Branding encompasses a much broader area of business than just a design such as a logo or a colour. It’s about tailoring an emotional experience that resonates with your target market. In the contemporary world, businesses are in need of an out-of-the-box strategy that relies heavily on customers, creativity, and solving challenges. This is the reason why designing thinking in branding is so important.

Design thinking refers to ensuring that branding is not only visually appealing but also functional and engaging. This method guarantees that all branding efforts capture as well as exceed customer expectations.

This article will explain the steps of applying design thinking in branding to develop an effective customer-oriented brand.

What is Design Thinking in Branding?

Design thinking can be described in simple terms as a user-centred creative problem-solving concept that also allows for prototype testing. From the field of product design, it has now made its way into branding.

Applying design thinking in branding helps businesses:

✔ Understand and fulfil a customer’s expectation

✔ Build a brand that connects to a customer on a psychological level

✔ Design flexible and creative brand interactions

✔ Address branding issues in an inventive manner

Let’s explore five important levels of design thinking in regard to branding.

Empathize – Learn About The Audience

The first step to design thinking is empathy, which is the foundational part of every customer’s journey: putting yourself in their shoes. Rather than trying to guess what clients need, this step calls for actual effort to find out what audiences expect.

How to Glean Information About Customers

✅ Execute Detailed Surveys & Interviews: Gain information from your customers regarding their expectations, frustrations, and views of your niche.

✅ Study Customer Actions: Implement Google Analytics or insights from Social Media platforms and check how active customers are.

✅ Build Customer Profiles: Create distinct personas for various parts of your audience.

The Case: A sustainable fashion label may learn that customers desire not only eco-friendly textiles but also wish to access information about ethical sourcing. This would help shape their brand message and marketing strategy.

Pro Tip: Analyse your competitors’ brands and identify places where other brands do not serve to help find gaps to fill.

Define – Clarify Your Brand’s Core Identity

After understanding your target audience, it’s time to outline your brand’s attributes. This step captures that all branding activities will be carried out in accordance with the company’s objectives and ethos.

Key Brand Identity Components:

• Brand Mission & Values – Your brand does what?
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Why should anyone pay attention to you?
• Brand Personality & Tone – How do you speak (casually, formally, humorously)?
• Visual Identity – Primary and secondary colours, typefaces, and logo mark.

Example: Airbnb designs visuals, messages, and experiences all under the umbrella of reinforcing belonging. Their brand paints an emotional resonance with belonging.

Pro Tip: Convey the same message on all platforms, and keep your brand message clear. If the audience is confused, they will not engage with your brand.

Ideate – Brainstorm Creative Branding Solutions

Now comes the most interesting part – brainstorming creative branding ideas. This is the stage that has no limits where you are required to be as creative as possible.

How to Ideate Effectively:

✅ Work with Your Team – Invite a marketer, a designer, and even customers to have a broader point of view.

✅ Use Mind Mapping – Have a look at the various different ideas of branding and how they relate.

✅ Experiment with Several Styles – Try out various designs for logo, brand voices, and campaign ideas.

Example: The Stirring a Coke ad was highly productive because of the effort placed into determining the name as a branding initiative.

Pro Tip: Strategies that require risk taking are always valuable! The most distinguished brands change and build themselves with exploratory imagination.

Develop & Test – Create & Experiment With Branding Components

Testing different branding elements is essential prior to completely launching your brand. When prototyping in business, consider the following:

Branding Components To Prototype:

✅ Packages & Products – Determine the customer’s experience with your branding design.

✅ Logo Variations – Diverse logos can be explored to affirm the best one.

✅ Marketing Messages – Experiment with new campaigns and tag lines.

✅ Website Mock-ups – Digital layouts to enhance the user’s experience can be created.

Example: Before Spotify fully integrated the black and green colours into their interface, they had to ensure that customers were able to navigate seamlessly throughout the app.

Pro Tip: Test the prototypes on a real audience, but do not make it too large so that you can quickly adapt the final version without much effort.

Launch and continuously improve over time – Implement & Evolve

Interact with the users over time and integrate their perspectives to cultivate the brand as per the desired expectations, while interacting with them

Tips to Ensure a Successful Brand Rollout:

✅ Ensure Consistency – Website, marketing, social media must be aligned.

✅ Engage with Your Audience – Listening and communication should be two ways.

✅ Monitor Brand Performance – Measure engagement and conversions to analytics.

✅ Adapt Based on Trends – Branding should evolve with time to remain relevant.

Example: Instagram underwent a shift from a non-minimalist, logo-centric interface, and, in response to feedback and market analysis, transitioned towards a refined, contemporary brand ethos that appeals more to the current digital audience.

Pro Tip: Always remember, branding is a continuous effort. To ward off obsolescence and maintain relevance, re-evaluate and optimize every few years.

Conclusion: Design Thinking can Transform Your Branding 

Utilizing design thinking in branding enables the building of customer-centric brands that are tough to miss in a highly competitive environment. Following the five steps of empathizing with customers, defining what your brand is, ideating solutions, prototyping, and branding should be an endless cycle that ensures the brand resonates, engages and grows.

If you are looking for guidance on implementing design thinking within branding, Rebrand offers strategic branding solutions, helping businesses create meaningful human-centred brand experiences.

Brand transformation is a click away, contact Rebrand now!