Creating brand systems.
A brand system is how the brand elements work together to create a remarkable design. It's how all the components of the design live together to visualize a brand.
The term branding becomes more and more popular every day since businesses need to grasp more of it to survive in a sea of competition. More often than not, people with a non-design background have at least a vague idea of what branding implies. However, very few people know what a brand system entails.
The branding of a product or service usually consists of a logotype, color palette, typography curatorship, and any other element needed to create a solid connection with the final consumer. These may include icon sets, illustrations, patterns, textures, and so on. If well done, these characteristics start to embed in people’s minds, hence positioning the brand and making it recognizable.
The secret to playing around with all of these elements is the creation of a consistent brand system. A brand system is how the brand elements work together to create a remarkable design. It’s how all the components of the design live together to visualize a brand. It’s one thing to curate a beautiful color palette, but it’s a whole different story to make it work with the main features and goals of the brand.
The stronger a brand system is, the easiest it is to replicate and recognize. This creates consistency among assets and different channels, thus boosting the brand’s message. If a very complex system is developed, as designers we may jeopardize its replicability. The moment someone else has to reproduce the system, details may get lost in the way. For this reason, it’s fundamental to keep a coherent and straightforward mindset.
Overall the idea of a solid brand system is to keep it so clear, that no one doubt rises while replicating. The use of all the brand assets is so straightforward that having someone else work with the brand system comes effortlessly. As designers, we tend to focus more on the aesthetic side of things, however, if we want our brand to transcend keeping its reproduction clear, strong and simple is key.
Aside from a brand book, creating a document that explains how to use the graphic assets is very helpful while trying to make a brand easy to reproduce. In tbpmx we call this document Master Graphic. It consists of thorough examples and visualizations of how the assets can be used across multiple channels and applications. Making the use of each element pretty evident.