Visual Branding
By Mandana Samii, Product Design Center, SAP AG – 02/21/2003
What's so special about visual branding? How does it work? A brief look into the basics of visual branding design, its complexity and its mission.
True enough, painstaking design effort and hefty budgets are being judiciously invested in ensuring that your washing machine, vacuum cleaner or car engine make a very special sound. The commercial aim of sound design is not always to reduce noise, but rather to make devices sound exactly like buyers expect their favorite product to sound.
But (except if you are branding a special product or service for blind users) the most basic, essential discipline involved in creating and maintaining a brand is and remains the visual branding. Why?
A single image delivers large amounts of information in a very short time because we perceive an image all at once, whereas reading or hearing the same amount of information often takes significantly longer. Hearing and reading are sequential activities which require time and attention, while seeing seems to "happen" without any special effort on the viewer's part. (In fact, trying NOT to see something that's in front of you requires some effort.)
Seeing is Feeling
The texture and feel of a physical product are important attributes of that object, but they are hard to mass-reproduce. Visuals can easily invoke the feelings associated with a certain material. A mere glance at a photograph showing Meret Oppenheim's "Fur Cup" is enough to know for certain that you'd rather not drink your tea from it.
Figure 1: Meret Oppenheim. Object. 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS)/Pro Litteris, Zurich Images, from the Website of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, www.moma.org
Oppenheim's famous surrealistic work of art was meant to cause disgust and rejection, but countless advertising images showing us close-ups of gleaming sun-tanned skin, rolling ocean waves, glistening plant leaves etc. use the same principle to stimulate positive feelings in our minds.
Even though we never decipher all the information available in a complex image at first glance, we do notice its dominant shapes, colors and general mood very quickly. Whether it's a photograph, a simple logo, a Website or the GUI of a software program, we involuntarily associate a mood and a certain character with what we see. This explains why it isn't possible to not communicate visually.
Colors, shapes and their arrangement create a mood, an ambiguous range of associations which, in turn, influence our emotional reaction toward what we see. This is true even when an image doesn't include any recognizable objects.
Figure 2: Detail of a painting (Click here for the complete image. Painting by the author.)
Regardless of how powerful or subtle the emotional experience, appearance never fails to influence the way we feel about something. The main goal of visual branding is to make sure the brand's appearance delivers the desired emotional reaction, and to avoid unwanted, negative effects.
Who, Where, When?
All types of visual communication involve aesthetic considerations, knowledge of the audience's visual habits and taste, technical restrictions imposed by the used reproduction media, and, of course, budget limitations.
Visual branding is much more complex – not only due to the quantity of the communication channels it serves, but also because it must cover some very important additional criteria, such as multicultural aspects of color and symbols, diverse target groups from different cultures as well as different visual preferences and tastes of subgroups belonging the same culture. Visual branding not only has to pay attention to technical requirements and restrictions of standard media, it must also adapt to new emerging technologies in reasonable time.
The long life span of any brand means that its visual manifestation must deal with changing visual trends, and accomodate to new technologies and media requirements, while remaining suitable for the brand's unforeseeable future products and services.
No such task can be fulfilled once and for all. Brand design is an ongoing challenge.
Finding the Right Appearance
Translating a brand personality into visuals which call up the desired associations in viewers' minds is a complex task which requires extensive knowledge of the basic effects of shape, color and composition. There are dozens of basic shapes, thousands of typefaces, millions of color tones, and countless possible ways to arrange and combine them with each other. Designers identify the most suitable basic elements and attributes which can express the desired characteristics of the brand, and use their creativity to find a unique, effective and flexible combination of those elements.
There are natural – or universal – associations evoked by shapes and colors that are common to all of us: A vertical line "stands" and seems assertive, even potentially aggressive. A diagonal line looks as though it's falling over, or suggests ascending or descending motion, while a horizontal line can't help but look calm and motionless. Curved and zigzag lines seem lively and dynamic compared to straight lines. A curved line also seems softer, a jagged one more aggressive. Stability needs a form which cannot topple and fall – a square rather than a trapeze, a triangle firmly standing on one leg rather than one balancing on one of its corners. A circle definitely looks less threatening than a sharp-tipped arrow or a triangle. The colors red and orange can't possibly look as cool and calm as light blue or green. Gray is always less stimulating than any saturated primary or secondary color, and so on. All these associations are derived from our daily interactions with the real world, as well as our inherited collective memory of our forefathers' experience with nature.
