Recently, the Pantone Color Institute™ announced with much fanfare their “Color of the Year”. The ordained hue for 2017 is “Greenery”, which they describe as a “fresh and zesty yellowish green”, one of “nature’s neutrals”. Since 2012, this division of Pantone® has annually selected and promoted an individual color to the design industry for the coming year.

Just across the river in Alexandria, Virginia, the Color Marketing Group was established in 1962 as a not-for-profit international association for “color design professionals”. Both groups offer a range of services that analyze, forecast, and consult on color trends. This is a real asset to the designers, manufacturers, and marketers of the next generation of consumer goods. A brief survey of the past few decades illustrates these trends, reflected in everything from automobiles and make-up to fashion and home furnishings, as prominent colors burst into the marketplace only to fade away as passé.

There is a direct correlation between how successful or trendy a color is in the marketplace and how soon it will fade and be seen as out-of-style, old. The short life cycle of trends, including colors, are the lifeblood of manufacturers and marketers hawking lifestyle goods and services. They survive by inventing and promoting the next big thing we all must have. While identifying and exploiting color trends works well for the fast-paced consumer goods industry, it may be short sighted for long-term brand building in the less volatile world of non-profits, associations, and institutions.

Here’s where your design team can help by offering expert advice and consultation. What are the mission and vision of your organization, and how might your brand’s color choices reflect those values? Is it time for an evolution of your brand, or merely time to refresh and support an existing legacy identity? Careful consideration might also be given to the psychology of colors, or the international perception of certain hues in different cultural contexts. For example, the color of good luck is red in China, but it is green in the Middle East; in Indonesia, however, green is “the forbidden color”.

Color is one of the most powerful communication tools in graphic design. Use it wisely to differentiate and distinguish your organization, and not merely to be caught up in the latest fad.

“Neither a leader nor a follower be”

—with apologies to Shakespeare

Looking for some guidance on how color can enhance your identity? Email or call us at 301-776-2812 to start the conversation.

So your organization is going to rebrand; you’ve gathered and heard all stakeholders, assessed your motivations, determined your goals, and built consensus. Now what?
 
Timing is Everything
It’s always tempting to unveil something new at major conferences or events. What better way to show membership how their money has been spent than to launch a new website or present a new logo to an attentive crowd? And you CAN build a lot of buzz for your organization by doing just that—IF you’ve allowed enough time to do it right. As you’ve already learned, your brand is the composite portrait of who your organization is and the perception customers will have of you. Creating a new identity can take anywhere from three months to more than a year depending on the scope of the project, so it’s essential that companies plan ahead in order to best capitalize on the launch. Ideally, your design partner has been involved in your decision-making process thus far, but if not, now is the time to integrate them into your team. A good design firm can help you develop realistic timelines and set achievement targets to monitor progress along the way.
 
What to Expect
This is where the rubber meets the road. Whether you’ve decided to take your brand in an entirely new direction or evolve it by building on existing strengths, the process should include several key elements.
• The Logo—Using the knowledge gleaned through focused discussions, logo options can be presented to decision-makers. Through constructive feedback, ideas can be narrowed down and refined to arrive at the right solution for your organization.
• Language—What you say and how you say it is a crucial part of your brand identity. Your design team can advise you on adding or amending a tagline to support the logo, maintaining consistency of language and tone in your messaging, or energizing marketing copy.
• Visuals—Will you use photos or illustrations to share your vision with the world? What colors and fonts best reflect your corporate culture? In an increasingly visual and digital environment, ancillary graphics can speak volumes about your organization. Thoughtful curation of these elements by your designers can propel your brand to the fore of public awareness.
• Branding Standards—Launching your new identity is just the beginning; for a brand to resonate, it has to be nurtured and reinforced. Developing style guidelines that define what the elements of your identity are and how to use them arms your staff with an invaluable tool to consistently implement your brand and foster institutional buy-in.
 
Having helped numerous organizations develop lasting identities, Dever Designs has the experience to guide organizations through the process of creating or updating their brand. Ready to start? Visit deverdesigns.com or call 301-776-2812.

If you were to open a magazine and see an entirely blank page that contained only a swoosh image, you would likely immediately recognize the “Nike” logo.

Seeing the symbol may trigger thoughts of Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan or cause you to picture sweat-laden celebrity athletes training intensely.

That’s the beauty of a brand. It’s not just a logo. It’s not just a tagline. It is a composite portrait of who an organization is and the perception customers will have when they think of the elements of that brand.

Picture your brand as the face, voice and mind of your organization. The face is the visuals or graphics, the voice is your tagline identity, and the mind is your messaging and vision.

As a company reevaluates its branding, it must first consider if it’s trying to be evolutionary or revolutionary. In other words, is the company refreshing a brand with a strong history or legacy, or is their existing brand fatally flawed and in need of a complete overhaul?

Many organizations with well-established brands have modified their logos to make them usable across a wider range of mobile applications. Telecommunications leader AT&T has an iconic globe-shaped logo that was originally launched in 1983, then underwent updates in 1998, 2005 and 2016. In its most recent iteration, the AT&T logo incorporates a brighter blue, smoother curves, and improved positive/negative balance to better reflect its positioning as a global leader with powerful new acquisitions and partnerships.

If your company is evaluating its branding, we suggest following these essential steps.

1. Companies first need to slow down enough to have an awareness of who they are and who they want to be. Identify your vision and mission and make sure employees have a clear understanding of this. Uber recently rebranded in an effort redefine its reputation as a company that serves not only the luxury customer, but people from all walks of life.

2. Involve all key stakeholders in the initial meetings to ensure everyone is heard and is on the same page. When we were hired by a major university to save their floundering rebranding efforts, we made sure the president and vice presidents were all in the room at the inception of the project to ensure a consensus vision.

As a design firm, our goal is to visually represent your company’s mission. What we design for you should be a reflection of what we have heard from you.

A collaborative approach is essential, because we want our clients to feel vested in the process and have a sense of ownership.

Is your company interested in rebranding? Visit us at deverdesigns.com or call 301-776-2812.