What We Do Before Designing The Visuals: The Brand Strategy Process Explained
Every one of our brand and web project starts with a questionnaire and a conversation. This is called the discovery phase and gets squared away before we discuss any of the visual brand design. Most people expect a design process to begin with design, but it doesn't, and can’t, for good reason.
Just like you wouldn’t start building a house by starting with the wall colors, but with the architecture plans, it’s important to design a website similarly; the discovery phase is the foundation of ensuring that the strategy fits your needs in a brand and web project.
The client questionnaire
Before we discuss anything specific, I begin each project with a detailed written questionnaire.
We will discuss questions about your organization's values, your audience, your competitors, and your goals. We will also discuss the harder parts: what isn't working, what you'd change if you could, where the gap is between how your organization sees itself, and how the people it serves experience it.
The written questionnaire has a purpose that a first call can't offer; it gives you space to think without urgency, and it surfaces information that real-time conversation often misses. The research on user experience (UX) of website design consistently demonstrates that pre-study questionnaires are standard practice before any discovery session for this exact reason: people share more honestly, and more completely, in writing than they do in real-time conversation under pressure.
The discovery call
Our discovery call is a 60–90 minute conversation to discuss your organization, the community you serve currently, and the people you're trying to reach.
What we're listening for is the gap between your current messaging, and how the people it serves actually experience it; that gap is where the most important brand decisions usually live in terms of a successful brand overall.
In UX design, this is called a stakeholder interview, which is one of the most valuable qualitative research methods available. It can help reveal gaps between what you, as a service-provider, provide and what your current and potential clientele experience. This conversation can help form the strategy for our next step.
The brand strategy document
Before any visual work begins, we deliver a brand strategy document that outlines your positioning, your ideal audience, your brand voice, and the visual direction we’ve agreed upon together. This is called a design brief, which is a shared understanding of the strategy before we build any solutions. As a result, this document helps translate your values, community, and service model into design language; the translation is what makes the brand specific to this organization rather than generic to its category.
Why this order matters
By completing the questionnaire, the discovery call, and the strategy document we build the foundation so that once we start putting visual design pieces together, the strategy remains our point of reference from beginning to end.
What your brand looks like visually, including the color palette, the typography, the layout, and the messaging, will more easily fall into place once strategic decisions are made. Brand design without a strategy is just decorative, but our foundation-building process is what makes sure everything is built to withstand the test of time and make your brand stand out amongst the rest.
Take the next step
Thinking about a brand or web project for your health practice or nonprofit? Download the free Website Checklist to start understanding where the gaps are before any design work begins.
→ Get it free at wellfolkdesign.com/resources