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Brand & Identity Technology UI Design UX Design

How to Avoid Bad Branding Mistakes That Can Ruin Reputation

Branding Mistakes

When most individuals hear the term “brand,” they immediately think of huge, well-established corporations such as Google, Adidas, or Apple. However, you must remember that these multibillion-dollar corporations were once small businesses, just like any other venture.

Although there are several factors that contribute to a business’s growth, having an effective branding plan is critical to its success. Creating a strong and visible brand is a lengthy process that requires time and effort.

Branding implies seizing every chance to convince people to choose your brand over the other. As a result, all means of communication — not just visual — are critical for strengthening this trust and keeping your brand at the forefront of your customers’ minds.

However, just as strong branding enhances your business’s value, poor branding detracts from it. That’s correct; even the tiniest branding mistakes may have a significant negative impact on your corporation’s brand and image. Let’s look at some of the most typical errors you must avoid while developing your brand strategy:

Lack of a Well-Defined Branding Strategy

To accomplish your business objectives, the first step should be to develop a strategy, especially with regard to your branding. If you enter the process of branding and marketing without a clear concept of what you want to accomplish, you’re likely to miss the point, creating uncertainty for both you and your consumers.

Before you begin developing your brand image, you should have a firm grasp of the idea and tone you wish to convey for your business. Are you a strong and commanding figure? Are you sociable and amusing? Are you a youthful and carefree entity? Whichever route you take, if you’re clear on the style, feeling, and tone you want to accomplish from the start, you’ll be able to develop branded content that accurately represents this.

Paying No Attention to Customer Experience

A strong brand image is unquestionably helpful. It might assist you in developing a favorable image with your consumers and make selling much easier. While branding can contribute to a favorable image for your goods, the experience of the consumer with your product is much more critical.

Unfortunately, many people incorrectly believe that a brand is defined by a logo, an advertisement campaign, or the aesthetics of product packaging. Eventually, your branding is the feeling a buyer has when considering your products. To enhance the customer experience, resolve the concerns of consumers promptly. Establish a timely response to consumers, whether it’s through a live chat feature on your site or by replying to emails within 24 hours.

Inconsistency Across Platforms

To establish a strong brand, you must boost your business as real, legitimate, and precisely who you claim to be. You must have a consistent voice, style, and purpose throughout all of your communication and social media platforms. If you neglect to do so, your consumers will never get a strong feeling for your business. This implies that if you mention something on your brand’s Social Media pages and something else on your website, your customers will be confused as to which is true.

Brand reliability begins with aligning all of your advertising campaigns across your brand’s touchpoints. This encompasses your visual identity, philosophy, beliefs, and business objectives. To assist you in maintaining a high degree of consistency, we propose that you develop a set of business-specific branding style standards. It is a collection of standards in which you may include your preferred color, typography, pictures, logo, and voice tone. 

These standards will ensure that anybody generating content for your brand maintains consistency across various platforms.

Choosing Low-Cost Alternatives

When you’re just getting started with your company, it makes perfect sense to be frugal with your spending. While it is prudent to be cost-effective, this does not imply you should forego factors that contribute to the identification and effectiveness of your branding efforts.

If you believe you can get away with having your friend’s cousin create your logo and construct your website at cheap rates, you are mistaken. While this may appear to be a fantastic deal for both parties, it will have a negative impact on your branding strategy in the long run. Whenever it comes to social media, everything is a matter of perspective. 

This implies that if you have a low-quality website having fewer features and an unattractive logo, it will reflect poorly on the services provided by your organization. Individuals who are unfamiliar with your company will see them and quickly connect your branding with being poor and unpleasant – a mistake that should be definitely avoided!

It’s good to spend on experienced designers and developers to produce something of exceptional quality, as this will result in the creation of an authentic, professional, and attractive brand to your intended audience.

Integrating Yourself with Your Rivals

While it may be simple to follow patterns whenever it is about branding, if you do so too precisely, you risk being indifferent to the rest of the businesses around you.

While it may be tempting to follow current branding trends, the purpose of effective branding is to differentiate you: to give your brand its unique voice, appearance, and personality. As a result, you must develop your distinctive style, as that’s what will truly differentiate you from your rivals.

Conduct research, determine your differential advantage, and utilize the results to develop a powerful brand image that emphasizes your individuality.

Focusing on Quantity, Not on Quality

Effective branding is not about how often your potential customers see your brand; it is about how they perceive it and the opinions they form about it as a result of what they can see. What counts is that you deliver valuable information to your audience, not how many posts, photos, or clips you publish featuring your brand. Quality should never be sacrificed for quantity in any marketing strategy.

Even though it is a widely held idea that regularly publishing and updating information is a method to differentiate yourself from your rivals, if the frequency of your posts and updates outweighs the quality of your content, it is all in vain. Instead of viewing the content of your brand, consumers look forward to, they’ll come to dislike your business as one that continually appears in their feed or mailbox with nothing significant to say.

This will certainly result in people unsubscribing your brand and discontinuing to connect with you. As a result, it’s critical that you guarantee each content you post with your brand is valuable to your audience.

Ignoring the Significance of Mobile Users

Whenever it’s about digital marketing, there is a growing trend towards mobile device use. Mobile phones currently account for 65 percent of overall digital media consumption and are gaining traction as technology advances and web browsing increases.

Regardless of your primary channel, mobile-friendly content must play a significant role in both your short- and long-term branding strategies.

Conclusion

Utilizing the potential of branding is no different from implementing any other marketing approach. By utilizing analytics, you can ensure that your business avoids costly branding errors. However, increasing awareness and holding the aforementioned guidelines in mind is one of the most effective methods to pave the road for your brand’s success.

Contact Us Today to For Your Branding Needs

Categories
Brand & Identity Design Mobile Apps UI Design Web Design

‘Meet The Team’ Pages: The Human Element Of Your Website

Meat The Team

While designing a website, designers categorize all the pages into three major categories – most important, important, and least important. Their focus and efforts on improving the user experience and elevating the aesthetics of the pages majorly depend upon the categorization. One of the pages that are often overlooked and incorrectly categorized is the ‘Meet the Team’ page. It may sound insignificant, and a very small element of a website, but plays a crucial role in the user experience journey. According to various studies, the ‘Meet the Team’ page is often the most visited page of websites that do have it.

Meet the Team

It is a small section on a website that introduces the team behind your brand and business. It is a way of recognizing individuals who allow your business to bloom and prosper. It may not seem too important, however, it helps a lot to create a positive image of your brand.

The ‘Meet the Team’ not only presents the faces of workers, but it also allows users to know more about the company and its work culture. Be it the pictures of the faces, or a large panorama of the entire group, team pages are there to show the quality and commitment of business.

The personalities, qualities, and ethics of people that make up a company are equally important as are the company’s achievements. Creating a team page that offers meaningful insight into a company’s culture and character enhances the human quotient. Users want to interact with your website as they are interacting with real human beings, and this page is a perfect platform for you to develop that kind of relationship with them. It greatly adds to the credibility that builds trust with customers, partners, and clients.

Best Practices

1. Put a Face and Personality 

Most companies include professional photos of key team members on their team page so that the customers, partners and other agencies quickly connect with the team. It is the most popular way of showing the team. However, the reverse approach has also shown tremendous results. Websites that used personal photos of team members, with friends and family, instantly connected with the audience. Multiple photos of the team at social functions and office gatherings are also a unique way of displaying bonding, teamwork and the fun that the group has together.

