Designer's brand awareness: a good brand can be a belief

Why do we talk about brands?

This stems from one of the things that impresses me very much: the designer of a big company, who wrote an article on the iphone on the company's official blog, has been blamed by a reader for his "iphone" in the article. The reader was thrilled to reprimand the author and the company he was in, how unprofessional he was.

This thing makes me very guilty, because if let me go to fight, I also certainly will spell wrong. In this case, I have summed up three points: 1. Apple's brand is doing very well 2. We as designers of large companies, perhaps not other people imagine the professional 3. Only if you know how to respect the brand, others will respect your brand.

The role of the brand

As an ordinary designer, my understanding of the brand may be very superficial. I personally think: a good brand can become a belief: internal cohesion staff;

How does a brand unite employees? A good brand will attract professionals, and a good brand will increase employee loyalty; How does a brand build up its image? Good brands make users more trusting, and good brands add value to users (why do many people like to buy designer bags?) In fact, it is more important to have this brand to bring their own satisfaction.

Why should designers have brand awareness?

Brand management is actually a complex project. Logos, slogan, user experience, reputation and so on are all related to the brand. So who is responsible for the maintenance of the brand? Marketing Department? Department of Technology, design department?...... It seems that there is a reason to push to any department. Or is it not realistic to set up a department specifically?

In fact, to shape and maintain the brand depends on the efforts of all, but also consciously. For our designers, we really do not specialize in branding. But we can do our job to build a building block for the brand. What makes you different from other people? is every tiny spark.

What should designers do?

Many designers want their work to be unique and exquisite. But as a member of the product design, sometimes the correct expression is more important than the beautiful design. "The essence of creativity is to look for a better way to express it when it is available," says the inspirational-design iphone app. Good design follows the rules and is not bound by rules. Here are some of the design rules that I have recently summed up to enhance the brand image:

1, to ensure the relevance of

First of all, you have to make sure that you design something that is related to the product, not to do this is not a qualified work. It looks simple, but it's not easy to do. Because designers may not be able to really understand the product definition: Product features, target groups, product characteristics. In this way, it is possible to design a piece that looks gorgeous but is far from the product direction. So, to correctly understand the product.

Give an example of an iphone app logo. Logo to reflect the name of the product or function or features (the target group indirectly embodies the function or characteristics), do not get a "three not touch."

For reference products in the Web version (Facebook), entity Store (Starbucks) logo, through the picture description product name (Cellar mouse), directly to the function (not too easy to use the picture) written out (Pudding coupons), through the picture description of product nature (flashlight, cute mm Notepad); Draw on the style and material of the Application Interface (cellar) ... These methods can improve the recognition of products and the loyalty of users.

Here are two counter examples (purely personal insights):

Every time I click on the Beijing-east logo, I will involuntarily think of Taobao (and Jingdong Web version of the style is not much like, and Taobao is very similar) ... As for the second logo, can you guess what this application does?