Brand Design

At Pivot, we believe in the value of curiosity and collaboration. We’ve seen first-hand how bringing together a diverse group of participants to share their knowledge, explore and discuss a wide set of ideas and perspectives, and participate in the design solution generation process can unleash their creative juices and collective powers. Whether we’re kicking off a project building our personas, consulting stakeholders, building a brand foundation, or co-designing and testing concepts, every session is carefully curated to enable knowledge exploration, project progress, problem solving, and better project outcomes

Personas are archetypal characters of real people who represent your audiences and, in the context of brand design, place a greater emphasis on decision making behavior. They explore audience needs, values, motivations, and pain points — and how these traits and experiences impact their decision making when purchasing a product or service. Personas allow us to get into the weeds of your target audience, see the world through their eyes, and bring an empathetic lens to our work. Throughout the design process, we refer back to our personas to ensure our strategic decisions are based on real needs, rather than assumptions, resulting in more targeted brand experiences.

To provide a superior brand experience across the board, you must gratify all stakeholders. Beyond just your customers, stakeholders represent anyone with an interest in your organisation, such as employees, investors, partners, vendors, and more. For an organisation to understand how they can improve, they must first understand the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions stakeholders have towards their brand. Stakeholders are fundamental to brand longevity and success. Otherwise, you’re overlooking critical opportunities for growth, proactive reputation management, and identifying unforeseen events that could impact your bottom line. Whether we’re conducting 1-on-1 interviews, surveys, focus groups or worksessions, we want to hear the good, bad and the ugly – without any bias.

Think of a Brand Audit like a checkup or physical, every once in a while we must consult a doctor to ensure everything is working and we’re fit to live a long and healthy life. For a brand to operate at peak performance, organisations must prioritize regular maintenance, management, checkups and, from time to time, a deep diagnostic examination. This is a comprehensive, objective process that should be conducted alongside supporting qualitative and quantitative research that considers both the internal and external factors that can impact a brand. Only then can we fully understand the state of a brand, evaluate and re-evaluate strategies, and set the baseline for success.

To develop an in-depth understanding of customers, seeing first hand how they act and behave in real-world scenarios and contexts can make or break a brand's success. In many cases, what customers say they do is very different from what they actually do. Additionally, depending on where you go geographically, there may be cultural shifts and differences in customer needs and preferences that could impact their experience. In the field, we’re a fly on the wall, observing customers’ in their natural habitat, listening and taking notes, asking questions—uncovering insights that we otherwise would have never encountered or understood. It’s our opportunity to view the brand experience through various lenses, interpret the experience in a way that considers the unique needs of the audience, and adjust and tailor the brand strategy accordingly.

In today's increasingly competitive industry landscape, simply being aware of your competitors isn’t enough to get ahead. Success depends on the ability to quickly identify and respond to the evolving needs of the market and customers. This requires developing a deep understanding of who your competitors are, what they do, how they do it, how they’ve been effective or ineffective, how they are perceived. Alongside a thorough Brand Audit and Stakeholder Research, the landscape data will show us your brand's precise position in the marketplace, its strengths and weaknesses, customer needs yet to be filled, and a clear path to delivering a superior, market leading brand experience.

A brand is not a logo, a colour palette, or website, it exists beyond any visual or communication vehicle—it’s the emotional connection your audience experiences at every interaction with your organisation. Similar to building a house, if you want to create a strong, durable, and long-lasting brand, it first requires a solid foundation. It’s a clear articulation of who you are, what you stand for, what makes you unique, and what you aspire to be—the fundamental framework on which the brand strategy is built. It ensures that you will never waiver on your brand promise, and audiences can trust that every experience will remain seamless and consistent.

At its most basic, a brand strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a company builds, communicates and maintains its brand identity in the market. And whether a company is a start-up introducing a nascent brand or a legacy corporation, a thoughtful brand strategy – anchored by research – is critical to success. It’s critical because it’s necessary to establish a strong brand position to differentiate a company from competitors. When creating a new or – revising an existing – brand, Pivot will work with you to develop a brand strategy that creates a design language that when used consistently across multiple audience touch-points creates an affinity with prospects and customers.

Moodboards are one of the most powerful tools at our disposal in the creative field and the first step to establishing a visual Identity of the brand. To ensure the design is an accurate representation of who you are and how you wish to be perceived, designers draw inspiration directly from the Brand Foundation to create a series of boards that each, in their own distinct way, capture the tone, look and feel for the visual identity. They explore the use of colour palettes, fonts, illustrations, photography, icons, graphics, patterns, and more. When put together in a certain way, can even elicit a targeted emotional response from users.

Creating a memorable and effective name is a crucial part of the branding process for any product, service or organization. The right name can capture the essence of a brand, differentiate it from competitors and resonate with audiences. However, developing a great name is not alway a straightforward task, it’s a creative process that is part science and part art. We excel at both, using a straightforward process which starts with gaining a deep understanding of the brand’s values, audience and competitive landscape. The ‘science' includes a deliberative process to identify associated keywords and concepts associated. The ‘art’ is then anchored in brainstorming sessions employing lateral thinking. We employ 5 principles in this filtering process: strategic, dimensional, credible, differentiated and memorable.

An identity is defined as an individual's distinguishing character or personality, and the same meaning applies to the identity of a brand. Once we have articulated who we are and what it is that makes us unique in the Brand Foundation, we can begin to develop a visual representation of how we wish to portray ourselves to the world, using elements such as colour palette, typography, illustrations and graphics to let our personality shine through. As we iterate through ideas and designs, we establish an overarching visual communications system that makes up and influences the brand, such as the logo, website, and all marketing communications collateral.

A logo is the smallest, most concise visual building block that represents your brand. It is the first opportunity to make a strong impression, differentiate yourself from your competitors and, over time, become the most recognizable feature. Armed with a strong understanding of who you are, your audiences, and your industry, designers take their time to brainstorm, ideate, sketch, and iterate through concepts. They explore different logo styles, such as wordmarks vs abstract vs cymbals, through to various typefaces, fonts, and colours. It is an interactive process that doesn’t end until we’ve come to a design that effectively communicates who you are, what you stand for, and why you are different.

The most successful brands in the world know how imperative it is for audiences to see who they are and what they do as one unified experience, arguably making the Brand Guidelines document the most valuable, widely used, internal document. Covering everything from how to communicate the right message in the right manner, tone, and voice; to strict rules on how, when, and where to use the brands’ visual elements, such as the logo, colour palette, typography, graphics, and icons; to how they are applied across all assets like business cards, brochures, websites, and social media–every department, employee, and stakeholder has a precise rulebook and definitive guide on how to represent the brand.

At Pivot, we work in partnership with our clients to balance the goals of the audience with the goals of the organization. From vision to strategy to execution, our iterative process ensures that design decisions are based on the needs, preferences and pain points of target audiences; and your unique value proposition is clearly articulated in a voice and tone that is representative of your brand. Whether we’re designing a website, educating audiences via motion video, planning a marketing campaign, packaging a product, or arming your sales team, Pivot always delivers compelling brand experiences that resonate with your audience and ensure consistent execution and messaging across all marketing communication channels.