Brand graphics include but are not limited to the brand logo, but can also include brand patterns, mascots, and symbolic products, packaging, rituals, actions, etc.
Brand graphics must serve brand marketing communication, carrying the psychological energy of the cultural matrix, entering the collective subconscious of humanity, activating consumer psychological cognition with the lowest cost and highest efficiency, and triggering consumer behavior.
Brand graphic design principles
There are three basic principles in brand graphic design, namely originality, recognizability, and expressiveness.
1、 The originality of brand graphics
As a cultural resource for brand marketing communication, images are essentially inherent in the cultural matrix. They are symbols that people already remember, are familiar with, and like, in order to conceive and design brand graphics, thereby improving marketing communication efficiency and achieving marketing communication goals.The cultural matrix has prepared an inexhaustible amount of image resources, and all we need to do is requisition and occupy them for brand marketing and communication.For the design of brand graphics, it is better to find the cultural matrix, discover the image resources, requisition and occupy the symbols that people already remember, are familiar with, and like, rather than always thinking about innovating, in order to achieve the maximum marketing communication efficiency with the minimum marketing communication cost.
2、 The recognizability of brand graphics
The reason for emphasizing the need to find the cultural matrix, requisition and possess symbols that everyone remembers, is because in real life scenarios, these symbols are more easily understood by consumers.That kind of square continuous simple graphics is very easy to form visual experience and has a strong cognitive drive. Even when the shape is incomplete, it can still be fully recognized.In extreme cases, some shapes can be easily recognized even if torn into pieces. This is what we call recognizability.For this type of square continuous simple graphics, we call it brand patterns.
Undoubtedly, among various brand graphics, brand patterns have the highest degree of recognizability.The key to visual symbols is to solve the problem of a brand's "stunning glance".When a consumer takes a glance with the corner of their eye and sees a specific area, a shadow can also attract them and let them know who we are, what value we have, and what relationship we have with them.The value of brand patterns is not limited to the easy recognition of the brand graphics themselves, but more importantly, it can give the brand a visual advantage on the shelves.The so-called "shelf" used to be considered as a shelf inside the timeout, but later came out of e-commerce, and the shelf also includes the main e-commerce image and details page. As for physical stores, their shelves are storefronts on the street.
When designing brand graphics, it is necessary to meet the typical categories and consumer expectations as much as possible.
For example, people can easily infer that apples are fruits, while they may have doubts about tomatoes. This is because apples are closest to the ideal typical fruit and are the best representative of fruits.A fruit shop using apples as a graphic design prototype is better than using tomatoes.When consumers are guided by the concept of fruits, apples are more likely to be cognitively processed and understood than tomatoes, as they conform to people's assumptions and expectations about fruits.From this perspective, the creativity of brand graphics is not simply pursuing novelty and uniqueness, but rather meeting people's assumptions and expectations, so as to make brand graphics more recognizable.Brand graphics should respect the knowledge and experience of consumers, and make it clear at a glance what you are doing. Food should be like food, medicine should be like medicine, and banks should be like banks.These images that directly show the characteristics of the industry greatly save people's cognitive costs, allowing them to complete the process of searching, understanding, and memorizing in an instant.
3、 The Speakability of Brand Graphics
If you think that the task of brand graphics is over when people see and understand it, then it is obvious that you have not truly understood the essence of super symbols.In addition to having strong signal energy, brand graphics must also have strong communication potential, allowing consumers to see and speak, thereby promoting brand communication and further amplifying signal energy.In this sense, brand graphics must also have expressiveness.In fact, for consumers, even if brand graphics are easy to understand, if they are indescribable, indescribable or unclear, it is difficult to form spontaneous word-of-mouth communication.This brand image has only been completed halfway, which means it has only been "visualized", but it has not completed the other half, which is to make consumers speak.Brand graphics not only need to be visually and correctly understood by consumers, but also need to be seen and spoken by consumers.
The term "speaking" here refers to the "broadcasting" advocated by the supersymbol theory.Consumers can be seen as important "metamedia" with strong and sustained communication influence.The indescribable nature of brand graphics is to convey the role of consumers as disseminators, actively spreading to surrounding consumers, and only in this way can the signal energy of brand graphics be amplified.Only brand graphics that allow consumers to describe them fluently have strong advertising potential.