2. Create a Mix of Professional and Personal Information

Mostly the profiles include the name, designation and bio information. But, that’s a subtle and traditional way of displaying the team. Although, professional info should be mixed with personal, fun info as well. Include fun, personal passions, and interests that make individuals approachable and showcase personalities. Details like ‘favorite moments’ or ‘fun facts’ allow their staff to highlight skills, areas of expertise and personal attributes. The key point is that it portrays the company as a group of real people.

3. Include Personal Social Media Handles

A company’s team and its philosophy are important and must shine through its ‘Meet the Team’ page. A lot of times the team members personally contribute via their personal blogs, relevant publications, and other platforms. The information shared through an employee’s personal social channels is a reflection of the company’s expertise as a whole. Including an employee’s personal social handles or links is a great way to encourage readers to get to know your staff and the knowledge they offer.

4. Include Testimonials of Team Members

Testimonial quotes of fellow team members provided for each individual’s bio page not only represent who the employee is as an individual but also the strength of their individual role and the incredible value they bring to the team. Team bio and about pages are one of the most important components of any website. Adding a human touch can help build credibility and position your company and its representatives not only as thought leaders but partners that clients and prospects will respect. 

Characteristics of a Strong Meet the Team Page

  • It has personality
  • It is full of quality images and /or graphics, including headshots.
  • It stands out from other cookie-cutter designs.
  • It highlights the people who make up your team in a professional, personal and unique way.

Read more about other pages/screens here which should be designed cautiously

Here are some awesome ‘Meet the Team’ pages

Advantix-digital
Advantix-digital
Humaan - Our Team
Humaan
Mayple - Team
Mayple
Mimosa - Meet The Team
Mimosa

Wrap up

Creating a “Meet the Team” page expresses your company’s identity. It increases brand awareness and definitely this is something that helps your brand to grow. Contact Us Today if you think your brand’s team page needs tuning 🙂

Categories
Blog Design Technology Virtual Reality

A Guide For Designers To Design Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality

Let’s get back to reality. We sure would have heard this term one or more times in our lives. As humans, we once in a while try to break out of the shell of reality and try to fly into the unrealistic world. That’s really been the foundation of the growing, trending virtual reality. For designers, the arrival of virtual reality poses some unique challenges, as there is really no set rules to design for VR. That said, this leaves room for innovation and new possibilities for greatness.

VR Design

VR design is the creation of a simulated world, which people can experience and immerse themselves in, using hardware, like headsets, or even a software. The origins of VR goes back decades, however, it has become a sensation only in the last decade or so. It has been previously used for practical applications like NASA flight simulations and even for entertainment purposes, but today, it has become more achievable and profitable than ever. Recent tech advances in VR suggest it will eventually spread out across all industries.

Virtual reality’s application range from physical therapy to educational aids, cancer research, employee training, remote communication, image modeling for architects and a lot more. Design gurus of the world suggest that VR will play a transformational role in the world of web designing by contributing to the creation of more immersive websites. It will potentially change the way we browse the web.

How To Design ‘Reality’?

If we draw a comparison, VR design is closest to video game design, or we can safely say that both of them are almost the same. Web designers will see some familiarity in interactivity and specifics of the UX, but visually, it is one level above video game designing. There’s a lot of unique visual problems in virtual reality design, like changing depths, recognizable cues, and including functional controls within the environment. So how do you design for virtual reality? We have compiled a list of best practices that will get you started with designing for the VR, if you’re planning to master the art.

Interactivity

The top priority for interactivity is controls. There are no different buttons for different actions in VR design. Most of the controls must be gestures. Primarily, there are two types of controls – semantic and responsive. Semantic gestures are common movements like walking, nodding etc. On the other hand, responsive gestures are how we interact with our environment, like picking things up, pushing buttons, etc.

The key here is that the fewer controls your user has to learn, the easier it will be for them to immerse themselves. The main objective is to duplicate reality so try to rely on as many natural gestures as possible. Another challenge is to make users understand what they can interact with, and how. Proper and prompt cues based on the real world must be offered for this. Acknowledgement and constant feedback are also necessary so that the users know once an action has been completed.

