I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly made me think that traditional ID processes might be missing in the branding department - or at least where the ID process could be enhanced by thinking more about the brand. It stalled me for a bit
Two examples on on my mind the last couple days and I thought I’d share.
One was was the design of a multimedia TV set-top box I was a part of a couple years ago… the early concepts had several designers contribute, and the results were nice - they were very attractive and all appealing, but all over the place in focus. It wasn’t 6 tight designs around a core theme, it was 6 very diverse concepts. In the later passes, the client chose a direction, and the designs were more focused around a theme, following the clients preference of the concepts. It seems that if some initial brand exploration were done of what the company’s products “should” be, the first concepts would have been further along (the brand expression benefiting from the experience of the design team), and a second concept pass could have been even more refined. I guess any discovery part of the project would have taken the same time as doing the first concept group, but I wonder about the pro’s and con’s of the two ways of starting the project.
The second was something that’s been on my mind since a recent chat with a brand consultancy manager in London… he was telling me about a beer project, and how he’d try to embody the essence of the brand in the design. The client’s name was had an animal theme, and he said that the particular animal had a certain kind of confidence… he thought this was a central in how he would approach the design. He described the different shades of meaning “confidence” could have - how the confidence of a chess player is different than the confidence of an athlete. Even in athletics, the confidence of a basketball player would be different than the confidence of a marathon runner or soccer player. I’ve only my own experience in ID, but I haven’t often heard that level of focus often when discussing how a product design language should be crafted…
Anybody have any thoughts around whether branding is … or is not … considered during an ID project?