Trends in Designing Brand Identities

The trends we are now witnessing in designing brand identities are the major disruptors that are shaping the new reality in which collaboration and humanity play the leading roles. The relationship between marketing and graphic design continues to be a crucial part of reaching the strategic goals of a company. When well done, marketing creates interest in a brand, and design communicates the brand.

Set your graphic design skills on a path of meaningful, different, and relevant potentials to position the brand and generate the most value share growth. As the market and our society transform themselves, the best brands are the ones that innovate continuously in response to geographical and political sceneries, culture, social changes, and scientific research. There is always “the next big tech thing” coming and with that the consequent changes to society. 

THE NEXT BIG THING!

Most of what was predicted last year has now become mainstream. “The next big thing” is already happening. Therefore, the relationship between design and marketing people is essential. The design needs marketing and marketing needs design. Both teams need to be appropriately aligned, working together to create surprising connections with the customer base. 

Talking briefly, there are some differences between the way marketers and designers view the results of a campaign. Marketers concentrate more on the content, the conversions to action, the brand tone, and the experience of the customer. Designers, by comparison, view the hierarchy of the elements in the visual image, the purpose of the presentation, the emotion it invokes, and the experience of the viewers. They both care about the final goals. But they use different tools to get there. Collaboration and humanity will help them reach the best solution. 

FOCUSING ON COLLABORATION

So, we ask. What makes a successful logo? What produces the best creative branding? Active collaboration between marketing and design infuses the content with images and the conversion to action with customer engagement. Furthermore, it helps the brand tone with targeted promises and responsibilities and the experience of the customers with delight. 

Similarly, active collaboration will help the designer produce fantastic content that will satisfy both parts and their brand goals. Some examples of collaboration cover areas like:

• Sit together during relevant marketing meetings to understand the strategy, sharing numbers like traffic, engagement rate leads generated, and so on.

• Identify the intended target audience to allow the designer to customise the design elements, photos, colours, and fonts to deliver the company’s message.

• Content affects how designers approach a project. So speak to designers after iterating and approval processes are done.

• Provide visual references and ideas on graphics and tables and not just words so that the designer can find the best fit for the various media. 

• Deliver reliable customer experiences to the designer so that competitive results can stand out. The excellent customer experience helps to strengthen the message and keep the brand consistent. 

• It empowers customers to look for the best user experiences. Designers help marketers enliven their stories with characters, colours, and shapes. They are working together to communicate their consistent voice to a listening audience.  

• Positive sharing of opinions produces excellent results in the selection of photos, colours, white space, typography, and other concepts in visual images. 

• Designers should always do their homework on marketing projects. A designer who understands the marketing process is precious, as they will produce effective user-centred designs and engage the end-user and their needs. 

• There must be a clear understanding of the need for deadlines and the number of revisions necessary for each project.

Active collaboration from designers and marketers is a sign of confidence and reliability in the building of your brand.

FOCUSING ON HUMANITY

Brands that focus on emotional connection, statistically, build customer loyalty because they respond to emotional needs, refine their target and are more disciplined in their approach. But we could ask, is there any relation between marketing, design, and design thinking?

Well, in this case, when both parts, marketing and design, systematically overlap and intersect when they put human desires, needs, interests and behaviour in the centre of their strategies, they are equivalent, as Dan Rammal says, to a match made in heaven. They both focus on the empathy and customer-centricity of design thinking. Both parts will be interested in ideation, problem-solving and testing.

Successful marketing campaigns create a good emotional connection with target customers. They also produce a good connection among the staff who will share experiences, values, and decisions on solutions through verbal and visual interpretations. This way, the company will build a better team more suitable to deal with the intended market.

It is beautiful to see how big this mix of perspectives, expertise and approaches can become. We are advancing in technology, but the future is still human. When we can work together, understand each other, and collaborate in our skills, we can deliver our goals and values that exceed expectations.

BIGGEST GRAPHIC DESIGN TRENDS

Venngage has made a beautiful creation with this infographic. Our style is a bit more colourful with splashes of yellow, coral and blue. The typographic focal points with bold faces scream strength and confidence to grab your attention. Futuristic patterns and colours create unique content with bright colour palettes, gradients, abstract patterns, holographic and reflective elements, geometric influences and much more.

You might have noticed the light and dark modes of some more prominent companies’ apps, just like Twitter has been doing since 2016, which helps reduce eye strain in low-lit environments. Or a light and dark colour scheme and white. New complex gradients and duotones feel right at home with the futuristic patterns.

Duotones are another good tactic that goes well with the trends. Technically speaking, “duotones are images that replace the whites and blacks in a photo with two colours” (Ryan McCready). They can be instrumental in creating effects in blogs. Colourful minimalism with light colours in the necessary components; is a new kind of minimalism ruled by colour and creativity to make it eye-catching but still with the atmosphere of minimalism.

Hand-drawn illustrations are great to stand your visual content out. And they are unique as no one else will be able to replicate your visual. Those illustrations are in the same high level of authentic and genuine stock photos. Photos that look like they were taken with your camera with an honest look, not just professional photos.  

As we can see, this year we will go radical, creating unique, genuine visual images. It is great to feel happy. And motivate our viewers to be satisfied.

SCIENCE INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE

It is incredible to see science interacting with people and not just replacing them and be able to use its resources in graphic design projects in ways we haven’t seen before. All the projects we list underneath are influencing brand development and industries these days. And graphic design has not been spared its dominant influence. Graphic design is essential because, without a proper plan, brands will not be able to engage the audience with their message.

Following a list of engaging mainstream advances and the companies using them as a source in the beautiful book of Alina Wheeler, “Designing Brand Identity”. There is much more in the very near future!

MAINSTREAM NEW TECHNOLOGIES

This technology provides us with tools to make our designs better. Let’s rejoice and approve of their developments and keep them as part of our world. This process is how our profession has developed since the beginning, moving with the times and the latest technological innovations, and keeping in mind the current needs of our clients. Please, leave some comments on this subject, too. It is great to share ideas.