Building Your Brand

Published in

Third Layer

18 min readApr 20, 2020

This article will help you develop the skills and teach you how to access the tools you need to build your brand; but before you can become a brand expert you will need to really understand the following:

The branding process
How brands work
How your brand will fit in the current market
How to reach out to experts when you get stuck

only then, will you be successful. So, allow me to walk you through — building your brand.

HOUSEKEEPING

Who is this for?

If you are embedded as an employee, this is for you. If you are providing a service to a client, this is for you. If you are looking to build, re-build, define, or refine a brand, this is for you. You don’t need to be a designer, though it would help, and you don’t need to be a marketer. You just need to be ambitious and teachable.

What You Will Need

Note taking tool, or pen and paper. A computer with keynote or some sort of powerpoint; because you will need to build a deck.

How Long Will it Take?

The 101 version of the class I teach is a couple of hours. This is the equivalent of that class. It may take you about a day to dive deep into this first lesson.

INTRODUCTION

Modern Brand Creation Model

Before I get into the lessons, allow me to break down the modern brand creation model in most companies. This is why most companies fail or struggle with their brand.

“just getting to the brand later,” is an absolute fallacy…

As you can see, in the image above, the brand creation process wasn't employed. This is a critical miss, causing a company to eventually fail. Brand impetus, is what most companies manage to do, which is create some sort of logo, but they don’t follow through and build the proper elements needed in a brand. They start and stop with just a logo; and by all definitions of the word, logo, they don’t even get that right.

The best place to start building a brand, is in the beginning, with the product. And, though you may hear otherwise, the concept of “just getting to the brand later,” is an absolute fallacy. You’ll learn why in this article. DON’T WAIT!

If you take the existing model, you will find their are moments you can interject and repair the brand. These moments are broken up into phases.

Phase 1

This is when the company has just started. This is the most optimal time to initiate the brand process because this is when its core is being developed.

Low cost $

Phase 2

Most companies look at their budgets and start hiring employees that will push branding at this point because the product has reached a level of maturity that gives the team the confidence they need to make the investment. Though this is not the most optimal time to intervene, it is certainly the best time after phase 1. The damage that has been done, by not having a solid brand, is still very minimal. The only downside is it will cost a pretty penny, even if you want to run the process in-house.

Very high costs $$$$$

Phase 3

Brand building at this phase, may prove to be extremely difficult. I usually, say no to this job, or say yes, barring we can just start fresh with a re-brand. From a cost point of view, double what you were quoted when you were at phase 2.

Very high costs $$$$$ ²

Phase 4

Costs will continue to rise, it’s not so much the work involved, it’s more so, the fact that you now have a deep rooted culture and cognitive biased set in, that the brand team will need to navigate through. This is a very arduous task, that will take a lot more time than normal, to complete successfully.

Very high costs $$$$$ ³

Phase 5

Of course, if you have reached phase 5, no amount of interjection will help repair the current state of affairs. I recommend packing up and tossing up the deuces ✌️ at this point. I say this with the utmost sincerity. You will need to fix the product first, and set the flags back to phase 3 or 4.

Because of this defunct process in branding, a new model has been introduced that will allow companies, to come out on top and hit hard as major contenders in the space they represent. It’s called Magic 8.

Magic 8

Take a look at the new model that everyone is kicking around these days; well, at least the more progressive startups are following this model.

“…the brand is the company’s most valuable asset, on a company’s balance sheet.”

The philosophy here is that you start the product with the brand. Instead of 2 engineers sitting in a garage creating a company, you’ll have those two engineers and a designer. This, is the pinnacle of business design, called Foundational Design, and not only is it proven to take you far, it sets you off in the right direction to build amazing products and creating a long lasting brand that sells itself, independent of the core product. Wait what? Yes. ;)

Here’s an article that breaks down what👉🏻 foundational design 👈🏻is.

