Brand Corporate Identity - Task 1 / Breaking Brand

5/4/2023 - 19/4/2023 (Week 1 - Week 3)

Anna Chin Siaw Fong / 0354370 
Brand Corporate Identity / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 1 / Breaking Brand

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LECTURES

Lecture 1 - Introduction

Brand Corporate Identity is an integral part of the graphic design discipline as it focuses on the visual integrity of a brand. 

"A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object or relationship."

Lecture 2 - Brand

What is a brand?

The term derives from the Old Norse word brandr or "to burn," and refers to the practice of branding livestock, which dates back more than 4000 years to the Indus Valley (aka Indus Valley Civilisation).

What we brand, how we brand it, and why we brand it has changed. But branding in the twenty-first century is still about taking ownership, and not just for property and products. It's about owning what your company values and represents, owning up to your shortcomings, and earning customer trust and loyalty through your words, your actions, and your stories.

A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company. While companies cannot control this process, they can influence it by communicating the qualities that make this product different than that product.

When enough people arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. In other words, a brand is not what you say it is. It is what they say it is. It is a mental construct shared by society about a product, service, organisation or even a person.

What is a brand identity?

Brand identity is the collection of all elements that a company creates to potray the right image to its consumer. Brand identity is different from "brand image" and "branding," even though these terms are sometimes treated as interchangeable.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of giving a meaning to specific organization, company, products or services by (actively) creating and shaping a brand in consumers' minds. It is a strategy designed by organizations to help people to quickly identify and experience their brand, and give them a reason to choose their product over the competition's.

Branding can be achieved through:

• Brand definition: purpose, values, promise
• Brand positioning statement: what your brand does, who you target, the benefits of brand, concise statement
• Brand identity: name, tone of voice, visual identity design
• Advertising & communications: TV, radio, magazines, outdoor ads, websites, mobile applications, etc.
• Product design
• Sponsors & partnerships
• In-store experience
• Workspace experience & management style
• Customer service
• Pricing strategy

What are the benefits of branding?

• Helps you stand out in a saturated market
• Gives you credibility
• You can charge what you're worth
• Leads to customer loyalty
• Leads to returning customers & referrals
• Consistency
• Attract ideal clients
• Save money & time
• Provides confidence in business
• Easier to introduce new products/services
• Provides a clear strategy to move forward

What is a designers' role in branding?

Designers play a pivotal role in the creation of a brand but they are part of a larger network of individuals collaborating to give voice and form to the brand. What is clear is that there can be no brand without the skill-sets a designer brings to the table. The visual identity that a designer creates constitues the face of the brand.

Your role is to give form to the content, strategy and messaging. For the designer, this means research (history of client and product, and understading the target market and more) and the development of a trademark.

To ensure consistency in message, a "design programme" is necessary to ensure a visual identity is developed that is coherent and cohesive in its application across products and services of the organisation or person.

The design programme is a crucial endeavour in every large and medium enterprise for branding to be effective. The role of the designer is to develop, envision, create a visual identity that is distinct, memorable, consistent, value-based, profit based, gives confidence, increases market-share, endears itself to the audience and wins the trust and loyalty of its audience. All this through good research and understanding and the development of an effective visual identity programme.

Lecture 3 - Types of Marks

Term: Logo

The term "logo" is short for logotype, design speaks for a trademark made from a custom lettered-word (logo is Greek for word). The term logo caught on with people because it sounds cool, but what people really mean is trademark, whether the term is a logo, symbol, monogram, emblem or other graphic device.

What is commonly (wrongly) understood is that a logo is a symbol made up of text and images that identifies a business/service/product/person. The general term logo refers to all marks that represent a brand. A logotype is a logo centred around a company name or initials. A logomark is a logo centered around a symbolic image or icon.

A signature is when a word and a symbol is combined, it is also known by its other term "combination mark". On the other hand, a "Logotype" is also sometimes called a wordmark, it is one and the same.

Term: Monogram

A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable "symbols" or "logos".

The original Greek meaning of the term "monogram" is a "single line", understood as something written or drawn in outline.

Term: Heraldry

Heraldry is a broad term, encompassing the design, display, and study of armorial bearings (known as armoury), together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. It is generally European in its origin. Even though the concept of symbols/seals/flags representing, royalty, armies, or empires is not exclusive to Europe, this particular style of composite of visual elements that make up the heraldic symbols is however Euro centric in nature.

From this comes related terms like: Crest, Coat of Arms, Insignia, etc.

Crest: A distinctive device that represents a family or corporate body, borne above the shield of a coat of arms or separately reproduced. 

Coat of Arms: A distinctive heraldic bearing or shield of a person, family, corporation or country.

Insignia: A distinguishable badge or 'emblem' of military rank, office or membership of an organisation.

Term: Mark

By itself it just means an impression made on a something, paper, wall, wood, etc. However when combined with another word, i.e. trademark, watermark, earmark, farm mark, ceramic mark, stonemasions' mark, hallmarks, printers' mark and furnitre marks.

These mark signifies ownership or identification. They represent the quality, ability and skill levels of its creator and with that comes a promise of excellence.

Today the term we are most familiar with is the "trademark" both in law and in branding. While the ambiguous term "logo" has usurped the term "trademark" in prominence amongst lay people, when it comes to the law ™ ® the term trademark reigns supreme.

In addition to the term trademark, the term servicemark ℠ in the US and a few other countries around the world carries legal weight.

A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representinga company or product. The function of a trademark is identification. Identification often takes place within a "design programme", both design programmes and "branding" are methods for controlling corporate identity, one at an organizational level, the other at product level.

A trademark is also used as legal protection against intellectual property infringement or theft. A service mark or servicemark in a trademark used in the United States and several other countries to identify a service rather than a product. Both "unregistered" marks (trademarks and servicemarks are temporary until the recognizable sign, design or expression which identifies product or services of a particular source becomes a registered trademark.

The registered trademark symbol, is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceeding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been successfully registered with a national trademark office.

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INSTRUCTIONS

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Task 1: Breaking Brand

For this exercise, we were to select an existing brand and deconstruct the brand. Anna Ong, Kwai Pin and I decided to form a group and work on this together. We chose Disney as our brand and began deconstructing the brand according to the given framework. We divided the task accordingly and began researching our parts. We compiled all our work in a Google Doc.

Fig 1.0 Task Distribution

Fig 1.1 Compiling information

After we are done compiling the information, I created slides using Canva.

Fig 1.2 Designing slides

Final Submission

Fig 1.3 Final Submission (Slides)

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FEEDBACK

• Research can be improved by breaking it down into bite-sized information
• Information should be paraphrased
• Try to add more visuals to brand communication strategies 

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REFLECTION

Experiences

Breaking down the brand Disney was an interesting task that required a combination of research and analysis. I had great experience working with my groupmates. They were all very proactive and efficient in doing work. We were able to get our work done quickly.

Observation

Through my research, I observed that Disney is more than just a brand; it is a cultural phenomenon. It has become synonymous with family-friendly entertainment, storytelling, and imagination. One of the key strengths of Disney is its ability to create emotional connections with its customers through its characters, films, and theme parks.

Findings

From doing this task, I found that Mickey Mouse was actually not the first character of Disney. I also found that Disney has been able to maintain its relevance and popularity by constantly innovating and adapting to new technologies and platforms.

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FURTHER READING

For further reading, I read this article about brand purpose.

Fig 1.4 Brand purpose article