to a certain extent the value you offer is based on the time you put into a project.

We won’t begin the creative work until a down payment has been made. If we see benefit in the project, then when we put together a proposal, we might include a page or two abo...