How to Narrow Down Your Design Ideas – Building A Brand, Ep. 4

When you’re exploring a variety of possible design directions, how do you narrow down your ideas?

Building a Brand is our YouTube series where we give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the brand building process, from the discovery session all the way to the brand’s launch.

In this fourth episode of our Building a Brand series, the designers come together after the creative brief to try to narrow down their design ideas.

They’ve been given creative direction to explore the possible visual aesthetic for the Hamilton Family Brewery rebrand. Taking cues from the customer personas established in the discovery meeting, the designers put together brand identity stylescapes to explore the design’s direction.

In order for the creative team to properly share their ideas to the client, they need to find a way to bridge that gap between what they’re envisioning, versus what the client may want.

And since they’re short on time to complete this rebrand, it’s important that they nail the design direction before they design anything.

The solution? Enter: stylescapes. Stylescapes are a collection of images, textures, colors, and typography to communicate a certain look and feel of a brand. Think of a stylescape as a mood board, just taken one step further.

Stylescapes are meant to set the broad direction of the overall design and get the creative team and the client on the same page of how to move forward.

Stylescapes are arranged in a way that makes sense, with each element edited to work together to communicate a single idea.

Across the stylescape, there needs to be a sense of visual balance to keep the client’s interest as they scan it. The use of contrast between elements helps to create this visual balance.

Stylescapes are meant to help the client see what the new brand will not only look like, but feel like when someone walks into the taproom, or picks up a can of beer from a local store.

If you’re interested in learning more about Stylescapes and how to incorporate them into your design projects, check out this article we wrote.

And if you want to see the Stylescapes the design team created for the Hamilton Family Brewery, be sure to watch the full video above.

ABOUT

Chris Do

Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning director, designer, strategist, and educator. He's the Founder and CEO of The Futur—an online education platform that teaches the business of design to creative thinkers.

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