What is a discovery session? How do you develop a brand strategy? What questions do you ask a client? How do you create user profiles and user personas? How do you identify your customers? Why must you define a strategy before you design?

The discovery meeting is the backbone of the entire project. It’s a facilitated meeting with the clients or stakeholders. Sometimes, a discovery session can take a few hours. Other times, it can take a few days. In this meeting, we define the client’s goals, the challenges getting in the way, and understand the customer’s pain points. It’s what defines the brand strategy moving forward.

“Building a Brand” is a series where we take you behind the scenes as Blind helps to rebrand Hamilton Family Brewery. Hamilton Family Brewery was founded in 2014 by husband and wife team Josh and Crysten Hamilton. Since then, their little brewery in Rancho Cucamonga, California has ballooned in size because of its growing popularity.

In episode 2 of Building a Brand, Matthew and Ben from Blind sit down with Josh and Crysten from Hamilton Family Brewery to define Hamilton’s brand strategy moving forward. In this meeting, they'll define the goals of the business, identify the customers driving revenue, create user personas, and define the brand attributes. All of these exercises will help the branding team at Blind develop a successful strategy for the business.

The Hamilton's are looking to take the next step into retail, but Josh, who has been doing the design for the company up to this point, does not feel confident in creating a recognizable, stand-out brand for that next phase. In this series, we'll give you a behind-the-scenes look at this process from start to finish. You'll see how ideas are shaped and take the form of a new identity system, packaging, messaging, website, and ultimately, see the brand launch.