The entire world of product design is changing. For those companies intent on making products that are enthusiastically received and championed over time, it's no further enough to simply logo design them so they really work well and are aesthetically pleasing. For a product to have stickiness in today's market it must reach consumers on a greater level.
Today's new breed of product designers understand that the important thing to successful, long lasting products lies, not merely in the design and feel of these, not merely in the event of these, but in the whole experience, from the initial contact in the store, to the product's ultimate disposal. At every stage, the experience should be meaningful and positive for the customer, fulfilling aspirations and emotions.
This trend in design, called "experience design", underscores, at its most basic level, the folly of having a reliable, aesthetically pleasing product and putting it in an aggressively sealed clam pack that's extremely difficult to open. It seems askance at such brand killers as poor customer support, badly written instructions and missing peripherals, such as batteries or mounting screws.
Frustrating and angering the client shouldn't be the main consumer experience at any level. Unfortunately, these negative touch points can occur anywhere, from misleading advertising, to poor merchandising, to difficulties in getting rid of the product.
Accomplishing a successful brand experience means reaching across disciplines. The marketing manager must certanly be on the same page with the product designer in addition to the client service manager, the supply chain manager, and the retailer; all parties must work in concert to accomplish the same goal by the same brand strategy.
The brand strategy, the overarching plan to handle the consumer's experience of the product is in the middle of experience design. But who conceives of and directs this strategy?
The very best brand strategies flourish in the fertile soil of collaboration. The gardener of the soil is the corporate executive responsible for product development. But just as an excellent gardener will nurture the many different plants in his garden, giving them the light and nourishment they have to blossom, the nice corporate brand strategist will recognize the talents and abilities of his team while marshalling them toward a standard goal based on an agreed upon brand strategy.
Working in teams is important to effective brand strategy, teams at every level. An even more apt analogy may be to a league, a confederation of teams, a group of teams, working together to accomplish a positive experience for the customer with the product. There's the marketing team, the merchandising team, the style team, the retailers, the shareholders, etc. If any one of these teams is not working effectively with the others the strategy bogs down.
This will present a significant challenge to the brand strategist, specially when some of the teams are independent entities with their very own agendas. Therefore it is incumbent on the brand strategist to obtain complete buy-in from all his teams, meaning communicating a coherent brand strategy, one with the power to go even probably the most stubborn holdout.
To make this happen, the brand strategist should assist the style team to anchor the strategy in the firm bedrock of consumer experience. One needs to know how the customer interacts with and feels about the product (or if the product is yet to be developed, similar products).
Today's product design firms routinely call on anthropologists to observe and evaluate consumer interactions with their products to find out ways to boost them, to fulfill aspirations and relate genuinely to positive emotions. This is not done in a vacuum.
Traditional focus groups too often count on a false environment, a corporate meeting room, a few words of advice, a video presentation, which does not observe the customer interacting with the product in an all natural way.
Anthropological field work - observing consumer interaction with the product in their very own environment - tells a much deeper story. Imagine following the customer through their first experience with a product, from finding a description of it online, to driving to the store, to searching the aisles because of it, to purchasing it, unpacking it, assembling it and using it.
Are there any negative touch points? Did the online description create the correct aspirations and expectations? Was the store conveniently located? Was the product properly categorized and simple to find? Was the price right? Was the product easy to get free from the package? Were the instructions adequate? Did it include the required peripherals? Did the appearance of it elicit positive associations? Was the event of it intuitive? Did it function in accordance with expectations?
An anthropologist dealing with a style firm will get answers to these questions. Working with the corporate brand strategist, the style team can help devise approaches to enhance the customer experience at every level. They could make suggestions which can be acquired and analyzed by the marketing team, the merchandising team, and others, on the way to designing a general brand strategy with the power to go all players.
So while the brand strategist works with many teams in his effort to create his strategy, one of many first teams he will want to consult with is the style team. Product design oftentimes becomes the catalyst to develop a coherent and powerful brand strategy.
Product design is a lot more than it used to be. Today's product design firms will work on a much broader canvas, incorporating the philosophy of experience design to help companies design products that relate genuinely to the consumer's emotions and aspirations. All things considered, delighting the client is the important thing to successful, long lasting products, and how you can a better bottom line.
A brandname is often identified by its design. Be it the logo, the design and feel of it or something that increases familiarity of the audience to the brand is essentially a design. While a brand's online presence greatly defines a lot of its strategies and approaches in today's world, it's imperative to remember to produce a powerful offline presence as well.
Creating any offline or online design needs certain factors to be used into consideration, the most important being consistency. Consistency is one factor that should pervade all offline and online sourced elements of the brand-website, storefront, social engagement, signage and any other vertical or horizontal collateral. The style should seamlessly transition from one source to another. Let us see some pointers to think about while designing a steady brand.
Creating a brandname guide does not essentially mean just adding up some information and a colour scheme. A brandname guide should consist of all the information regarding the chosen colour combination, the style and its source, how it is going to look like when written down and pen in addition to how it will appear on the digital media. A genuine brand should set the standards of your organization that covers most of the areas of your branding design.
A consistent design team that works on all of the business projects and its design factors is important to produce a seamless look. A logo or any such design element that is used across various platforms should be consistent in look and feel, wherever it's appearing. If your dedicated team is not fond of the style, communication with the audience too is going to be inconsistent. When a same design team is handling all the style processes, understanding the brand becomes super easy and communication becomes smooth.
A powerful brand strategy that conveys the business enterprise messages and serves because the backbone for the organisation's concepts and visualisations is essential. Developing a new service or stating a fresh campaign may require a brandname strategy that would take your organisation's identity forward and help the style team to help create a visionary story. A brandname strategy should resonate the voice of the business enterprise, what it represents and what sets it apart from its competition.
When creating an offline design that would go in prints, it is important to create designs in highest resolution. The images should not just be of high quality for the website, but usable for big prints as well. Your digital designs should seamlessly and easily translate to offline designs. Though many businesses start online, when one decides to develop, a great offline logo lays a solid foundation for the business. It's thus essential to plan an offline logo design that portrays your brand image and is print ready.