Presenting Your Brand Ideas Professionally
So you have liaised with your client, you know what their brand represents and the angle you’re going to tackle this project. You’ve started coming up with logo/brand concepts. You’ve got various ideas and inspiration plastered all over the place and you’re creativity is flowing.
The following thoughts are based on my opinions and previous experiences within a design agency folks! I have recently gone freelance! :)
What to do next….
When ready, you need to filter your conceptual ideas down to 3 (maximum) of the strongest options you have. These could be logos that look great and represent your client’s company/start- up perfectly, but they also need to have great personality, variation and a wide range of brand exploration ideas. The main “elephant in the room” cannot be ignored either, does it work on web?
Think about the quality in the conceptual ideas. It’s not all about quantity and how many logo ideas the client wants to see, it’s more the quality of those ideas and what they represent: The company moving forward and rebranding.
Explore your chosen ideas
You have chosen a few strong ideas that have great variant and character. The next step is to transfer those logo characteristics to brand exploration.
We have to remember that we’re exploring the brand and showing some potential brand ideas and mock ups, not a full finalised brand book. By potential brand ideas…certain things like showing the logo in different scenarios, variations and showing the brand elements on different materials (vehicles, posters, t shirts etc.) is always good practice. Try and steer away from “technical requirements” and “dos and don’ts” and advanced branding solutions until a final identity is chosen.
A good point to think is to only explore brand ideas with mock ups/concepts that are relevant to that specific company. For example, if it’s a online-only tech company don’t display vehicle mock ups etc. Just display mock ups that are relevant.
It is always best to collate your brand ideas and logo from 1 chosen idea first to see where your branding mock up imagery and logo will sit on the pages and fit in. Then you can use that 1st presentation as a template for the other logo ideas.
Useful links will be displayed for brand mock ups at the end of this post.
Presenting your ideas
Choose the first idea you wish to create a presentation for.
Start by planning and writing down how you want to display your idea and it’s conceptual explorations on each particular art board. For example…you could choose to display the 1. The Logo then 2. Logo Variations and then 3. Branding Stationary etc. This will help you distinguish what element or mock up will go where and create a journey for the client as they’re looking through the presentation and/or you are speaking through the presentation.
Once you have quickly written a list, start setting out your art boards (a good typical size would be 1000px x 800px). I personally like to use Adobe Illustrator. You should set as many art boards as your list requires.
Once you have set up your art boards and know which element will go where on each art board, you can now start to build your presentation.
A couple of initial key points….
- Set up your default cover page (This can usually be your name/company name and title of the rebrand project).
- Set up your page footer. Include the project name and content name on all pages. This adds a professional look.
- Watch your spacing! Make sure everything is consistent and follows a theme throughout, whether that is spacing, page footer, image grid style etc.
Present the ideas in a professional, clear and easy to understand manner. Tell a story from beginning to end. Show variation of each logo idea by brand exploration.
A Professional Brand Presentation
Now you have created your first professional brand presentation, you can use this as a template for the other chosen logos and any other re-brand and branding projects you may have in the future. Once you have your own styles branding presentation, it will be highly useful for you moving forward and allow to spend more time on the identity itself. However, we have to remember what i am explaining is good if you have limited time or work within an agency where designers can access assets and templates. If you have a less-strict project in terms of timescales or budgets, its always nice to create a custom layout and explore the brand even more in my opinion.
After all, you can’t hamper the creative juices once they’re flowing! :D
Shout-outs
A few little shout outs to people of whom I’ve found an interesting approach in terms of resourcefulness, branding inspiration and design experience in the past: Dustin Senos ✌️, Ramotion, Dmitry Kovalenko, Erigon, José Polanco, Bill S Kenney, Budi Harto Tanrim, Muhammad Ali Effendy
A few Useful Links
Thanks for reading my story, you can always follow me on Twitter. You can also check out my work on Dribbble or find out a bit about me: My Website
