"The most important thing for me is who your audience are, or rather, what the audience are interested in talking to you about. It gives you an idea of what kind of content you need to produce, and when you have that figured out -what are the digital channels, what platforms do I have to communicate? And the last bit is how do you measure that, how do you react to that in real time? "
This is a really good nugget of advice for someone like me who is considering a brand project, in particular the last sections about what digital channels are best and how can the customer react to it in real time. Any successful brand would have to create an experience that continues outwith the platform or the ideas of which go beyond whatever platform the experience is led by. Now I have to start asking myself how could I do that, although this may require me to already have a product or service in mind.
The next thing Mustafa talks about is focused on content, which gives some thought to why the designer creates a certain kind of content and for whom, and then, how can customers interact with the content.
"Who are your influences, what topics do they like to talk to you about. The second part is to figure out your content. Do you have content that these people would like to engage in? The third part….is looking at your whole ecosystem; can my customers interact with me in any device, in any channel, where that want. And the last bit is how you react to that in real time." Advice on different platforms for different content was also something to keep in mind for myself:
"…does that message work in this particular channel, how do people react to it? People on a mobile device might want to have the information in chunks, rather than a wall of text."
But with all this noted, branding is still so huge that at times I feel as if I don't know where to start. However in order to get the ball rolling for physical work I thought about what I could do, and after some suggestions from friends I have decided to try redesigning those godawful logos from "logo generator" websites. While a logo is by no means equivalent the brand as a whole, it can be a snapshot of the brand's overall identity. I think ideally the logo should be left until after the brand identity and values are identified as then it can be more informed, however doing a quick list of what kind of brand/audience I might want to target when I remake each logo could help in the short term.
Some examples of logos I screen grabbed with a view to making them over -
Cringe.
Another useful link for getting ideas was the New Blood Awards page on the D&AD website. Here, various brands were used in setting briefs to do with enhancing the user's interaction with the brand itself, whether on a physical level through interaction prototypes or an emotional level through cleverly orchestrated ad campaigns. While the competition is over for this year there are definitely briefs I am keen to respond to as part of development or even research of my honours project. I hope to get started on some of these next week.
Other research I have been doing which I'm still sorting through into a blog post is on advertising catalogues - I found a decent book in the library which discusses how the visuals of a catalog make the customer want to buy the products, even though they lack the physical element of clothes stores and such where we can reach out and touch before buying. A lot of it focuses on the brand's identity and the emotional connection it creates with it's catalogues which has been really useful so I will hopefully have a post up soon when I have scanned the images in. I have also bee reading "The Design of Everyday Things" and looking into the work of Debbie Milliman and Wally Olins among others; again, I will have posts on them soon as I collate the research into a blog post with some direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment