The Branding Masterclass for Graphic Designers: The Entire Process

1. Brand Design Masterclass Course Intro: The branding masterclass. This course covers all aspects of the brand design process, from sketching to portfolio presentations. There is not one thing this class leaves out. It is massive covering topics such as understanding client briefs, learning to ask the right questions, client and competitor research. Finding a target audience, creating a customer persona, finding a style direction, finding a brand's position in the market. Word association exercises, word mapping and other brainstorming activities. How to start sketching and sketching out different concepts. The select concepts for further development, the entire logo design process, picking the right typeface, gridding in a finalizing our logos, creating a logo system, creating a typographic system, creating a flexible color system. Understanding color psychology and its effect on brand design. Working with projects and mock-ups to further develop color palettes. Applying our brand systems to real-world projects. Creating and writing your brand voice and language, creating photography rules for brands, developing a full client presentation, creating a Behance portfolio case-study, understanding the basics, a brand standards and brand guidelines. And so much more. The brand development process plays a critical part of the marketing and success of a company. I want to show you not only what successful brand design looks like, but also how to brainstorm those concepts and ideas to finally turn that spark of an idea into a fully finished project ready for the client presentation, your portfolio, and the world. So this class gently guides you through this process with a practical real-world branding project. Using a case study for a sushi restaurant and delivery service. I created this course so you can start to offer branding packages to land bigger, higher paying clients and propeller to the next level in your design career. This course gives you the tools to know how to spark creativity, ideas, concepts, and put them into motion. We go over several tools to help prevent creator's block and to make it easy to come up with ideas that are relevant, authentic, and meaningful. Looking at blank pages never has to be scary again, you'll feel confident filling those pages with Finish Polish content that will wow your potential clients. We will work on building a finished case study presentation for you to start building a strong portfolio. We will work on creating both a client presentation and a brand guidelines manual to help people know how to use your brand design and identity system you developed. This course has a nice balance of theory and practical software projects. This classes for those who have taken any of my software courses or have basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and Adobe alternatives, as we will not cover beginner level software basics. This course comes loaded with a 50 page brand design guide that details the entire class and the easy to read accessible PDF. This course comes with a style presentation, Adobe Photoshop template and Adobe Illustrator brand presentation template and an Adobe Photoshop be hands portfolio template and more ready to serve. Charging more elevate your design offerings and changed the direction of a career. When to be a designer that understands both the business and design aspect of the branding process to craft strong brands. I will see you in the first lesson. 2. Course Guide and Student Facebook Group: Welcome to the course. I'm so glad you decided to join me for this adventure through the entire branding process. I wanted to quickly bring up a few important things. First of all, I have a new student Facebook group. This course has its own private group. I have around 20 thousand students in my man graphic design group, and it can be a bit busy in their this way with a smaller group, we can post our projects and have more personal branding related discussions. You can find the student Facebook group by typing in the branding masterclass student group and the Facebook search bar, you can post your progress there as well as in the Q and a and Discussion sections of the course. If you don't have Facebook, that's okay. Those community and discussion areas of the course we'll do just great. You can also tag me on Instagram at Lindsey marsh design so I can see your work that way too. I'm also active on Behance. So when we get to the Behance case study at the end of the course. I'd love to see your work there too. Secondly, the course project. I'll talk a little bit about this throughout the first section of the course. But I want you to do one of two things for your student brand design project. I want you to either download the sushi club client brief document and work through your own version of sushi club for the class and put your own spin and research with it. Or you can decide to use another client brief or make up your own. Ibm had students work on real paid client work throughout my courses as their student project. Either way, the goal is to have a nice portfolio case study for you by the end of the course. Lastly, downloadable resources. There's some pretty important downloadable resources in the class. Make sure to download them as you work throughout the course. We will start off with some theory and introduction sections and then move into some practical software portions of the course. I will use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the course, but you can use Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo as your alternatives. If you feel like that works best for you. There may be some Adobe specific tools I referenced, but most projects you can still work through with affinity tools. So let's get started with the course and I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Introduction To Brand Design: The brand development and brand design process plays critical parts of the marketing and the success of a company. I want to show you not only what successful brand design looks like, but also had a brainstorm these concepts and ideas. First of all, a simple question, you might think you know the answer to what is branding. The word branding comes from branding and animal. So a farmer or caretaker can take