Magic 8, allows you to have a continuous loop of reevaluation of your brand so you can constantly improve it. This ensures, you are also giving it the same amount of care and attention that your brand requires, by paring its evaluation periods with the core product. Design should lead this effort with Marketing and Product as the primary partners. A really important thing to mention is that: the brand is the company’s most valuable asset, on a company’s balance sheet; so you need to invest in it heavily.

Some designers, who specialize in foundational design, can get this done, because they are unicorns 🦄 , in the end-to-end process of design. Make sure they are licensed and have experience in foundational design. DM me if you want to become licensed or want to learn more about the foundational design certification process. Myself and my team are all licensed and trained experts in foundational design.

Engineer driven companies, that exclude design and fail to build a brand first.

Magic 8, allows a company to build it’s strength at the beginning, giving it a solid foundational core.

THE PROCESS

The Process

Building a brand is a multi-step process, so expect to build a timeline (or roadmap — buy the kit 🗳 here) that accounts for all the steps in the process.

Baseline*
Discovery
Definition
Ideation
Draft
Close
Deliver

*Not included in this course

BASELINE

If you have an existing brand, rate it and score it. If you need help with this reach out to me. This course is targeted to company’s that won’t have a score, or will have a score that is so low, you will need to skip this step. I teach baselining, just not in this course. Essentially, if you haven't reached product maturity or 1 million in sales, you wont really be in the ball park to run a baseline.

DISCOVERY

Why Build a Brand?

Each company is different, so there will be reasons that vary, based on what you need. In fact that’s part of the exercise of building a brand. Here’s a common set of reasons:

Reposition us to gain more sales and investment
Attract new investors
Increase revenue
Increase sales
Visually safeguard our brand
Have our brand match our audience better
Have more meaning to what our company stands for

Your task will be to setup a series of working sessions with the company (with key stakeholders) to extract the “why.” Once you have the why document it in your deck. Below, is an example of a why statement. Grab the Discovery kit here, on Gumroad.

Defining a Problem

After understanding why, you will need to clearly define what problem this will solve. Of course you need a brand to run a business properly, but why do you, or your client, want to venture down the path of creating a brand, what problem are you solving? Here’s an example of how you can formulate the problem statement.

Go through each of your why statements and turn them into problem statements.

Goals

Now set goals. Through a series of workshops, extract expecations from the team, in the form of a measurable goal. Like this:

Outline, in detail, how you expect to get here, come up with a clear plan of action, on how you will achieve each goal. This is a team effort, make sure you gather data and document, and let the team speak up and come up with the solutions. Your function is a facilitator. Now that you have documented the data you need, let’s move to the items you will need to create to build your brand system.

“…a brand system is 90% planning and 10% execution.”

The Brand System

A Brand System is the entire system needed to complete your brand. When you go through this process, you will find that the work required to build a brand system is 90% planning and 10% execution. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of what you would need, to build a solid brand system.

Core

Start here first. Make sure you run sessions with the top stakeholders, (CEO/CTO etc.) and understand what the mission is. This can be done by simply asking “how they define, the mission,” in 1–1 sessions. Take those sessions and compile and synthesize the data, to get a total picture of the company’s mission. Get them to define it. Meet as a group, review, and close on a single brand that they write as a group, it can change, you just want to get a version one, set in place to move on to the next step in the process.

PROTIP: You won’t perfect this right away. You most certainly can drive to a preliminary mission, but through the discovery process, you will gain more clarity and extract a hyper-refined mission. Then you can write a vision and values. If you run into issues, set a time box and create a basic place holder.

Attributes

Get the team to define what their attributes are, from a company perspective. Ask them what they love and hate from a perspective of other brands. Ask them the same question from a perspective of styles and aesthetics.

You can break out the results like this.

This will help you understand what direction to take when designing the brand.

You will need to ask a lot of questions with the team about the company. You want them to tell you what words come up when they think about the company. Over time, you will end up with a master set of words, and attributes, that will allow you to slowly uncover what the brand is all about, through the values of the people who help set the tone, and culture of the company.

