Brand Development
At Piquant, we are passionate about building rigorous, dynamic brand systems that allow our clients and their organisations to represent their brand purpose confidently and creatively across multiple channels. As a creative brand development agency, we work closely with our clients to unify messaging, map out brand strategies and identify opportunities that assist brands in delivering on their objectives.
Our Approach
Our approach to creating a brand begins with a course of information gathering. We define project objectives and carry out extensive research before launching our design process. We assess the landscape for developments in audience behaviour and mood. We identify the functional and emotional requirements of the brand. There are two overlapping phases to our brand development process: Brand Expression and Brand Design
Brand Expression
Brand expression is the process of defining and communicating the implicit values a brand should represent. We carry out workshops to explore and define core brand purpose, values, characteristics, and a narrative that resonates with your practice and audience. We define methods to express those values through operations, business strategy and communications. We refine this process into an expression document to be used by all stakeholders involved in representing the brand. Rigorous brand design and expression guidelines enable and encourage consistent and fluent messaging across all media and marketing channels.
Brand Design
We develop visual design concepts to represent your brand with iterations of logo, brand pattern elements, typographic treatments, colour, grid, animation and audio specifications. We work with our clients through our creative and explorative design processes to deliver unique, confident and timeless identity design systems that serve as a flexible resource kit for communications across all channels and all contexts.
The Essence of Branding
We have extensive experience creating brands that can live in and respond to the real world, while also engaging in the digital space, to maximise online marketing and brand building opportunities. Our experienced team has delivered brands across the sectors of hospitality, education, NGOs, culture, food, hospitality, retail and entertainment. Piquant will create a distinctive brand with unique character that will clearly differentiate your offering.
Our Brand Development Process
Define
We identify and define clear goals and project objectives. We establish a project briefing document with clearly listed project stages, time-lines, channels, and deliverables. We also document key information such as audience overview and hierarchies, resources and collaborative opportunities and any other specific nuances that relate to the history of the project.
Positioning
We carry out a competitor analysis to identify opportunities and areas for unique expression. We examine and document what others are doing inside and outside of your industry. We create personas to understand the audience and their motivation and language. We assess our creative approaches and methodologies to see what is relevant and a good fit for each stage of the project.
Design & Refine
This is a cyclical process of creating and editing. We begin by exploring and nurturing initial ideas and concepts. We further explore selected concepts in a process of play to identify their ability to present brand narratives and opportunities for ongoing expression. We then refine and finesse the detail of the primary design concept for presentation and discussion.
Release
With the concepts from the define and refine stage signed off and approved, we begin to roll out the concept across the project deliverables. We provide a series of client proofs for feedback and discussion. Once the final designs have been signed off we then prepare the final artwork files and a rigorous brand guideline documentation.
Evaluate
We work with clients to examine impact, effectiveness and real-world user experiences. Often observations and nuanced amendments made at this stage lead to efficiencies in both ongoing production and brand relevance. Through systematic ongoing analysis, we continually adapt and improve our concept development and production processes.