claim of their stock. This would include a series of numbers or another way to identify the cow. When you saw that number, everyone knew where that Cal belonged, even if it was found miles from its home. The same as the case for modern branding. You can take a look at any company asset like fliers, mobile websites or social media posts, and perhaps already find yourself familiar with the company that created it. We know this by looking at very memorable brands like Apple with their distinct Apple icon. But we also recognize Apple products and their user interfaces by its simplistic design and distinct look and colors can play big parts of this recall or brand memory for viewers, which, for example, uses his very unique bright purple colored icon. It only needs to be that purple icon on its homepage for w0, instantly identifiable, even without the company name being next to it. We mostly think of branding or identity design as the following items. A logo, you know, maybe a color palette, and some various marketing materials like letterheads and business cards. And while all of those play big parts of the overall brand design process, they just show the outer layer of the many layered brand onion, if you will. There is also brand language that needs to match the visuals. For instance, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, they have a heavy focus on social issues and sustainability. You cannot unwrap their visual branding from their brand language because they're one and the same. The headlines, words and phrases they use in their advertising's, and posters and flyers and social media are equal in importance to their appearance. We communicate with the viewer with both types. One, your brand language or how you write and communicate to the viewer and your visuals, which is going to be your graphics in your design. And this is why as a designer you need to think about this brand language. Because working with the client to write it, or crafted, or working already with written copy is important to be able to do so. All these are developed in tandem and they both harmonize. Along with a text and language that appears with the visuals. There's also emotions that brands evoke with their visual branding. Take for instance, the popular home exercise company called Pilloton. A quick review of their website and brand presentation gives us a higher end clean look, which caters to their target audience, which is mostly those with the ability to afford the almost $2 thousand bike and the monthly subscription fee. Notice the whitespace used throughout their layout. I noticed even their bike design is simple and clean and their videos are packed with quick transitions and energy. So the brand needs to echo that energy and all of their visual branding. In some cases, brand packaging can be very effective at communicating the brand's emotions, feelings, and language. This can be done by having a unique package size or form. Take for instance, the language they use on this. Can. I loved this brand? And they have a cute little simple phrases at the top and sides of the can that gives you this kind of youthful and playful vibe. Experience can play a big part of branding. The big unboxing craze that hit YouTube Many years ago, perfectly explains how important this experience can be for consumers. Take for instance, the unboxing of a subscription box. What does the outside of the box look like when I open it? Is there a greeting card that kicks off the unboxing experience? How is everything wrapped up? What type of paper do they use? Designers are the ones who help the crap all of these items and being able to develop and adhere to the brands feel and ethos is important. The quick takeaway to all of this as brand design, as multifaceted with so many different factors at play outside of just how it looks and what you as a designer to be able to think about and focus on all aspects of branding process. So you can be effective working on a team to do this, or crafting brand designs all on your own. We just reviewed how brands are more than just the logo and tagline. There's a brand language, there's product presentations, there's user experiences, and there's just so much to think about. The roles most graphic designers take in this process is the visual branding and trying to communicate the brand language with visuals. Your final deliverable or what most clients will expect from you, is a standard, predictable assets like logo design files, but it could range from package designs, marketing materials, the entire social media campaign. We're gonna take a look at fantastic looking visual branding examples to give us a little bit of inspiration Before we get working on our own example for the course. Most strong brand campaigns includes something called a unifying theme. That means all visuals are connected somehow through words, language, colors, shapes, or patterns. And take for instance, this one for a mall called River Mall. All visuals share a similar pattern throughout all the materials. What's great about this particular brand design example is they created a flexible design system that can adapt to so many different projects, sizes, and types. Instead of eliminate, limiting the client to a restricted set of usable assets, they expand that out to an infinite array of possibilities. You can see the unifying theme throughout this brand presentation. Not only does it feature set color palettes throughout, it has a geometric shape system they use to create patterns and shape of any type of size or surface. You may find that some designers even developed a custom icon set like for this coffee company brand. There is consistency in the thickness of the lines throughout the icon set that matches the more thin typeface used for the main logo type. The style of the logo can also echo and other design elements as well within the same brand system, this restaurant has a typeface as their main feature of their company. But it can also exist with a visual element, the chicken. It can exist as a vertical presentation or a horizontal. When a designer starts to extend the brand onto other items like menus or the interior wall design here, they need to have other brand elements to incorporate and tie everything together. Solid brand design has both structure and guidelines. You can see here with his clothing store company the rules of how to properly use the type size with a subheadings being set to 54.5% of the main header type size. There's some structure there. They call these brand guidelines for reason, it helps other people who may be involved with the design of future items for the company to know how to properly use it and to stay true to the original brands design, LFOs. We had a chance to see some great examples of brand design. And we're going to get more chances to see inspirational examples as we move throughout the course. We're going to be working with the entire Boolean design process. So make sure you download the 40 plus page guide. There'll be super-helpful for those who like to learn with offline materials or like to have something nearby to reference. The brand design process can be intense, but fear not. There are logical steps we walk through to go from this. Just an idea in our heads. Does something like this. Where it's welded together, it's finished, and it's ready to be executed. And we're going to walk through an example brand design project using a mock sushi restaurant called the sushi club. And we'll start with a good amount of research before we get started with any type of visual design work. 4. Introduction to Brand Design - Continued: I believe that some of the best concepts and ideas are not thought up at random. It, it's not like you can sit around a table and just brainstorm the perfect idea in the first five minutes. Well, maybe sometimes it can happen, but mostly it's about asking the right questions and receiving proper feedback from the company. And it's required to get that feedback to have a successful branding campaign. I encouraged deep and intense research into the industry and company before starting the brand design process or even touching the visuals. This gives you data to work with ideas and at least a general starting point. Without gathering proper information from your client, you will mostly find yourself guessing what they might like. When you guess you assume and fill in the blank with improper information. Research can go even further, especially in industries which you may not be entirely familiar with. Knowing what the company's competitors do can help you find those unique approaches to the visual branding that can help you stand out. Also understanding the unique proposition or unique offering the company has can help you spin your visuals and language to show off that advantage. We're gonna go into more detail on this later, but I love to visit or experience what my clients competitors offer firsthand. For example, are sushi restaurant example or work through throughout the section, I visited several different sushi restaurants in my local area. This was not to copy or emulate what they do, but to experience their process. In this case, experiencing the sushi consumption process. There are some enjoyable parts of the research base that could be nice surprises. If you allow yourself to be open and the experiences. You should never be expected to come up with an idea from thin air. There's always helpful starting points that can be generated by brainstorming. But most importantly, that research, there are several steps you can follow to gather enough research to start the brainstorming and concept development stage. But first things first, let's get the information we need from the client directly so we can move forward. And how the process usually works is one of two different ways. First of all, the client could have already done their homework and provided you with a fully written client brief that details a history of the company, some goals, perhaps a mission statement, maybe some desires and expectations for the brand design and development process. You could answer some of your questions before you even have to ask. That's great, but not all clients have this all figured out yet. There might be some clients that have just one person startups, or they could be the first time they've ever gone through this process. In that case, I like to send them a series of custom tailored questions that help to fill in any information gaps about the company, the goals, their missions, their desires, and their expectations. Questions will be different for each client. Sometimes you'll start off with some prior knowledge of the company if you already know it or it's already well known, or you may not have any information at all because the company hasn't really gotten off the ground yet. The goal of the questionnaires to ask questions that help you get familiar with what they offer, why they're different, discover possible target audiences, and any detailed information that's required like taglines and other unique situations. For example, we need to know if the client does not want us to use the color red. We do not know this. If we do not ask, imagine going through this whole brand design process with intense research to finally found out during the presentation that the CEO hates the color red. And guess what, you used red. Without gathering this information, we're making a tougher sell for us. There was a great show that streamed on Netflix called the pitch. And it was about two competing ad agencies pitching their brand concepts to a client that had a long history in the adult beverage industry. The owner told both agencies in the brief to not change the shape of their historic bottle design. It was very important to maintain that history and their package design. Let's just say one of the agencies pitching totally ignored the client's request for that. And they pitch this cool, wonderful looking advertising campaign and brand refresh. But they totally changed the brand's packaging bottled shape. They went against the one thing the client requested to remain the same. And let's just say they did not get the job and it didn't go well, you gotta listen to the clients. It's important and it's the only way to know what they're looking for is to simply ask. So now that we establish how important is to get that initial information from the client, let's go to our mock sushi restaurant client that we will work through throughout this entire class and ask them a series of general questions so we can go ahead and get started. 