Ask what words come to mind when they think of the company. This usually spawns many adjectives, and adverbs that will give you the master set list of attributes to work with. They should look like this.

Document the attributes in your working slide deck. Then work with the team to see patterns and begin clustering the like, attributes.

Condense the first set.

Find a pattern and further condense.

Condense again.

And condense again.

Now, simplify.

Then, from your master list, and during a live session, pick the top five attributes (no more than 5) that express the company’s values. These can emerge from the session and don’t necessarily need to come directly from your master attribute list.

Lock those down and document them, you will use them later.

Attribute Taxonomy

Now taxonomize attributes, not in a logical grouping, like you did earlier, but in the following categories:

Culture
Customer
Voice
Feeling
Impact
X-Factor

This will keep the team primed for the next exercise.

Brand Statement

Run a session with the team that helps them create a brand statement.

Again, just close! Time box the session, it’s not the final brand statement, just a start. Strong teams, won’t have an issue with this. Your strong leadership will also help you, speed up and close.

Document your brand statement and use it as guidance for all things brand, until you re-run the same exercise and change the existing statement.

Metrics

Define metrics that you will use to analyze your competitors. Here’s an example.

You will also want these to help you evaluate your brand and design effectiveness.

Define Any Technical Limitations

List out technical reasons why — you may run into difficulty, when producing your product. Document them as a team and create plans to address them.

Competitors

List out your competitors. You do have some; I promise.

Run through an analysis of each competitor, using a formula like this.

Then populate the data like so.

Define Your Customer

Take detailed time to define, clearly, who your customer is. Initially, it could be investors, that’s okay, but also include your core set of customers.

Define Regions of Focus

This just allows the team to further consider any issues that are related to logistics or demographics.

Create Protopersonas

Build out protopersonas based on the data you gathered.

Validate your protopersonas, with user testing, by interviewing (ethnographically) customers that may fit within your target demographic.

Create Empathy Maps

These will help guide you as you work on the brand and keep teams focused on how to build the product, with consideration to what the customer needs are.

You’ll want to fill out the form below, based on what you know and what you’ve observed. These don’t need to be 100% perfect, just get to a stable state of understanding of your customer.

Post these on gator boards, on the wall.

Now, you have enough data to create stylescapes. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

DEFINITION

Stylescapes

Stylescapes are the visual directions you want to take the brand in, based on your discovery work. Build out 3 directions that allow the team to make a choice on a direction, not a design, but a sensation of what the brand should emulate.

Take a look at some samples below.

Print these out at your preferred print shop, and present them directly to the team, in person.

You will need a designer for these.

Sketch Artboard size: 4032 x 756 pixels

Physical foam core print out size: 56 x 10.5 inches tall.

Your goal is to get the team to pare down options. That is all.

You will ask them what they like and don’t like, and get them to close on a decisions. Once they make a choice, this gives you the ability to start designing a logo, based on the desired direction.

You may be asking, “What do I put in the stylescape?”. Think magazine collage. You are trying to convey a sensation, nothing more. You can do this with typefaces, icons, images, cutouts, motifs, accoutrements, styles, colors, branding samples, and more. Go wild, just make sure the general spirit of what the brand. You should have 3 total to review with the team.

From a layout perspective, you do want to follow a right to left, large to small, principle. Take a look at the examples — here — to understand how these should look.

Mentally prep the team before you reveal the finalized stylescapes, so they know how to provide input and feedback.

Present them to the key stakeholders, around 9 or 10 am on a Monday or Tuesday, and provide a deadline, no later than Thursday (24–48 hours).

During the presentation, ask questions. Explore what motifs, accouterments, and elements, they like or dislike. What styles, do they like, what lettering do they like, etc. Use this data to inform what direction to take the brand in.

Once you have a direction, you are ready to design a logo.

