Branding - Building a Brand (Part 1)

What is Branding?

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another” - Seth Godin.

Branding can be simply defined as a marketing practice wherein companies or individuals attempt to establish a unique identity for their products, services and business.

Creating a successful brand can be complex. Successful brands are more than simply logos or taglines (if you tell someone you’re ‘lovin’ it’, chances are they’ll know what you’re talking about), but branding is the entire story of a product or service. For example, the company name is one of its most valuable assets.

For more information on branding and how it works, take a look at this great video from Branding by Garden.

Why is Branding Important?

Branding isn’t just limited to the world of business. It’s about creating an identity which represents an organisation, and is specifically crafted to give people a positive impression when interacting with it.

In this course we’re going to explore the idea of creating a school brand. Schools, like commercial business, can also benefit from giving off a positive impression to ‘customers’ - i.e. prospective students and their parents - or potential new staff members.

Branding for the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.

The image above was taken from this article on penji.com, which we recommend reviewing to see many more examples of great school branding. In the Moore example not only are they making effective use of wordplay based on the college’s name, but they’re also promoting a ‘student-first’ mentality with their tagline - both examples of creating a positive image for themselves through branding.

We’ll talk more about what makes a good school brand in the coming weeks. For now, let’s wrap up our introduction to branding by hearing from freelance graphic designer Ben Bowen on why he thinks branding is important.

In our first video tutorial Ali Blackwell introduces the Adobe Illustrator interface and shows you how to create a logomark using simple graphic design techniques.

Your Assignment

‘Using Adobe Illustrator, create a logomark for a new brand.’

Please base your project on one of the following options.

1. Follow Ali’s example and create a logomark for a real or fictional school brand. Check out this article from penji.com for some design tips
2. Challenge yourself and create a logomark for a brand of your choice