5. The Client Brief : You can download this client brief as an example in the downloadable resources in this class. So let's get started. This is the client brief, and this is a series of questions I asked to get some further information from the client as they did not provide a formal breed. So simple one, what is the company name and how would you like it to appear on your logo? Sushi club, authentically prepared. And it's kind of important to understand, authentically prepared is a little less important of the logo then the sushi club, it's kinda like a tagline and that's something we need to establish and get back with the client just to make sure authentically prepared isn't official tagline and not part of the full company name. Also, what industry are you end? We plan to start out as a full sushi delivery restaurant. We went to open a physical location shortly after launch to complement our delivery service. So that's really interesting. So they're going to start off as a full delivery restaurant. They hoped to be able to have patrons inside of physical store. So it's really important to kind of think of this branding process, of thinking about how important the delivery will be for them in advertising a delivery service. So we gotta think about in-store branding, but we also have to think about how they're to go items are going to be branded as well. So it's kind of a little bit more complicated and I'm glad we have that information. So they'll offer Mackey, shisha, Amy, and Nigeria style sushi along with traditional sushi side complements like at a mommy. So they're going to have a pretty simple menu. They sent us a sample menu. That's another great thing to ask for. What is their, they have a restaurant, you know, ask for a menu. If they're an online company, asked for the list of products. So it's really good to kind of know what they offer and become pretty familiar. So if I didn't know what Mackey was, you bet I'm going to Google that and figure out what's the difference between Mackey shushing Amy and Nigeria style. And it was able to find out that Mackey is the sushi roles that you traditionally associate with sushi. And she, she me is raw fish without any rice. It's just raw fish on a plate. And the jury style has the raw fish on top of rice, usually wrapped with seaweed or sometimes not wrapped it all depending on the style. So the next question is a standard question I put in all questionnaires because I think sometimes the client doesn't even know what their unique selling point is until you ask them and they have to think about it sometimes they know right away, but you really have to find this information because I think it really plays a huge part of positioning the brand design. So what is the unique selling point of your product? What makes them different? They say we promote a more authentic way of eating and preparing sushi that you might experience in Japan. We would like to bring that more authentic sushi preparation to American consumers. This is a great article that details some ways in which Eating and preparing sushi, the Japanese way, might be different from what you might have seen or practice yourself. So that's pretty cool. They gave us a nice detailed article. You bet I'm going to read that entire article. And it really kinda do some research about different ways you call sushi different ways to prepare it. This is the type of research that we need to be involved in. We really need to absorb ourselves into the Client Product and the industry and what they're offering. It's all a normal part of the research process. We will also prepare a sushi using Japanese made high-quality sushi knives called Inaki. Here's a basic website that details the look in function of the special knives. Okay, so there's another awesome article. And it's also nice if you don't know about the industry, you know, just just be blunt. Ask the client. Okay. I don't understand this part of your industry. I'm not familiar with it. Be honest. Let them educate you because they're the ones that are going to be able to educate you the best about their product. Sometimes if you go straight to Google, you're gonna get some misinformation. So it's better to go right to the client for that source. And the fishes freshly source to maintain quality everyday of operation. So when I'm reading this, I'm reading the feedback. I'm also starting to notice trends and common words that continue to prop up. And we're gonna get to some word mapping next. And we're gonna be able to take a lot of the words that the client is saying over and over. And we're going to be able to do this word mapping to help us find connecting words. And it's going to help with our overall brand design process. But I can already see authentic is obviously a word I'd like to explore further. And fresh. I've seen fresh, fresh, authentic to starting to see those kind of themes in their feedback. This is another required question of mine, is the target audience. And if you don't know who you're designing for, you're not going to be able to know how to properly put everything together. Is this going to be young millennials? Is this could be Gen X, Gen Z, all those different kind of generations. Is this an older population? What is your target audience? How much money do they make? What kinda discretionary income do they have? What do they wear? What? All these different things we want to know about our target, target audience. It can only be helpful. So they said their target audience is those who want good Japanese style sushi. Mackey, she, she, me and a jury style. They prefer the taste of fish over the flashy extra stuffing. We do not offer volcano roles and I've, I'm no sushi really well, but if I did not, I would definitely google volcano roles and find out that they're not really authentic Japanese sushi. It's just almost like a tomato sauce poured on top of sushi. It's very Americanized and silly. But they taste good. But that's not who they're trying to target too. So they don't offer volcano roles. And they, they, which is what you think of when you think of sushi. We do offer rice-based roles, but they will be made with simple ingredients and never more than 31 role. So visiting and doing research and go into different sushi restaurants. I discovered that they do kinda pack their sushi with lots of different ingredients. Which is usually kinda complicates the taste and you can't really