IDEATION

Logo

Hire a professional, or better yet, several professionals to take your input from the deck you have compiled and data you have compiled, and amass a group of logos. Set up internal review sessions, and continue the process, repeatedly, isolated from the team and or clients, until you and the designers, nail down a few good contenders. You are now the director. You will need to work, exhaustively, to refine the brand, based on the high-quality detail you have about the brand. This could take up to a week, each push, that’s perfectly normal, but keep it time boxed to — no longer than a week and a half of ideation.

Draft

So, it has been about a week or so, and the design team you assembled, has been working hard on delivering logo, after logo to arrive to this point. So make sure you make a huge “to-do,” about this day!!

I usually order breakfast. I also get some amazing coffee, and the biggest conference room with multiple TV displays.

If you have the time, you can go with a few directions, but I have always been able to land on a single logo to present. So, shoot for one, unless you feel you need more direction.

There are many cool tools you can pick up to help with this presentation. Here are some:

Reveal easel
Laser pointer
3 way HDMI Splitter

These items are nice to haves, not required. ☺️

Closing

Similar to how you ran the stylescape sessions, get the team to nail down what they like, and help you refine how the logo looks. This needs to be very succinct, do not drag out the process. Drive to closure. Use the portions in my deck to present the logo.

Here’s what should be in the deck:

Where we started (talk about the previous logo)
Attributes (discuss the process and the attributes that helped drive to the logo you are about to reveal)
Colored Logo Centered
Black and white versions
Semiotics (show symbols within the logo)
Swag (show the logo on t-shirts, hats boxes)
Finish with the colored logo

As you reveal the logo, digitally on your slide deck, also unveil the physical foam core logos in the room.

Get the team to drive to closure. They may not like lines, curves, that’s okay. Note that and fix it later, but get them to give you their nits, and make those changes later. Leave this meeting making sure you land on some minor tweaks, but an agreement to the logo itself. If you get major pushback, call me. You may have botched the process. This design should be based on data you gathered and the teams input. This makes it hard to design something they won't like, but on rare occasions, it could happen. If so, you will need to preserve the bulk of the work and negotiate adding in or adjusting just a small part of the logo, not a total redo.

Here’s an example of what kinds of tweaks you may have. Take a look at the before and after of the Precisely logo I designed.

The team didn't like the spacing or the escutcheon, so we agreed that it just needed some tweaks.

Here’s where we landed.

I also showed them the geometry to help ease their math and spacing concerns. Spacing is optical, not with based. I spent time educating the team on this and they eventually grew to love the design. By the way, they won’t all like it right away, in fact, they will most like feel a little weird about it, but the ROI and likeability increases over time, somewhere around the 30–90 day mark. Once you get the logo approved, making a brand guidelines document will help a ton. Everyone will start to get onboard then.

For a really nice example, take a look at the Precisely👉🏻 brand guidelines document.

Brand Guidelines

This step is absolutely critical. You want to lock in your brand and make sure you know all possible scenarios that could come up, and account for them in this living document. Post it on the main website, under media assets, and allow your team and partners to use it.

Conclusion

That’s it! Once you’ve gone through this process, pat yourself on the back and take a break. This is a massive breadth of work, and it deserves to be celebrated, which means, now, after a quick break and celebration, your next focus is rebranding and launching your brand; but that’s an entirely different class.

Consulting

Reach out to Third Layer, by email at info@thirdlayer.io, or by phone at (800) 621–1713, if you need them to help you get your brand kicked off.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter or feel free to drop him a line, here, on Dribbble or LinkedIn.

Jonathan Bowman is a San Francisco based Product Design Leader, and accomplished author, with over 20 years of experience. He has worked with companies like, AT&T, Verizon, Amazon, Spotify, Arlo, TiVo, NETGEAR, and Virgin. He is a Director of UX design at Third Layer, where he has helped build hundreds of strong brands for startups, with the same process laid out in this article.