What is branding? What is a logo design? And what is the difference between the two?
Great question! A brand is more than a logo or the written message. A brand is how a company expresses itself philosophically and the story it tells. It’s how it perceives itself. It’s how it wants to be perceived by it’s audience. A logo, on the other hand, is the company’s visual identity. And it should successfully communicate the brand’s message. Hence, a powerful logo is crucial in having a effective branding.
So basically logo and branding are the same??
Yep. It’s not just the logo! It’s branding too! And that’s why a well designed the logo is so important. Weather you’re a big company or small, you need to think about branding strategy as an extension of logo design.
So how do I get to know what my client wants?
I really try to get to know my client. To understand what their design needs are, we have meetings, I have them fill out questionnaires. We go back-and-forth via emails. If the project calls for field trips or market research, I do that too! All of this is a part of design process to thoroughly understand my client.
Once I get to know what my client wants and their vision is I will go ahead and start working on the design. I create three different concepts and present them to my client. After my client selects and finalizes the design we go back-and-forth and tweak it till it’s just perfect. I then deliver all the final files so my client!
Let’s look at the logo and branding for one of my clients: Mindful Carrot. Please see logo above.
The logo has the two R’s in the word carrot designed to reference a person but also a carrot. While the dots in the background reference a person in meditation i.e…mindfulness.
When I attended my client’s Pilates class as a part of research, I realized that she dabbed everybody’s yoga mat with essential oils. I loved this so much! I thought it made me mindful every time I inhaled. So to emphasize the word “mindfulness” in her marketing collateral, each one of her biz cards was waxed to infuse them with the smell of essential oils! What better way to have a person be mindful than to have them take a whiff of the essential oils? It’s so on brand for her!
Reach out to me if you’d like a unique design like that!