Designers need to be very careful about the distance while designing for VR. You don’t want your user to look back and forth between something close and something far away, which leads to a shift in focus. In VR, asking your users to browse items both near and far would cause too much eye strain.

Visual and Audio

Remember, our own sight is curved. Therefore, one should always use concave text and images in the VR design. This lends itself better to the visual immersion and will look smoother when the user turns their head. VR still relies on a 2D display model rather than three-dimensions, like in real life. Showcasing spatial relations is particularly very challenging in VR. Techniques like isometrics, lighting and shadows can help create realistic 3D spaces.

As far as the audio is concerned, speakers are best for audio immersion as you can change the direction the sound comes from; headphones limit this advantage. It’s best to design for speakers to create the most realistic audio possible.

Human Designing

Ultimately, we are designing for humans, and it is important to note that we humans don’t move in straight lines; we move in arcs. VR design’s body movements must resemble real life. Talking about movement, the excessive head movement gives some users motion sickness; we don’t want that to happen for sure. It’s best to keep interactive elements between desk height and eye level, commonly known as the ‘Goldilocks’ zone.

All the VR designs must include hand movements. When the user can see their hands in the virtual environment, it’s easier to interact with objects. This may require creative problem-solving, but sometimes it’s just as simple as having them carry around an object.

VR’s success completely depends on designers. It’s more about the length of designers’ imagination and less about the technical aspects. Yes, being an uncharted territory it’s difficult to get started, but that creates a chance of endless opportunities. The aforementioned information will surely be sufficient to guide you towards the right path; if you want to discuss more on VR design, feel free to get in touch with our experts.

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Brand & Identity

Here’s The Essential Guide For Your Startup Business Branding

Startup Business Branding

We are living in an era of startups. Every second person in today’s world either has his own startup or else dreaming of having one. It starts with an idea which shapes into a business model which eventually lays the foundation of a company. There are plenty of things involved in the whole process. The idea, planning, execution, market study, competitor analysis and the list just goes on and on. Startup owners have so much stuff on their plates that they often neglect one of the most important topic – Branding. In this article, we will highlight some important guidelines for your startup business branding.

It’s very important that you get your branding correct right from the start. How you brand your business will set your image in a customer’s mind. But, Mind it, it’s a one-way road without looking back. Once the image is set, it’s very challenging to change it.

Half The Game Is In The Name

Zeroing on a name for your company is a very crucial, tiresome, and time-consuming process. It takes a lot of efforts and time to come up with the perfect name but, the wait is surely worth it. Customers start judging your business and your company the moment they hear the name of your company. A non-impactful or bad name might lead customers into falsely judging your company even before knowing what you do and other important details.

An effective name will assure a distinct and rock-solid place in the market. It helps in distinguishing yourself as a company and conveying your business vision along with creativity. A strong and impactful name can be the difference maker in being just another firm or a category-defining iconic brand.

Maintain An Impressive Visual Identity

If you underestimate the effect of a brand’s visual components on people, then you’re calling trouble. We always hear sayings like “Never judge a book by its cover” but let’s be honest, an attractive cover will always grab more eyeballs. It helps in getting noticed by people which will eventually lead to a long term business relationship. Logos, business cards, color schemes, graphics, taglines, fonts and many other visual components need super attention.

It can easily communicate your intended message to the customers. If the design is used in an efficient manner, it instantly communicates your business values- Trust, strength, innovation, creativity, luxury, value for money or anything your brand identity stands for.

Differentiate Yourself Through Branding

It’s a rare possibility that you won’t face any competition while running a business. Even if you are the first one to start any kind of business, competition will crop up in no time. It’s very important to differentiate yourself from all the other companies in the same business. Use your branding to create that difference. If properly done, your branding can make a huge difference in cutting through the clutter and placing you above your competitors.

