Presentations For Getting Buy–In For Design
We don’t understand how to make Web content both usable and persuasive. I, by no means, intend to imply that we should sacrifice the usability of content to make it more persuasive. Truly winning content must be both.
— Turn Usable Content into Winning Content
There are a lot of misconceptions about design. When you put the word information with design, the misconception rate goes up exponentially. Honestly, if it weren’t for the myths about design, the word design would have no meaning whatsoever for most people.
So here you can find simple design ideas in short presentations. Since some of these design presentations tackle touchy issues, the style is a sugar coating designed to get the medicine delivered.
Use the style and simple ideas in these presentations to your advantage. Each takes on a real problem design can help with in your company.
- 01
The Experiment: Force a Logo To Carry The Brand
Have a logo do everything which should be done with policy design, product design, content and business strategy. Bob, the designer, reluctantly went along with this violation of the fundamentals of marketing and design. - 02
An Unfortunate Convergence
The combination of stock photography cliché and graphic fads may have combined with the platitudes from a nearby motivational poster to muliply the bandwagon effect a thousandfold… - 03
Brand Eating Zombies Arise
…Creating a virus which devours brand coherency. Logo artwork separates from the business identity in the mind of customers. Cost cutting and tehnocentric policies eat into brand positioning, causing dissonance. - 04
Desperate Measures: Planning and Testing
Business identity is the designable part of a branding effort, which happens through testing designs with customers. Message–to–market match trumps pretty. Seek out sources of brand dissonance. - 05
Designing Simple Brand “Triangulations”
A position of service could triangulate on 1) Client dashboard for looking at key indicators across web invoices 2) A value proposition focussing on from three to seven points 3) A logo with design elements which equal the number from step two. - 06
Think Heraldry 2.0, Not Abstract Art
Don’t Web 2.0 the logo when the company is stuck on business 1.0. The logo design is a visual memory prompt to recall the meaningful brand promise or unique selling proposition. Too many logos are branding Web 2.0, not the company’s value proposition. - 07
Don’t Design In a Vacuum
Test a logo within the context of competing companies and limited user attention. Put your logo design into a field of likely candidates and measure the time customers take to identify yours. Test for what customers identify, not personal preferences. - 08
Art is Expression, Design is Connection
Connect the brand with everything your company does. Make sure customers identify the same brand attributes in products, packaging, invoice design, how the phones are answered and customer services. Enforce design consistency across media. - 09
Replace Motivation Posters With Infographics
Explaining the motivational requirements keeps employees focussed on customer valued factors supporting brand strategy. Substance beats superficiality and imunizes against zombification. - 10
The End?
The price of a company free of brand eating zombies is eternal vigilance.
Branding A Design Is Not Branding Through Design
A brand is neither a goal nor a means, but a result. It’s a byproduct of performance—specifically, of consistent delivery against a differentiating, relevant benefit. “Differentiating” being defined as a benefit the competition doesn’t offer, or at least not as well or much. And “relevant” defined as a difference the target audience actually cares about—something that is a factor in the decision to buy, or to remain a customer. …Chief marketing officers who allow themselves to be pigeonholed in the long–term brand equity box are likely to find themselves soon “pursuing other interests.”
— Merchants Vs. Marketers, Forbes
Most companies will say whatever they do is “branding.” Unless they’re very careful to design with a consistent brand message, conflicting signals will nullify branding efforts. Business identities form in the mind of customers, who are the final arbiter of whether branding works or not.
Consequently your brand is a social interface, not unlike a software interface. The issue is figuring out what parts of a user experience are under your control and to design (and test with customers) accordingly.
Resources
- Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors explains the psychology of how brands happen in the mind of customers.
- iPhone Launch, AT&T Vs. Apple Store explains the brand presence forged by such mundane factors as the design of your billing statement. Org Chart 2.0: Built for User Experience Systems explains the 2.0 shows up in the business design first, logo design after.
- The Forbes magazine article Merchants Vs. Marketers explains branding through design is more in line with pragmatic business goals.
- Most Designers aren’t Design Thinkers – Yet argues, before clients can climb the design maturity ladder, designers have to lead. Andy Rutledge describes “…the logo is the most abused, misapplied, misconceived, wrongfully distracting element of design and business today.” Many companies are relying on a graphics program when they should be looking at whole business design.
- A List Apart has a singular tagline, “for people who make web sites.” That’s why it comes as a surprise when you find out ALA has an entire section dedicated to writing. Perhaps not so surprising when you read text is interface and web designers should learn to write. Nor should it be much of a surprise well written content does more for branding than some of the stock photography being used.
- Too many designers know the word branding, when they need to add terms like positioning, brand dissonance, as well as the difference between brand awareness and brand preference. Until designers can pass the brand test, they’ll continue using the words, and producing atrocious design decisions.