An organization’s brand is its promise to its clientele. We ensure the written messages and visual elements that make up your brand identity help you consistently deliver on that promise.
Great Brands Take Great Stands
A flash sale can boost revenue in the short term. So can an expensive ad campaign. But do these “brand-aids” do anything to grow loyalty for ongoing, sustained success?
The most effective brands appeal to audiences in ways that transcend gimmicks. While helping organizations develop their brand identities, we encourage them to look beyond what they do and focus on why they do it. Whether you’re a nonprofit working to mitigate climate change or a national retailer ditching single-use plastic, standing boldly behind your principles helps you connect with customers who value purpose over price.
Our Process
Goals
We work with you to establish clear and measurable objectives for your brand identity.Discovery
Engaging in open dialog allows us to get to the bottom of who you are, what you do, and why you do it. In gaining foundational knowledge of your organization, we are able to help you shape your brand in a way that speaks to your target audiences while expanding and clarifying your vision.Moodboarding
Now that we understand where your brand is coming from, it’s time to find inspiration to help shape your new or refined brand identity. During this time, we seek out existing visual elements and messages to share with you. This gives you a preliminary sense of our vision for your brand while allowing you to provide feedback prior to getting too deep into the design process. It also ensures we are on the same page with subjective style preferences. After all, words like “modern, clean, and bold” can mean very different things to different people.Conceptualization
Most branding projects begin with a logo design (or redesign). During this phase, we sketch out numerous logo concepts which we self-edit down to the strongest concepts. The concepts worth sharing are rendered digitally and presented for you to offer feedback.Application
Once we have agreed on a direction for your logo, we begin experimenting with real-world examples. These can range from business-card layouts to mockups of basic website landing pages. Along the way, we experiment with fonts, colors, patterns, textures, and photo styles. By the end of this phase, we should have the visuals of your brand identity roughly accounted for.Refinement
Your brand’s visual elements should be close to defined at this point. Now it’s a matter of reviewing them together to make sure everything is working in visual harmony. If any conflicts are discovered, we smooth out the details to ensure your brand identity will remain consistent regardless of application.Delivery
A brand style guide that documents how to use your logo and other brand elements (fonts, colors, patterns, graphics, etc) is created and delivered with those various elements. If your branding project also included a component of written messaging, we will document brand language rules as well. All files are delivered via Dropbox for easy download.Training
We review your brand style guide with whomever produces your marketing and communication materials. This process allows that person to ask questions as we work to empower him or her to handle your brand’s everyday design needs in-house.Launch
Your new brand identity is ready to share with the world. Congratulations! You’re looking good.Support
Managing your brand can be challenging — and we’re here to help. Whether you’re needing an extra eye on something you’ve designed with your new style guide, or if you’re needing agency help with designing a new project, give us a shout. We’re proud of the ongoing relationships we’ve built with a number of wonderful clients.
Kind Words
“Status Forward has helped us transform our brand identity as we’ve evolved into being more than just a whitewater rafting company. Their creative and technical abilities have made measurable impacts on our business, especially online, where we’re booking more trips than ever.”