Figure 3: The Dutch Refugee Council's Website, a public-sector branding example from the Netherlands; www.vluchtelingenwerk.nl
Figure 3 demonstrates how visual attributes can achieve desired effects:
The subject of refugees is mostly associated with drama and problems, but Rotterdam-based
yzdesign chose a warm, bright mood for the Dutch Refugee Council's logo
and Website to make it easier for people to approach the subject and to emphasizes
the council's optimism and constructive work. The site's clearly structured
general layout, with its straight lines and geometric forms, describes the council's
well-organized character, while the logo's curved shapes add motion, flexibility
and vitality to the composition. The strong symbolic associations of the logo
represent the human aspects of the council's work. Its main branding colors,
orange and red, are eye-catching signal colors associated with urgency and danger
as well as passion and dedication. A well-tuned composition of visual attributes
to create a suitable and stimulating impression.
Divers Audiences
Since there are two sides to every communication, design must take its target groups' visual habits into consideration. The same sign often means different things to different people.
Whether you picture a bride dressed in white or red is a matter of local cultural habit. But even in societies where red would be the customary bridal color, the global influence of mass media may already have altered that tradition within some social groups. Internationally launched brands pay attention to the proper usage of color, symbols and wording in each of their major markets. Sometimes brand naming and visuals are also altered for certain regions.
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Figure 3: The German and the US versions of a Procter & Gamble brand. For German-speakers, the original American brand name sounds very much like a German obscenity. ©Procter & Gamble; images taken from www.apotheke-aktuell.at and www.walgreens.com
Even language-independent signs which seem universal to most people in large regions of the world may turn out to be either meaningless or highly unsuitable in some other regions.
Figure 4: The hand sign used in this product's appearance, widely known as an O.K. sign in northern Europe and the USA, is an insulting, obscene gesture in some places such as Sardinia, Greece and Iran. (Image from thebottlecapman.com, a crown cap collector's Website)
Technical Feasibility
Branding should establish a unique identity, yet be adaptable to all kinds of media. The same recognizable look and feel, character and identity must flow through all points of contact between the company or institution and its customers, users or clients. The branding concept must be translated into feasible visual, audio, tactile and interaction design. Considering the fast pace of change in media, technology and even taste, that is a real challenge.
For example, an airline's logo and key colors must look good when printed in multiple colors on their stationary or glossy product packaging, but the logo must also be applicable in a single color when printed on rough newspaper material and remain recognizable when branded into the leather of staff luggage. Because the key branding colors will ultimately appear on staff uniforms as well as on airplanes, they should be chosen carefully from a color matching system's catalogue of durable dyes, available for all these different purposes. Only then they will survive cleaning, sunlight and weather conditions for a reasonably long period of time, yet maintain precisely the right color. Needless to say, it must be possible to simulate the same colors on the company's Website.
Visual Brand Consistency in a Changing Environment
Sometimes conflicts arise when companies transfer their established branding rules to a new medium or technology. Should the original visual branding rules be followed to the letter even if that means compromising performance and ease of use?
The answer seems obvious, but it isn't that easy in practice. Take, for example, an enterprise which decides to apply its established visual branding rules, which were primarily designed for print media, to their new Website. For clients, customers and staff, using the Web platform only makes sense if they can benefit from the common advantages of the Web, such as e-mail, news updates, discussion groups, online access to job-related databases and transactions, or search tools for internal and external resources. The more complex the Web services, the higher the risk that bandwidth problems arise when the company insists on "dogmatic" loyalty to existing visual design details. Slow system performance will frustrate external users with older equipment and consume too much of a company's internal working time.
Endangering positive user experience cannot be the goal of brand consistency! In such cases it is a sound decision to allow a more flexible translation of the company's brand rules into the new platform. The message is: Identify and keep the core characteristics of your established branding design, while at the same time doing everything to satisfy the goals and expectations of the people who will use it.
To Change or Not to Change
On the other hand, how do we ensure consistent visual branding despite all the factors mentioned above that can easily lead us far away from the original identity of our branding? Exactly how much flexibility is too much?
Figure 5: The Nivea Website offers an interesting view on the brand's evolution since 1911. www.nivea.com (click image for larger view)
In the discussion over the necessity of adaptation or redesign, marketing experts and visual designers should resist being driven by new visual trends and mannerisms alone. Nor should they succumb to undifferentiated conservationism. Any alteration of a brand's appearance should be primarily designed to deliver the desired emotional reaction, avoid unwanted effects, and follow the needs and preferences of its target groups.
Figure 6: The home page of Nivea's current international Website, www.nivea.com (click image for larger view)
Final Word
All in all, the secret to successful visual branding lies in the consistency of the emotional message that it transmits to customers – across cultures, media, and design trends. On the customers' side, consistency builds trust and leads to brand loyalty. For companies, brand loyalty is desirable because it is the basis for stable and prosperous business relations.
