4 ways to build an Internet brand!

Although the entry threshold for Internet brands is not high, it takes a lot of time and effort to become a good brand. Among the numerous brands, we can get a glimpse of their design trends, and brands that want to do well in the Internet industry need to focus on understanding "brand thinking".

1. Designer’s Abilities

1.1 Brand capability is equivalent to service capability, which everyone possesses

There is another point that everyone needs to make clear. In the project, brand is a consciousness that everyone has, because all development members, product managers, designers, developers, testers, operators, etc. are working to create a good product experience, and everything they do is to enhance the brand value. It’s just that designers professionalize this consciousness that everyone has and convert it into a professional ability in creating the brand.

1.2 Brand thinking and experience are necessary

Let’s talk about the profession of designer. No matter what industry you are in, the most important thing is thinking. This kind of thinking ability runs through all positions of designers. For example, predecessors always say that design is to solve problems. Then solving problems must be thinking of ways to solve problems through the language of graphics and colors.

The same is true for brand designers. First of all, we need to have the conscious thinking to understand the brand connotation, then the thinking to activate the brand and release the brand connotation, and use the brand thinking we understand to improve user experience through touch points, and so on.

The client company needs to see more possibilities of the designer, and the company itself needs to show clients more ideas of the designer. This is the value of a brand designer, and this value is inseparable from the accumulation of the designer's thinking.

1.3 Strengthen the ability of visual expression

In the design field, some designers are proficient in modeling, while some designers are more sensitive to colors. But many designers have no idea about visual expression. In my opinion, visual expression and visual performance are two different things, one is the visual part, the other is the expression part. Many designers are good at visual expression but ignore the expression part. The ability to accurately express information through visual language is what excellent designers need to possess.

Some people may ask, what brand capabilities does a designer need? We might as well answer this question by looking at the job requirements in the market.

If we open recruitment apps such as Lagou and Boss, we will find many brand-related positions and work content that needs to be involved. These requirements are the abilities that designers need to have.

1.4 How to improve visual expression ability

Everyone knows that a designer is a person who works in the field of beauty. On the road from a rookie to a boss, there are always two topics that cannot be avoided: "what to look at" and "how to do it". I summarize these two abilities into insight and expression direction.

a Designer’s insight

First of all, we must have this understanding that there is no absolute beauty or ugliness. Another explanation for beauty is popularity. You can't say that Apple's skeuomorphic icons are ugly, it's just that they are not popular in the current market. The standard of whether a trend is good or not is controlled by trend leaders, such as elites in the design industry, such as Apple's chief designer. This "trend" can become popular because this style appears frequently in people's lives. It's like, after seeing it more, people think that this style of thing is good-looking and a trend.

As a designer, you need to summarize the latest trends in the current market. This is what designers need to look at. In addition to paying attention to trendy styles, you can also use your insight to observe user behavior, habits, interests, emotions, and other aspects to see what aspects your product's users prefer.

b. Direction of visual expression

It is not enough to have this kind of knowledge and sense of trend. The most important thing is to realize it, which requires our aesthetic ability to keep up with the skills of our hands. Use the techniques you are good at combined with current popular elements to express visually appealing graphics and images. Especially when doing this kind of brand design, designers can apply their design skills to the brand's color value, brand symbol, brand font, picture composition and other aspects to make differentiated design plans.

1) Brand symbol case

GoGoKid online English for children is a typical example of brand symbol revision in the brand upgrading project. The person in charge of design may feel that the font lining is not conducive to screen display; the smiley face is not prominent enough, and the negative space shape is uneven; causing problems such as left-right imbalance. In the new version, they changed the lowercase "g" to an uppercase "G" to unify the baseline of the logo letters and bolded the thickness of the symbol. The new version looks more balanced and stable, solving the problem of imbalanced negative space. The uppercase "G" looks fuller visually, and the rounded arc looks more childlike, which is in line with the corporate business market audience.

2) Panel composition example

In the 9.0 brand upgrade project, Tencent Maps designed the background graphics in three ways: [cross road network], [tic-tac-toe road network] and [T-shaped road network] in order to highlight the weight and technological sense of the compass. Finally, the final solution was a 50/30 road ratio with a center deviation of 9 points. The new version of the logo has put a lot of effort in adjusting the layout.

2. The Birth of Operations Designers

Operations designer is a new term that has emerged in the Internet industry in recent years. The work content of brand design is to build a brand system for the enterprise, while the work content of operations design is to output the required operational materials on this brand system. It can be simply understood that operations are created to better disseminate brand design.