taste the fish anymore. So that's kind of a unique selling point that I'm starting to see more with their target audience answer. Another good one is what is your price point? That also helps determine our target audience if they're super high price point than they might need to have a different reserved, higher-end, simple, elegant brand presentation. If there are more casual and they're the cheapest in their industry, is probably going to be kind of more fun, bright, casual kind of presentation. So this is important to kinda know where do they fall price point wise. So they said, we spend a good amount of money making sure we source organic fresh fish. And I'm noticing the word fresh again, so I am just making a note. Okay. They mentioned the word fresh a lot, but also soy, ginger, and other required ingredients to maximize the tasting experience. It's interesting they use the word experience and definitely going to take a note of that. This means we need to charge a slightly higher price than most other places that prepare sushi. That makes sense. I would say we do not have an ultra high price point, but higher than most. So they're not going to be the top and the industry, but they're going to be up there. Since we deliver, we're able to pass along the savings of low overhead to the consumer and still maintain our high-quality standards that sets good. They're gonna be competitive with other restaurants that might deliver, but they might be maybe 10% more. So we're not talking about a drastically expensive price points, so that's good to kind of consider. So another question I'd like to throw out there because he never know what the client's good to give back to you. They may not answer a question that happens a lot. But sometimes they answer and they, they, they give you some good feedback. But in this case style preferences. So they said we have no clue. We love a very traditional, simple, elegant look, but we also fear we will be seen as pretentious. So they're worried about looking to high-end and two, unaffordable and too expensive. So that is a very interesting statement they made. So I'm already starting to eliminate certain design looks and feels and experiences because they said that we can go this ultra sleek, simple look, but they're also don't want to be seen as too expensive either, so we have to be careful here. So they say they want to educate and offer this experience to all consumers interested regardless of their knowledge on the matter. So it sounds like they kinda want to be approachable. Approachable would be like a really good idea were to kinda think about. So as I'm reading this, I'm highlighting words, I'm copying and pasting into a document all these words and writing little notes about it. So I'm just going to write down that word, approachable and eye-catching. Of course, every client wants to be eye-catching who doesn't. So that doesn't help us too much. But perhaps when you present concepts, you can try out two different approaches so we can see what might be the best fit for us. So it looks like they're wanting to kind of have us experiment with styles a little bit to kinda see what they look Sounds like. They really don't know where they wanna go. Which can be a little challenging because we have to figure that out before we move too far into the process. So it sounds like I might need to develop a couple of style escapes are a couple of little style presentation. So they can kind of figure out where they land or where they think they belong style wise. So we have some work on our hands do and that is not a problem. So number one, they want to try a bright hip, fun, kinda like a power when you see it. We are delivery service and will most likely attract a younger crowd with this more fun, vibrant look. They're kind of dropping some hints about style ideas. Number Two, more reserved black used SIL graphic, something that would cater more toward our traditional routes. So those are two totally different styles and I think they're still trying to figure out where they land. I would love to find one in between to that can really cater to both 12. I think we can find and compromise on something like that. I think that they can have their cake and eat it too. And I think that our job as a designer is to find the right fit. So it might not be one, it might not be two, it might be a blend of the two. And I think I'm going to be the one to help them figure that out. So I know these two are totally different styles, but part of the branding process we go through with you will also help us shape our marketing strategy, price point, and other business decisions. So it sounds like they're at the very beginning of this process in terms of opening this restaurant. And we are going to help them figure out a lot of things already. So there's still not a 100% finite on everything about the company. And that's okay because that happens. What I like to do is I'd like to turn the tables and I want them to brainstorm a little bit too along with me. It's not just me that's responsible for brainstorming. I want them to get involved in the process as well. So I asked them words you think of when you think of your restaurant concept. So they went ahead and got back with the word authentic, which doesn't surprise me because I've seen that throughout the answers and it's a part of their tagline. So that's going to be an incredibly important word when we come up with their ideas and concepts for the logo design preparation. So the process, I guess the process experience, I guess would be a better word for prep. Preparation. Taste over quantity. Once again, I'm noticing the word taste come up again. So I'm going to write notes about the word taste. Fresh. Again. Stay authentic and fresh and taste are repetitive words. Delivery. So convenience and then less is better. So maybe not too crazy of a design, maybe kinda more of a simple look. Maybe just kind of started to think out loud and think through, through all the answers that they've given us. Outside of the logo and kind of some brand ideas, what else will we be needing? But they said menus for sure. Our menu will also need to be online, but also eventually in a printed form. So we gotta make sure we design a menu that's flexible for both formats. I would love to have an infographic detailing the authentic way