Develop A Brand Personality

A lot of businesses fail to understand the importance of building a brand personality. Their websites look boring filled with all unnecessary jargons, words from the founder etc. These tend to repel customers and many times there is stuff on websites which totally confuses them. Irrespective of the business or the industry, everyone needs a brand personality. A brand personality should be designed carefully, thoughtfully and must be executed properly.

It might take more than one go to find the best brand personality but the effort is definitely recommended. Try out different methods until you hit the bull’s eye.

There are a lot of commitments to fulfill in the initial period when you’re planning to launch your startup or just started it. It’s very much possible that you forget about important aspects like your branding requirements. Share your vision and business objectives with our branding experts and fulfill all your branding requirements.

Categories
Brand & Identity

5 Things to Consider While Building a Brand Identity Style Guide

Brand Identity Style Guide

The world is flooded with brands and companies. There are umpteen number of companies catering to any and every need of a consumer. Therefore it is very important for a company to build and maintain its own unique identity for cutting through the clutter. In order to so a company needs to define certain branding rules & guidelines and follow them religiously. The document that defines all these guidelines is called the Identity Style Guide.

From corporate giants like Nike, Adidas, McDonald etc. to even tiniest of the startups; Everyone needs to have an Identity Style Guide. It’s commonly called the Brand Bible of a company. It may range anywhere between a couple of pages to several hundred pages. It voices out the personality of a company and drives every communication from the company to its consumers. The communication includes all forms – social media, personal, advertising, design etc. There are a few factors which lead the entire process of designing an Identity Style Guide. Let’s check them out:

1. Use of Logos

Needless to say, a logo is the most important factor considering the branding of a company. It’s the actual face of a company and plays a pivotal role while reflecting the essence of the company. There are majorly 3 sizes used to standardise the use of these tags.

Brand Identity Style Guide

Once the logo is decided, its integrity is maintained across all platforms including the placement and alterations. The logo of your company helps people to identify your brand and thus needs to be consistent across all collaterals, documents, and communications.

2. Color Scheme

A well-defined colour scheme is another important aspect of the Brand Bible. Colors play a very vital role in distinguishing a brand and are very appealing. The Big golden M sign along with red color signifies Mcdonald in the most striking way. We bet any other color scheme wouldn’t have been that effective.

The Brand Identity Style Guide must explain each color and its use. This includes colors used in a logo to colors that are used in text, backgrounds and other design elements. Each color must be defined by a particular name and color value. The document must define each color with values for print and digital projects separately.

Colour Scheme

3. Fonts And Typography

The Brand Identity Style Guide must properly define every bit of the type used across print and digital communication. It must contain the rules of use, acceptable typefaces, use of typefaces, styling, size, and color guidelines. There must ideally be two different set of rules. One for print and one for digital communications. But ensure both have some familiar link.

Firstly, select the primary typeface followed by a secondary typeface and substitute typeface. Having said that, a brand must not use more than five typefaces.

Fonts And Typography

4. Images

Images are another very important element and the Brand Bible must define guidelines for use of images across brand communications. The Identity Style Guide must define what, when and how images are to be used. Should photography be used or illustrations or both? Is clip art acceptable? What are the guidelines to edit pictures? Should the tone of images be black & White or colored ? These questions must be answered in the identity style guide.

Images

5. Text And Tone

The text that you use in your communications is of utmost importance and you must communicate to your customers in their language. Understand your customers and speak in their own words. The Brand Identity Style Guide must define the tone and content type of all the text that you use. It includes the text used across all mediums including headlines of ads, press releases, text on the website, blog posts etc.

The brand bible must answer to questions like Whether the text should be formal or friendly? Should the text be very wordy or compact? What should be the overall tone of your text?

These are only the basic (but still most important) factors which drive the Identity Style Guide. However, there are plenty of other aspects which are covered while preparing the Brand Bible. Get in touch with our expert brand advisers today and get your own Brand Identity Style Guide.