Many people mistakenly believe that operations designers only draw pictures, which are similar to design drafts pieced together from material templates found on the Internet. Users care about the text on the pictures, which is actually not that important in the team. But I don’t understand it this way. Operation design is an emerging profession in the Internet industry. Design drafts are only the implementation part of its work. It also includes brainstorming discussions with operation managers on event planning, gameplay design, and other things. From the design steps of operation designers in the project below, we can see that their value to brand design is enormous. Then I will talk about what I think an operations designer is like from the following four points.

2.1 Acknowledge the brand but not the operation

I received a request before, and the operation manager said: We don’t need to draw complicated illustrations in the banner, we just need to clearly display the title of the event, so designers don’t need to spend so much time on designing. How quickly can you finish it?

This is a very pragmatic idea from an operational perspective. Finally, in order to achieve the launch time he wanted, the visual design was simplified. However, most operational designs consider how to use the company's brand genes to create graphic designs or illustration visual expressions that are more in line with the company's brand.

From this point of view, what designers pursue is not the same as what operations managers want. The part that the designer thinks is valuable is not paid for by the demand side. The visual sophistication that designers pursue often has little to do with operational goals.

2.2 Time cost compresses creative inspiration

The working method of an operations designer should be to continue the ideas of a brand designer to carry out creative graphic design, but the actual working time and rhythm are more like an assembly line. This is unavoidable in real work. Compared with brand needs, operational activities have strict time schedules and delivery times have been set long ago. Creativity and time themselves have a positive relationship. Good time requires time cost to collide, but for many operations managers, as long as the copy of the design materials is outstanding, "just a picture is enough."

From this scenario, operational designers do not have as much time to think as brand designers. Functionality is far more important than creativity, and they may eventually become emotionless drawing machines.

2.3 Brand communication relies on operational design

In my opinion, operational design is a continuation of brand design, and brand communication also depends on the performance of operational designers. Let’s take the annual Taobao Double Eleven event as an example. In fact, the operations designer is responsible for the content implementation work. Especially the senior operations designers can also participate in the planning of operations activities in the early stage. In addition to helping the operations manager think of more interesting and fun ideas, after the project is completed, they also need to review the operations strategy, data analysis, copywriting skills, etc.

2.4 Operations also need to be standardized

Many people think that specifications are created by UI designers. In fact, in the face of large-scale events, operation designers also need to output specifications for those events with a long cycle and a wide coverage. This includes big things like capturing the style of the event, and small things like standardizing the font size and image proportions on the banner, etc.

3. Use of 4 tools

In my actual work experience, there are generally four reasons why a company needs to improve its brand:

1 Our competitors have upgraded their brands, and in order to retain users, our company must also upgrade its brand.

2 The company needs to create a high-end community culture in its products to consolidate user stickiness to the products.

3 The company realized the importance of brand and began to cultivate users' awareness of the brand and expand its influence in the market.

4 The company holds large-scale offline activities and finds some factories to make some peripheral products for the company as small gifts to distribute to participants. It is necessary to design some materials and peripheral products with IP image.

Next, let’s talk about which aspects we should start with to upgrade the brand if the company has a project with brand requirements and it falls on us.

3.1 Competitive Product Analysis

The current industry is focusing on the existing market rather than the incremental market. As I said before, the first point in building a brand is to have brand thinking, and brand thinking is differentiated design. Competitive product analysis is the most efficient means of differentiated design. It is not the most important thing whether your product is 100 points or not. The most important thing is that other products are 60 points while your product is 61 points.

Doing competitive analysis is the best and most efficient method. For example, I once heard a friend from JD Finance share the color design of their new logo. They said that the color of the new logo was concluded through competitive analysis. First of all, through market data, they found that people from different countries and genders actually have different preferences for colors. As can be seen from the picture, the proportions of blue and red are relatively high, which is a reference to relevant data for the international market. Back to China, the color distribution of Internet products, from the perspective of industry attributes, financial products are generally concentrated in the blue and red sectors, which are the two parts on the far left and far right.

In the initial exploration stage of the design, blue and red were mainly used as the main colors, and attempts were made to apply them in different scenarios. Through user interviews, we found that most users’ brand impression of JD Finance is also red and gold. In the financial industry, users are more accustomed to associating returns and increases with the color red. Gold also represents gold coins and money, which has a meaning that fits the user’s mind, so we ultimately chose the combination of red and gold. It can be seen from this that through the analysis of competing products, designers can sort out their ideas, rationally choose design solutions, widen the gap with other competing products, and generate differentiated designs for the brand.

3.2 BDS Brand Personality Scale

The name may sound a little strange when you hear it for the first time. This "BDS Brand Personality Measurement Sheet" is mainly a tool to help designers sort out what kind of brand the product is and what kind of personality it has.

It compares a company's brand to a person. A person has many characteristics and personality tendencies, and the same is true for a brand. The BDS brand personality measurement form measures the brand positioning based on five dimensions: sincerity, passion, ability, education, and toughness, and sorts out key words one by one.