to eat and prepare sushi. Maybe a bit of an education and different styles and names of sushi. Okay, that's interesting. Maybe in a format where we can place it on social media, but also on our website. I will want to see the brand on chopstick wrappers we have accompany already that can place the graphics on these, as well as other items that will come with a delivery kit, like boxes, bags, and napkins. So it sounds like we need to really work on some delivery branding. So bags, boxes and those chopsticks on that could be where we can test out our logo design once we get that finished as kind of a presentation for them so they can see it on the things that they need the most. So I already have some raw ideas and information and be able to write down from all of this. So I'm going to keep that on the side as I continue to gather more and more research to add to this. So next I like to kind of study the industry a little bit more. And the best way to do that is some competitor research. We talked about this before, how maybe visiting sushi restaurants would be a great way to experience this. But if your company isn't online company, there's fantastic ways to do some competitor research by just simply Googling the industry or Googling their name if they're already a business and finding out can comes up second, third, on Google. And kind of going through their competitors process. If they have an online checkout process, go through that online checkout process, you need to really be able to know what they offer and how maybe you can present something different for the client that you're doing. So competitor research is incredibly valuable. 6. Conducting Research : Experiences are a funny thing. Sometimes you can use a company's product or service and be able to quickly drum up interesting research. Sometimes you have to go out and just soak in the experience yourself. There's nothing like a holding a product in your hands and feeling the texture. Notice how it feels. Isn't heavy. Is it light? What does the packaging like? Is it rough? Smooth? Let's say we have a client that sells body wash. What other body wash bottles, what do they look like? Standing back into IL, which one catches my eye first. What flavors are they using? Cents. Am I seeing a theme among other bottle shapes? Do they use photos of the flavor or sent? If so, how big are those photos in relation to the rest of the bottle? How about, for example, a clothing brand? What does the fabric feel like? How did they place the logo on the TAC? What colors do they use? Recycled tags, plastic or the tags high gloss. How? Because the company name on the labels or the tags. This can also be applied to research in companies that are purely online. For example, a client that is creating a new streaming service that caters to dog lovers. I may browse One of the bigger, more successful video streaming services like Netflix. How's the experienced browsing and watching videos there? What does the logo look like on my phone? How does it compare to the experienced dreaming on TV? These give us clues to types of branded items we may need to produce for our client. And may also want to research web sites that cater to dog lovers to see how they presented their colors, logo, and brand elements. Combined together, we can find a way to create something blended and unique to our client. Since our sushi restaurant in delivery service will eventually be a physical store location. Let's research by visiting several restaurants to see how they handled their brand design and visuals. And, you know, I'm going to enjoy this process. One of the first things I like to notice is the restaurant signage connect easily read it from the street. Do I know what type of store or restaurant it is? Just by looking at their signage. What type of other visual aids like posters, wall silage are there on the outside of the store. What type of physical materials do they use for their interior design? Wood, bamboo, steel, concrete. Is it a dark or light facade? When I walk in, what is the vibe I get from the restaurant? This one, for example, had some beautiful architecture that really became a neat centerpiece. This one also had an online only menu with no physical menus present. And it is that most Asian restaurants had fairly complex menus and our client will have a much more simple menu. So I'm keeping track of all these different observations. This one had a really neat full color chopstick wrapper with a logo and some social media information on it. Most to go or take away bags I received when I order sushi online where the standard white plastic bags with no branded visuals on there. So I'm starting to see a really neat opportunity to add something to our delivery bags to make our experience more visually exciting. I'm also seeing the importance of a digital fully online menu as well as most places we're switching to a touchless menu system. Another sushi restaurant had a very unique concept that I've visited there called Cow fish burger. And funny enough, they serve both sushi and hamburgers. This is quite the opposite of our client, who wanted to just focus on sushi and keeping it peer and authentic. The dish I got was a bento box with sushi and other familiar items, but with a big burger in the center. It was odd, but it was an interesting experience and it was good to check out what others might be looking at when they Google nearby sushi places. Once again, I'm noticing the chopsticks had a wrapper to them and it was an online menu only as well at this restaurant. So I'm jotting down some of these notes and observing and both of these places in my notebook that may be land on my final restaurant to visit. It's a sushi place called becasue. It seemed like they took their sushi much more serious and it seems to have a similar ideas. Our client, they had a wonderful, slick-looking menu with reflective simple logo on the top. The inside pages, the menu used a special paper that had a really glossy, pearlescent quality to it. It was a very stunning and very nice. The price point was higher just like our client, but it wasn't out of this world. Hi, I'm really taking notes at this place. Their logo seems almost contemporary with a stretched out look to their lettering. And it gives it a very unique look from the road. I would not know it was a sushi place by just looking at the sign though. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. It could be a disadvantage. Our client has the name sushi in the name. So I feel like we're not gonna have that problem. The sign had very interesting topography presentation with that super long stretched out condensed looking custom typeface. The reddest striking from the sign and I liked how the black and red stood out. The great thing about Googling these restaurants is Google remembers your searches and it tries to re-target you with online ads. This means we'll get to study some of our competitors. Restaurant Ads are what people are looking for when they're looking for sushi or they enticing, do they work? What can I do different to make mine more appealing and focus on our unique approach to the authentic fresh tasting fish. I'm already starting to think about what type of photos with matcher unique concept as well. So let's do another competitive research example. Let's say we have a client that has an expensive restaurant that caters mostly to professionals that want to have a nice place to meet for business lunches. I'm gonna visit similar restaurant types and take notes. I happened to visit this one place for lunch and has the most stunning atmosphere. I notice there are many design, the typography in the layout of it. They also have really amazing cookies. Overall, the food match the brand design and I come away with a great perspective of what it might be like at my clients restaurant. This helps me put ideas together by brainstorming process. Remember ideas and concepts are never developed at random. These little nuggets of information we gathered through this research project process will all come together to form wonderful ideas with ease later on. 7. Target Audience : This next research idea can be optional and it's heavily used when doing user experience and user interface design, our UX UI design. But there's something we can do to help us establish our target audience. And that is to create a user persona, or in this case, a customer persona. We want to take the information the client gave us to put together and profile that lists basic stats about this potential customer, as well as possible goals, likes and dislikes. Being able to put a name to a face helps when we get to the concept and brainstorming phase. When we create a brand design, we always picture ourselves looking at the logo, but the client's product and services may not be for us. I think it is important to recognize that we may not be our client's target audience. I think a lot of designers assumed this role, but we need to step back and realize who we are designing this for. I want you to be as detailed as you like with these customer persona's. They need to feature possible age and job titles. A big question I get from people is due just make all this up. Well, you're going to need some data and hopefully your client has provided you with some or you can ask for it. If not, you can always research trends and certain age demographics as well. You can do surveys, you can make calls to those you know, who might be close to this target customer? Multiple user persona's? Yes, you can have multiple different customer types. Therefore, it's natural to add multiple user personas that help you better represent your varied target audience. The goals for these user personas, or in some cases, you can call them a customer persona or a client persona, depending on your client's industry. It's to help us see a person behind our design decisions later on. Our brand design is meant for someone or a group of people. And it's great to be able to visualize them. And it goes a long way. I am here in the brand guide and I'm gonna go ahead and get into this page that talks about defining your target audience. We talked a little bit about the user persona's and how it's great to develop a couple of them before we get started into the brainstorming process. But I wanted to talk about mood, just showing you kind of an example of a user persona in action. And I almost always like to put a photo on these because I think it's important to be able to put that visual to a name so that when we start to brainstorm, we can just have them in her head and have them in our mind. So you could just go on pixels.com or on Splash.com and just find someone you feel like would connect well with the brand after you've done some research. So of course, with a photo, I like to put a name, give them a name, but give them a name that's popular among their age group or, or, or whatever we want to do there. And also loved to give them a title. What are they, you know, and it doesn't always have to be a job title. Sometimes it's nicer but a job title, but sometimes it could just be the kind of personality they have. In this case is it's the professional foodie. So she just loves to kind of go out and write about food experiences. She loves food. But it may or may not be an actual title and could just kinda be a personality type. So I like to list some general facts. So she's has an age, she's 36, she's single. Her occupation. She's in banking, and she makes a pretty decent income. And that's really important because people who are making under 20 thousand a year, they may not be our target audience, and those making over 200 thousand a year might not be your target audience. So we need to figure out who are we targeting. It's gonna really help when we're coming up with marketing campaigns and when we're coming up with social media campaigns, who are we targeting? This can be really helpful to try to figure this out. Location. She's in the United States. Our restaurant is going to just start out in the United States. So it's kinda, kinda helps narrow things down for us. Education's important. So she has a bachelor or greater, and that kind of matches up with our income. I mean, none of this is set in stone for her, but it's this kind of helpful to guess kind of the education level she might have. That doesn't mean that we're stuck with only targeting people who have a bachelor's degree. That's not the case at all. There could be multiple user personas and this, this is just one example. So another thing I like to do is talk about their goals in life. What are their goals? This is when it gets a little bit more creative there you're kind of