Brand consistency happens when your company presents uniformed visuals, personality, and messaging across the entire range of products. A lot of people seem to see brand consistency only as it relates to marketing, but it’s just as important within the context of design. To have the most impact, all products under the same brand must maintain the same design language to be easily recognizable by the target consumers.
But imagine having a confusing or misaligned brand identity – it’s bound to create issues in terms of appeal and longevity and may even set you up for failure as you’ll fail to capture the hearts and minds of your intended audience.
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Why do you need to be consistent?
It’s pretty straightforward: brand consistency improves memorability. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions a premium gaming laptop so striking, it looks as if they’re also used by advanced space-faring species? Alienware. What about a power drill wrapped in a construction worker’s high-visibility jacket? DeWalt. So why are all those brands so easy to remember? Because they’ve been using consistent design throughout their existence. People already know too well what those brands represent, what products they offer, the expected build quality, and the presumed value for money.
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This is where manufacturing firms follow the “Rules of Seven” to their full potential. It’s a well-known marketing concept utilized by companies all around the world to suggest that unique products or brands will stick to people’s minds for good after they’ve seen it seven times. A memorable design creates a sense of connection with the target consumers. When the design is easily remembered and associated with positive experiences, sales will likely pick up.
If you want a gaming laptop, chances are you’re thinking about an Alienware; when the time comes to buy a new power drill, you can’t possibly forget about DeWalt – otherwise, you may have to settle for less. None of this suggests in any way that alternatives don’t exist. In fact, the competitors might be more in line with what you need, or at least equally good. The point is that you always take those brands into consideration each time you want to make a purchase. And that’s how you can tell if the brand consistency strategy works as intended. Apart from memorability, consistent brand designs also lead to the following:
- Recognizability: let’s go back to the brand examples again. DeWalt offers not only power drills but an entire lineup of hand tools and power tools for the construction and woodworking industries. Some products are intended for commercial use, while others are geared toward DIYers and craftspeople as well. The brand uses the same color scheme, typography, icons, logo, and other visual cues across the range. You can tell if something is a DeWalt or not from miles away.
- Simplified marketing: brand consistency accounts for a huge part of product marketing strategy. Given a unique product design with recognizable elements, you don’t have to worry about your product getting drowned out by dozens of competitors sitting on the same store shelf. No one says creating a unique design and maintaining consistency are easy undertakings, but once you get there, your marketing team has one less big thing to worry about. Apple is probably the finest example in this regard. It doesn’t matter if you pick up an iPhone, iPad, or Mac of any version, you’ll immediately notice it’s an Apple device.
- Testament of authenticity: brand consistency is all about maintaining the same build quality and enjoyable user experience across all your products. In other words, you need to be consistently good to showcase that the designs are indeed authentically yours. If some other brands are trying to look slightly (or perhaps eerily) similar, they’re copycats. To some extent, what they do is a direct admission that your design is the authentic one and actually better. To the customers, authentic brands are trustworthy, original, and good value for money.
Aiming for brand consistency when developing a new product requires two things: meeting consumer demands and presenting the product in a way that is relevant to all its predecessors. Of course, it applies mostly if you have already launched a product or two into the market. For a completely new brand, the best you can do is to try and come up with a unique design. No one will accuse you of being inconsistent because it’s the first product from the brand after all, unless the brand is releasing multiple products at once.
How does it affect design?
A big portion of branding – regardless of how the design appears visually – is making an effort to expose your target consumers to the brand in a relentless manner. It has everything to do with effective marketing as they share a common goal: creating unforgettable associations between people and the product. They may associate your product with pleasing visuals, striking colors, good ergonomics, build-to-last quality, practicality, portability, ease of maintenance, affordability, eco-friendliness, reliability, accuracy, or any combination of those aspects. Once you’ve built such an association, it makes little sense to reinvent the idea each time you release a new product from the same brand.