Then, use the collected keywords to create a simple table with the three categories of "we are, we are not, and it has nothing to do with us". Complete the classification of the cards within 30 minutes and finally determine the brand's personality.

3.3 Brand Prism

The brand diamond diagram is a model in the brand identification system. It is very similar to the BDS brand personality measurement table, but their latitudes are different. It is divided into inner character (brand personality), culture (brand culture), self-image (brand image); appearance (relationship with the outside world), relationship (relationship with consumers), responsiveness (specific products); and from the positioning layer to the execution layer, I personally prefer to use the brand prism tool.

3.4 Emotional board

Many people think that mood boards are useless, but I don’t think so. Mood boards are generally a way of extracting colors and styles from images from emotion to rationality, and it is also the simplest method in the design industry.

For example, when Tencent was designing the new logo for the Smart Products Design Department (Tencent SMAD), it used this emotional version method. I personally think the effect is very good and the deduction is well-founded.

The application of emotional boards is very wide. Not only can it be applied to brand logos, but it can also be used to capture the style of a certain project. For example, Didi launched a new theme image of a small car turning into a little lion during the Spring Festival in 2020, emphasizing cuteness. When they were defining the elements of this event, they used the emotional board method.

Methods are methods. You can choose to use them according to the scale and requirements of your needs at work. Here I would like to share a platform for expanding your knowledge, which is the Airbnb platform below. Airbnb is a company that I admire very much in the field of brand tone. You can find many cases and interviews about brands on this website to supplement your knowledge of brands.

If you are a little confused here, you might as well take a look at the following actual case. In 2020, 58 Group upgraded its brand language. In the stage of exploring the new brand language, they used the "BDS Brand Personality Measurement Table + Brand Prism" method to derive the brand's keywords, as shown in the figure

4. 4 ways to build an Internet brand

4.1 Building IP Image

An IP image is a representative virtual cartoon image of a company or enterprise. The greatest value of brand IP lies in the fact that the company can create a brand IP image with flesh and blood and soul, continuously output content about the IP image, and attract user participation.

This is also what many companies do to build closer relationships with users, making the corporate image warmer, more personalized and more interactive. For example, JD.com's mascot is a dog (named Joy), ZCOOL's mascot is Xiao Z, and Bilibi is a group image of 233 Niang. Some companies have even set up mascot homes. For example, Alibaba Group has its own zoo (currently with 29 images).

Many products will design the company's IP image into abnormal pages and loding page scenarios. Such a design can help users establish brand awareness while alleviating their anxiety, thereby maximizing the application of brand value communication.

In order to cater to the trend of their product user groups becoming younger, many companies are also moving towards younger and more energetic images for their mascots. For example, Amap has made many image expansions based on the "eagle" prototype and integrated it with other IP images to make its own IP image more warm.

Of course, the IP image can not only be put into operation posters, but also into product conversations or community scenes, which can be regarded as a means of creating a community atmosphere.

In addition to the design method of anthropomorphizing mascots into animals, there are also design methods using real human images. In order to achieve the design goal of creating a unified and vivid virtual knight image to represent the spirit of the platform for offline business, the Ele.me team artistically processed real food delivery boys and applied them to various scenarios in the product.

4.2 Building a component library

I remember that when I first entered the industry, ofo's splash screen illustrations were very successful in branding, because as soon as you see this style of illustration you can associate it with ofo's corporate brand. This style of illustration was also very popular for a while at that time.

Although ofo has achieved certain success in brand building by using this illustration style, this approach is not suitable for later operational iterations for three reasons:

1) The production cost is relatively high, the design time is relatively long, and it cannot adapt to the fast-paced operation rhythm of the Internet.

2) The risk of company operation is relatively high. It takes time to train an illustrator with this style. If an employee leaves, the new style and the old style may not be linked in visual expression.

It is precisely because of the above two reasons that the concept of illustration component library has gradually been recognized by everyone, and it is also a popular way to build corporate brands. There are also many mature illustration component libraries on the market, such as Ziroom Illustration Component Library 2.0, Baidu Health Illustration Library, Tujia.com Illustration Component Library and Keep Illustration Component Library.

The above four are component libraries that I think are different from the illustration component libraries of other products in terms of brand style. I personally think that one of the difficulties of illustration component libraries is that the illustrations must be well-drawn and differentiated, and the online and offline styles must be consistent, so as to achieve the goal of brand recognition and brand sensory unity. What I recommend most is the illustration component library of Ziru 2.0, which is relatively comprehensive, with a wide variety of character modeling styles, and components for house decoration styles. The only regret is that it has not developed 3D character images like Keep.

