The value of holding a consistent image and visual approach should be universally recognized, because it helps the user/audience you are trying to reach see your service as an organized system.

For example, if you need to label some doors at your business site or make signs for your location, don’t just go down to the hardware store and buy the first set of stick-on letters that you see, as I have seen done before, even by very large organizations, but put some thought into it with information design and branding in mind.

This is a great article and I wanted to share it for anyone wondering about why it would be important to create a consistent brand for their business or organization. Although the immediate focus is on user oriented projects, the ideas are useful to anyone wanting to learn more about branding.

“What is branding?”

Interaction Design.org

When you were at school, in all likelihood your mum/mom/mother (delete as necessary) probably stitched your name into all parts of your uniform and gym items. While the labels were probably itchy and annoying, they helped you keep track of your stuff by distinguishing them from everybody else’s clothes. Personalizing your things in this way, allowed you to say, definitively, that something was yours (unless your name is John Smith).

“Branding works in much the same way. Companies and businesses attach names, logos, slogans, and specific design elements to their products to distinguish them from their competitors. However, while your school shirt, trousers, etc. simply had your name in them, company branding is focused on attaching or associating positive attributes to their products.”

Branding: Making Positive Associations

“We already make associations between certain words, colors, people, objects, styles, design features, and meaningful qualities, such as likeability, friendliness, sexiness, and wealth. Branding attempts to ensure the package they are offering or purporting to offer, bears positive qualities, rather than negative ones.

The brand of a company or specific product is essentially the idea or image they are trying to project, so consumers connect or identify with the whole group or one product in particular. Branding is meant to help make products instantly recognisable to consumers, and to ensure they help to maintain a positive image or reputation. It is for this reason that celebrity endorsers are dropped like a lead weight, if any indiscretion becomes public knowledge, Brands lose their meaning if the products become associated with people who are appearing in the news for negative reasons.”

Read more of the article here:

Brands of the US map Credit: Steve-Lovelace.com