When brand consistency is of the utmost importance, sometimes it can put a strain to the creativity aspect of the design department. For the sake of being relevant to the brand, a design cannot stray too far from the already-established elements. However, this is not always a bad thing because brand consistency also leads to many beneficial effects.
Design template
Brand consistency is more than just about using the same colors, materials, icons, and finishes. Just as important is the overall user experience with the product. User experience, as the name suggests, is the sum of all interactions between the product and the person using it. This includes accessing the features, utilizing the functionalities, and basically all the user does to take advantage of everything the product has to offer. With brand consistency in mind, there’s no need to change the user experience for the sake of being creative. For example, keep the power button in the same position, make the product compatible with the same accessories or consumable parts as the previous version, don’t go overboard with reshaping the ergonomics, and maintain the same build quality.
If you have to introduce changes, make sure it’s an improvement, not a downgrade. Since the goal is to maintain brand consistency, think of your previous product as a ready-made design template to help eliminate a lot of guesswork. The approach actually works for more types of consumer products design services than you think. Referring back to our previous examples, most iPhones look the same, but people are still buying new ones, and nearly every DeWalt power drill appears almost identical to each other. It’s not that they can’t come up with new designs, but why bother when the existing design is perfect for the purpose? When you buy a new iPhone, you expect it to work like your old iPhone, only better. And that’s because the design department can put more resources on the product’s inner workings rather than cosmetics alone.
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Style uniformity
Brand consistency triggers the need to create design uniformity, leading to familiarity. Uniformity is not limited to build quality and materials but the stylistic approach as well. Let’s say you’ve positioned a computer peripherals brand as a classic alternative to contemporary competitors; although you’re using modern prototyping services and manufacturing technologies to produce computer mouses, keyboards, flash drives, headphones, speakers, and other peripheral devices, your products offer old-school or retro designs. There’s nothing wrong with Bluetooth, IPS display, and noise-canceling technology, but your style must be consistently classic.
Building familiarity is the primary design approach within the context of brand consistency. When people purchase your brand, they expect the product to look and feel old-school while offering new technologies inside. Customers won’t complain about the style being outdated because that’s exactly the distinctive aspect of the brand. As it is your signature style, the design team can focus specifically on “recreating” incarnations of antiquated looks. Brand consistency is the driving force behind design decisions.
Boring can be a good thing
A brand is an identity. In this case, being consistent means using the same identity for all the products released under that brand. Having inconsistent styles and design approaches makes it difficult to nurture a sense of familiarity and uniformity. You’ll be introducing the consumers to a completely different product with every release, and that’s a recipe for marketing disaster. If your design feels repetitive and boring but the sales keep going well, it means you’re doing brand consistency right.
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A simple guideline to brand consistency
To prevent yourself from deviating too much from the brand’s original value proposition, make simple guidelines that include:
- Price range
- How the brand logo should be used
- Color palette
- Materials, textures, and finishing
- Styles (futuristic, minimalistic, rustic, robotic, modern, etc.)
- Basic design template, including shape and contour
- User interface
- Modularity or compatibility with other systems
- Brand messaging
- Packaging design
There’s no need to get all fancy about the guidelines. As long as it conveys clear messages about what to do and NOT do, the design team should understand what you’re trying to achieve from the get-go and keep everything under the defined parameters.
Cad Crowd can help
Achieving brand consistency takes a lot of dedication, persistence, and of course, a good understanding of what a good design is. It can be a challenging task, but it doesn’t always have to be as daunting as it appears to be, especially with Cad Crowd on your side. Over the last 15 years or so, we’ve been connecting companies big and small with a serious lineup of professional designers and design consultants to collaborate in the efforts to ensure brand consistency across the board. You, too, can take advantage of experts’ insights into your strategic planning and design approaches to fulfill the dream of materializing brand consistency.
Reach out to Cad Crowd at your earliest convenience to get your free quote today.
