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Why Is Brand Identity So Important In Product Design?
In today's highly competitive market, product design goes beyond functionality and aesthetics. To succeed, you must craft a strong visual identity and build emotional connections with users. Often, product designers overlook this aspect, leaving it to marketers and graphic designers after the product is complete. This approach can result in products that don't feel integrated with the brand and its story. At FLYNN, we believe the brand and product should be developed together, with brand values and visual identity woven into the product's DNA. This is crucial for commercial success, so we've written this blog to explain its importance and why partnering with a design consultancy that takes this approach is essential.
What is brand identity?
Before we delve into its importance, let's clarify what brand identity actually means. While it differs slightly from branding, the two are closely related. Branding encompasses the marketing efforts behind promoting your product, including logos, colors, and advertisements. On the other hand, brand identity is how the world perceives your company as a whole. It includes not just your branding but also the design of your products, your values, and any other elements you use to convey a specific image to your customers.
Your brand identity is the narrative that connects your product and company, evoking an emotional response from the customer when it’s done right.
Crafting recognition and loyalty
One of the immediate benefits of a strong and appealing brand identity is the recognition and loyalty it fosters. Consistency across marketing materials and product lines enables customers to easily identify and connect with your product at first glance. When done right, this can be so powerful that customers recognize your product instantly and want to buy it simply because it's made by your brand. Companies like Apple and Samsung have famously achieved this level of brand recognition.
This should always be the goal when developing a product. It is achieved by combining high-quality product design that exceeds expectations with a strong, compelling brand identity that triggers an emotional response in the customer. This creates a bond between them and your product or company, with emotion serving as the bridge that connects product and user and forms the foundation for long-term brand loyalty.
When a consumer recognizes a brand in a product, they begin to associate it with the qualities and values that the brand represents. This leads to higher sales, as people are more likely to choose a familiar brand. If two products are on the shelf, one from a recognized brand and one from an unknown brand, customers will often feel more comfortable choosing the familiar brand, even without considering the actual performance of the product. Therefore, even with the most basic products, it's crucial to ensure that your brand identity is evident in the design, making it recognizable as a symbol of high quality and value.
“People are 2.5 times more likely to choose a brand they recognize over one they don’t.”
Setting yourself apart in a saturated market
Most markets are saturated with similar products, so to stand out, your product needs to be different. This can be achieved through superior performance and aesthetics, but it can also be significantly enhanced by a strong brand identity. As we’ve previously discussed, brand identity helps a product tell a unique story. If this story resonates with customers and evokes emotion, it can set the product apart from its competitors.
A common problem in product design is imitation. Patents exist to protect intellectual property, but not every product has IP protection, especially simple ones. Consequently, when you develop a simple yet effective product, it often gets copied repeatedly by manufacturers, leading to a race to the bottom on price. However, a strong brand identity can help combat this issue. By creating a brand identity that embodies strong values and resonates with users, you build brand loyalty. This loyalty can be so strong that even when companies copy your product and sell it for less, customers will still choose the original and willingly pay a premium for it.
Consistency throughout
A strong brand identity ensures a consistent narrative across your physical product, marketing efforts, brand values, and future product lines. This allows customers to easily grasp your values and the message you convey. The interaction experience should remain the same whether the consumer engages with your website, mobile app, advertisements, or physical store. Such cohesion fosters a seamless reflection of your brand identity, making it more memorable and trustworthy to consumers.
How we get strong product-brand fusion
A crucial first step in our process is our product design for startup workshops and discovery audits for established brands. These sessions are part of our onboarding process, where we gather a deep understanding of the problem you want to solve, your company values, your market and competitors, your solutions, and your future ambitions. We optimize your project for success by starting with a well-defined brief. Just as a goldfish can never outgrow its bowl, a product can never be better than its brief, highlighting the importance of getting it right and why we feel people should be left to do this part without industry expertise.
Additionally, these sessions help us understand the image you want to project to your future customers, your brand values, and your vision for your company's appearance. This foundation allows us to begin the design process with a clear understanding of your brand identity and to craft the product's aesthetics accordingly.
We believe in developing the brand alongside the product to ensure a cohesive feel. By aligning forms, colors, and finishes with the brand identity, we create a harmonious product experience. For instance, if designing for a company focused on sustainability, trust, and future thinking, we would use organic forms inspired by nature, clean and modern aesthetics, sustainable materials, and light natural colors. These techniques convey the company's values to consumers, often on a subconscious level.
Key steps in building a strong brand identity
1. Analyzing the company and its market
We start by employing analysis techniques such as SWOT to examine the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is a crucial step in understanding the company's starting point, goals, and the strategies needed to achieve them.
2. Determining key goals
Identifying the key goals of your business is essential for crafting a brand identity that aligns with them. For instance, if your aim is to attract high-end luxury markets, your brand identity should evoke a sense of luxury and prestige, with products featuring high-end materials and unparalleled performance. By defining these goals early on, you can tailor your design to meet them effectively.
3. Identify your customers
Identifying your customers and creating detailed personas early on is crucial for tailoring the design of your product and brand identity to your target audience. By understanding who your customers are, their likes and dislikes, hobbies, jobs, and values, you can design and brand your product in away that evokes emotion and resonates deeply with them.
4. Determine the personality and message you want to portray
Once you know your goals and understand your customer base, you need to decide on an image that will appeal to your customers and align with your objectives. It’s crucial to choose a strong, clear direction rather than attempting to combine multiple traits, as this can dilute your brand identity, preventing it from standing out and forming strong connections.
In conclusion, when developing a new product, your brand identity should not be an afterthought; it must be woven into the DNA of the product. This identity creates a connection with the customer, evoking emotions, fostering brand loyalty, and differentiating you from the competition. At FLYNN, we consider this aspect of the design process critical, as it can determine whether a product becomes a top seller or fails to sell at all.
We provide businesses with product design consultancy, industrial design, prototype design & related services.