What’s involved in the designing and implementing of a brand identity?

Research:

Every project begins with learning about what you do and how you do it. I need to understand your market, your competitors and your USP (unique selling point). I usually send the client a questionnaire that will help with this phase.

Brand Persona (design brief)

To make sure that both the client and I are on the same page, aiming for the same star, I create a Who, What and Why scenario. This outlines the goals and objectives that need to be accomplished in order to call this project a success.

Inspiration:

After the initial research, I will allow the information to swim around and marinate for awhile. During this phase I will let my mind roam free though fields of images and designs, not necessarily in any one particular field, at times looking into other design fields such as product design, illustration and others, daring inspiration to hit me.

Conceptualizing & Development:

Now we can let our creative minds flex their muscles, brainstorming to come up with ideas and solutions that best fit the brand. This phase includes a session of mind mapping. After which we can put pencil to paper, start preliminary sketches of ideas developed in the previous step. Many of these sketches will end up face down in the trash, while others will be re-sketched and refined.

Once we have some good ideation sketches on paper that I am satisfied with, we can finally shape things up (make it pretty) by transferring these sketches to our computer.

Presenting:

Most of my clients prefer to see a couple concepts, which is presented to them. I do this by uploading the concepts to my site with a private URL, which they can review and comment.

Revising and Feedback:

The next stage is to revise the concept chosen by the client. After completing the changes, I present them to the client in a couple of different formats- Black & white, greyscale, single colour and full colour, each one may need to be used for a certain job.

Once a logo is finalized and full payment has been received, I send the client both vector files and raster image files via email.

Follow-up:

Yes at times I do follow up with clients I worked with in the past and vice-versa. Clients may get in touch for some design consulting or just say hello.