writing a story for her. You're, you're writing it's more of the Xi's is more than just facts. She's more than just statistics. There is a real person who has goals, insights, and passions in her life. And this is where we want to kinda write and craft that story. So for goals, just an idea is a professional who wants to reduce time cooking and preparing food. So she's she's busy. She doesn't have time to sit here and have a really good food. But she's a foodie and she wants high-quality food, but she may not have time to cook it. So that's where this kind of restaurant can really help her, especially with their delivery service. She desires a high-quality fresh food. Notice the word refreshes and there you're starting to see these words used repetitively on purpose. She has a desire for sushi and visits a sushi place at least once a week. So she's already kind of a fan of sushi. She understands it already. It's not new to her. She is a foodie by the way. So it all kinda connects values. So she wants to have work-life balance. And so being able to get fresh sushi delivered or go for a quick bite to eat at lunch is valuable to her. She also likes health and nutrition and raw fish can be some of the healthiest food in the world, along with rice and the other side items they offer on their menu. This is a very healthy place to eat. Food is an experience, and it's not just for sustenance. So this kinda goes back to her personality being a professional foodie. She eats food because she really enjoys it. She doesn't eat it just because it has a certain amount of calories she needs each day as an important part of her life. And some people are built that way. Some people just love to eat food and I'm one of those people, I just enjoy the eating experience. And so this really helps us figure out who this person is and some of the motivations behind her going out and getting sushi. So everybody in life has problems, and that means they have some problem-solving opportunities. These are problems that we can solve with our unique concept and product or service. So if you have a client that walks dogs and you have a problem of not feeling like your pet gets enough attention when you're gone at work. Well, that's a problem that I have, that you have a solution or product for that can solve it. So that's how you have to think what these problem-solving opportunities. So she wishes she did not have to spend so much time preparing and cooking meals as she already has just a few hours of the evenings to hang out with friends and she didn't have a lot of downtime. So we're going to be solving that issue by providing a delivery service. She loved sushi and visits to fantastic places in town she thinks has the best sushi. She feels like she is missing the quality component of the sushi she eats. So she's eating at these places that have really Americanized sushi. And our place has that unique idea of just really focusing on really high-quality fresh fish and now putting a bunch of junk on it and, and all these other ingredients just really focusing on high-quality sushi. So that would definitely solve one of her problems. Another opportunity is she would love to have great quality fresh sushi delivered, but she's a little wary of trusting a local place to deliver it. There's the idea that delivery sushi is not going to test taste as fresh as visiting the restaurant. So this could be an educational opportunity for us when we're developing our brand language, we're writing our ad copy. Perhaps we can position our company to resolve this idea that delivery is not going to be as fresh. And so we have to find some way to maybe think about that in the future to say, okay, we are fresh, even though it takes 20 minutes to get to your door, we can use an app called door dash, which can really get your order super quick to you. And the fish is still going to have a slight chill to it. It's going to be nice and fresh. So that's kind of an education opportunity that we discovered by kind of walking through this user persona exercise. So why did we take the time to put all these user personas together? I like to craft it in a really nice professional way because when I do my presentation to the client a little bit later on, I think this really helps to add professional layer to my presentation because once again, I'm proving to my client I'm more than just a graphic designer. I'm thinking about the whole marketing branding strategy piece and that's what makes me different and that's why I can charge a little bit higher prices. Because I worked through all these different steps that other graphic designers are just not doing with their work. So if I can provide this, this is what ad agencies go through all these little detailed steps. It seems like a lot of extra work, but you can charge more money, can get bigger clients this way. This is the kind of stuff when you start to get large clients. This is expecting and this is what big ad agencies tried to do as well. So I'm just trying to show you this little bit more expert level presentation. I think this goes such a long way into to proving to the client, you're really thinking through this, that you're not developing concepts at random, that there's a process and there's a little bit of order to your creative process. 8. Finding Direction : If you're lucky, the client is very detailed in how they describe what they're looking for. But in our case, our client pretty much admitted that they don't know what they want and they don't know what they're looking for style wise, which is very common. It's gonna be up to us to help guide them through figuring out what they want. And as they say, clients do not know what they want sometimes until they see it. And this is where something called style escapes. Our brand style presentation was come in handy. You may have also heard the name brand boards, mood boards, and inspiration boards. All of those basically are the same thing, that they quickly and clearly defined and show a particular design style. The presentation is simple and almost always shown with one large image or page. At this stage, we have not tackled any sort of design tasks ourselves. What we need to do is curate our photos and items from other sources. This is mostly just between you and the client to find a general direction on style and look. So