Brandtastic

An issue often discussed in design is the concept of brand, which when dissected to its most basic principles boils down to name recognition. Research reveals people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing, and a brand provides the benefit of a previously established association.

Consumers have a preexisting knowledge of Kellogg's, for example, when they enter the grocery store: they've been bombarded with images, colors, and typefaces associated with the brand through advertisement long before they decided go shopping. A relationship has been established between consumer and product, and the familiarity that follows often encourages consumers to pay a premium to stick with what they know.

The information that relationship is based upon is often times irrelevant to the product itself. “A brand represents the holistic sum of all information about a product or group of products”, and if one's exposure thus far has been limited to the logo, name, and the jingle featured in every commercial, the information reflects more on the marketing team than the product itself. That information forms a powerful association, however, regardless how seemingly irrelevant or trivial.

This association is enormously beneficial to a supplier. When a consumer walks into a store and peruses the soap, the recognition of the Dove logo and form language compels them to look further, even before they consciously realize what it is they're looking at.

This is all old hat, of course; if you've worked in product design you are all too familiar with the zealous fervor with which “brand” is considered and guarded: “No, this is Kitchen Aid. Kitchen Aid is “quality you can feel”, yo. That means the knobs on the grill need to be at least the size of an infant's head, bigger if you can manage it.” or “Forcefully Gentle. Nuemay is Forcefully Gentle. Nevermind that the two terms are antonyms, marketing won't be happy unless the concepts look Forcefully Gentle”. At times it's a bit exhausting, but the more carefully-crafted- and in turn often repeated- the brand, the stronger the association made.

I think it's remarkable that many of us design students understand this concept quite well but fail to apply it to ourselves as designers. We are, after all, a product. When we look for a job, in theory, it would benefit us to use the same color, typeface, form, and presentation every time we update our portfolio (Damn, that Stefanussen girl's jingle is catchy. Let's give her a job!). The moment we put pen to paper in an attempt to begin a design career, we established a brand.

Our brand is the sum of everything we do as designers. It transcends the typeface and color scheme used in our portfolio, and includes our sketching style, the tone with which we write notes on our sketches, what we focus on in our projects, the way we dress, the way we speak with clients, the way we socialize with coworkers, the regard of other professionals, our past and present employment, and our performance at past and present employment.

There are five general reactions to a brand: brand rejection, brand non-recognition, brand recognition, brand preference, and brand loyalty. Failing to establish an online presence will likely result in brand non-recognition, dating three coworkers at the same time will probably result in brand rejection (OOPS), managing to not screw up a project might result in brand preference, and so on and so forth.

The goal, of course, is to achieve brand loyalty from clients in your industry. At this point in time your skills are deemed to be so kick-ass that people will hire and admire you even if, say, the juicer that made you famous only functions if the user is willing to drink his or her juice after it's been mopped up off the floor.

The products designed by a strong brand- be it a company or designer- can be recognized almost immediately, because those brands have worked hard to achieve consistency in their work and the presentation thereof. Popular examples would be Karim Rashid (bold, organic, pink, shaped like a peanut) Apple (white/aluminum, meticulously constructed, shaped like a box), and Eva Solo (geometric, metal, designed with the knowledge that it will be sold for approximately 13 times what it's worth).

How can we achieve this consistency while we're still learning to be designers? I hope to GOD my sketching style doesn't look the same in five years. Technical skills such as sketching and modeling will always be in a state of improvement, but our other assets as designers can be established now.

Our work ethic, willingness to cooperate, professionalism, charisma, creativity, and enthusiasm have already been judged by the companies we've interned for. I think more professionals than we realize have already developed associations with us as designers, be them positive or negative.

What we can do as students is to firstly, establish a positive association by producing the best work possible, and secondly, to capitalize on that association when the time comes with consistent work and a healthy amount of exposure. It's probably a good thing that we didn't keep our “logo” from freshman year and that we no longer use papyrus for our headers. After all, before tide figured out how to best advertise their product they needed to figure out how to make detergent.