10 Branding tasks for your first month with Adhoc

Introduction

Clients who contact us are always at different levels of design maturity. Some companies have a strong vision of what their brand is and need our help to visualize and make it all come together, others have already developed a brand style guide and need help to implement it on printed materials or marketing assets.

When we founded Adhoc, we wanted to create a new system for collaborating between clients and designers. Rather than trying to educate the client on "the design process" we wanted to create a system that is flexible and iterative, and can fit any client's way of working. It's like a plug-and-play solution for design.

Setting the foundation

We like to think of branding as three different pillars: Strategy, identity and marketing.

If you’re planning on introducing a new brand to the marketing or doing a relaunch of an existing brand. We strongly encourage you to have a look at our brand accelerator program, where we walk you through each of the three pillars and help you create a brand and launch a website from scratch in 8 weeks.

Ready for implementation

If your business has been up and running for a while, you probably have a good sense of who your target audience is and who your competitors are. In this case, our design membership service might be the perfect solution for you since it focuses on the production and implementation of the visual assets for your brand.

The checklist

Without further ado, let's dive into a checklist of 10 things every brand identity should include. If you're a client of Adhoc or considering becoming one, feel free to copy and paste any of these as to-dos in your task list.

1. Share an initial brief

A strong brief is a great starting point for any design work. If you’re new to writing briefs start by sharing the below information with your designer, let the designer read through it and get back to you with their input.

1. Mission StatementA strong brand needs to have a purpose. A good mission statement should answer these questions:

• Why does your brand exist (other than to make money)?
• What problems are you solving for your customers?
• How do you act each day to solve these problems?

1. Brand PersonalityExplaining what type of personality your have is a great source of inspiration for creating your visual assets.

There are 5 main brand personalities that you can use as your starting point:

• excitement,
• sincerity,
• ruggedness,
• competence,
• sophistication

1. SloganInclude any slogans or taglines that you’re currently using.

2. Create Logo System

A good logo should work in different use cases, big and small, and in black and white & on a light and dark surface. It's great if it can involve in a subtle way your "why, how, or what" from your brand's mission statement.

3. Create Color Palette

A good designer should pick colors according to which emotions your brand personality wants to express. If your initial brief for example states that your brand wants to give off a feeling of competence, a color palette including blue colors might be a good idea.

4. Choose Typography for the brand

Choose a maximum of two fonts that complement the logo and color palette of the brand. Make sure that the fonts have good readability.

5. Create an Icon library

Pick a series of icons to help explain different parts of your service offering. The icons should feel coherent with the overall brand identity and help the user to consume information or navigate on your brand.

6. Set the Photographic Direction

Put together a collection of coherent images that feel in line with your brand. The images could be used as a brief for photographers or could be stock images that are ready to be used in your communication material and website. These could be references of people, places, compositions, lighting scenes, or instructions for how to photograph your products.

7. If you offer physical products: Design the Packaging

Create a coherent packaging design for the product assortment. The design should help categorize your assortment and guide the client to your product offering. Use brand colors and icons to help guide the customer and create a family of products for your brand. Perhaps the packaging will give ideas of new products to add to the family, revealing any gaps in your current offering.

8. Create Social Media Assets

Create templates with brand colors, typography, and compositions for social media channels.

Instagram: Posts, stories, ReelsLinkedIn: Header, postsTwitter: Header, postsFacebook: Header, posts

9. Slide Decks

Create templates for slide decks, for example, marketing reports, sales decks, onboarding docks. Use correct brand colors, images, icons, and typography.

PDF documentInteractive document

10. Print or Merchandise

Create print-ready files of company collateral such as:

• Business cards
• Invoice
• Contracts
• Letterhead
• Banners/ads/posters/billboards
• T-shirt/cap

Bonus: Brand Style Guide

Put together a document that explains how to work with your brand for internal and external stakeholders. Include all of the above assets and present them together with the brand strategy in a coherent document.

Conclusion

Implementing these 10 steps will make sure you’ve created a solid foundation for your brand. If you’re happy with the results you can pause your membership with us and come back whenever you need new work done.

But please don't forget one of the most important assets for any brand, your website. Luckily we’re pretty good at those too. Check out this blog post about “10 webdesign tasks for your first month with adhoc”

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