Another reason why I love Ziru 2.0's illustration component library is that it has a strong style differentiation. I am not saying that other companies' illustration component libraries are not good-looking, but that Ziru's characters are more memorable than those in other companies' component libraries, especially when paired with the home scenes they draw. When I close my eyes, I can still remember what Ziru's illustration style is like. I think this is already very successful from a brand perspective.

4.3 Card Design

The membership center scene is also a very important scene for the product. In fact, brand design can also be done in this scene, such as in the card in the header. Take the membership center of Baidu Netdisk as an example. Its header card incorporates the styling elements of the logo as texture, which not only increases the sense of dignity of members but also integrates the brand elements well. It is a very pleasing design method.

*While this approach is great, don’t embed your brand symbols directly into the interface. This will affect the spatial dimension between information and graphics, causing mutual interference. Secondly, it will also destroy the brand symbol’s own recognizability, such as incomplete exposure of the graphic, rotation of the brand symbol and other problems. Next, I will take JD Finance as an example to see how they design brand symbols - auxiliary graphics.

1) First, we extracted the bubble element from the logo as an extended auxiliary graphic of the brand;

2) While maintaining brand recognition, ensure the ratio between auxiliary graphics and information, and divide the auxiliary graphics reasonably;

3) Find the appropriate scenarios and use the segmented auxiliary graphics in the interface and modules, and sort out all the card style components.

4) Add colors to the cards and complete the combination. Finally, you can see that each card carrying information is composed of a background layer, a product information layer, and a brand gene layer.

In addition to extracting elements, you can also design on the member label style. For example, for Tencent members, they added a bit of sharpness to the round IP image, and also made the font of the member label sharp, and increased the angle of the label. The font will be sharper against the background of the elliptical shape. Similarly, extract elements from the logo to increase the brand feel of the card.

4.4 Reusing a symbol

The last method is also a design technique commonly used by traditional companies, which is to repeat continuously to deepen the impression. There is a reason why Luo Yonghao thinks he is Steve Jobs' successor. He has fully inherited Jobs' ability in marketing and promotion.

Everyone knows that the biggest traffic entrance now is products in the short video field, but short videos are entertainment apps. If you watch short videos for half an hour, you will find that you don’t remember anything. But after watching Tik Tok for a while, I clearly remembered the information that "Luo Yonghao's live broadcast room is 50% off."

I reviewed it and found that in addition to the shocking poster designed by their team, the 50% off symbol repeated over and over again deepened my impression. The design team used different forms of expression and the simplest repetitive techniques to continuously deepen the brand message.

5. Brand companies that need to be learned

5.1 Foreign spiritual food

a PLUSX company in South Korea

PLUSX is ranked number one in the world in the field of branding and product design. The company has also served many well-known companies in China, such as the latest version of Alipay, NetEase Kaola, "Actors Please Take Your Place", "The Next Generation of Stars" and other projects.

Portal address: https://www.plusx.de/

b Pentagram Corporation of the United States

Pentagram is translated into "Pentagram" in Chinese. It is a traditional design company and one of the world's top brand design companies. In addition to serving many international big-name companies, it has also done brand upgrades for domestic companies such as OPPO, ByteDance, Citibank, Wangfujing, etc.

Portal address: https://www.pentagram.com/

c Wolffolins, UK

Wolffolins is translated into Chinese as "Wolf Olins". He also belongs to a traditional design company, serving companies such as Uber, Google, Tesco, McKinsey&Company, and Alibaba Cloud.

Portal address: https://www.wolffolins.com/

5.2 Domestic spiritual food

a EICO Design Company

This is a design company that covers a wide range of fields, including brand communication, product design, space design, etc. It is a small but beautiful company. There are many design instructions for the projects, which are of great learning value.

Portal address: http://eicoinc.com/

b Tencent’s ISUX

I believe everyone is familiar with this company without me saying anything. Tencent's isux does not undertake external design projects. It is mainly responsible for the design tasks of Tencent's internal operations, brand communication and brand design. It is also a standard Internet operating company.

Portal address: https://isux.tencent.com/about

Summarize

Brand design is actually a process of occupying the minds of users. This topic is not only widely used in the design market, but is also equally important in interpersonal communication. For example, when working with others to complete a project, why do some people prefer to work with a certain person? In most cases, it is because this person has a good reputation, which is actually a kind of brand thinking.

Brand and marketing are actually inseparable. In my impression, I think Xiaomi is one of the most successful marketing masters. Whether it was the controversy over Xiaomi's new logo or the gimmick of saying at their press conference that their computer was only as thick as a coin, they all left a deep impression on me.

Finally, if you don’t know how the project you are working on should be positioned, then you must keep this “Brand Personality Measurement Sheet” to help you have a clear direction for brand upgrade needs.

Author: Slash 7 Wet Brother

Source: Slash 7 Wet Brother