In a new article on BMB (Brand Marketing Blog) I define what a brand association is:

Creating links between a company and other concepts is what a designer should be doing all the time.

My background is in Industrial Design. At the Carleton SID (where I earned my bachelor’s degree), we learned how to take people prior knowledge and associations and leverage them to make easy to use products. Red equates to stop in everyone’s mind, so having a red button that stops something just makes sense. There is no point in trying to build a new association.

Using that sense to create brand associations is what I can offer a new company as a brand designer. I can use pre-established associations in peoples minds to give a new brand desirable qualities.

For example, when I designed the Strike Team logo for a competitive eSports team, it was determined that a sense of dominance and authority would be advantageous for competition.

What already has a sense of authority and dominance? The police. So the questions becomes: what design elements commonly associated with the police can we use in the logo?

In the final product, the answer to that question was the colour scheme. I did try other logo concepts where we used the shield shape of a police officer’s badge, but another direction was chosen.

Amateur designers design to aesthetics, but pro designer are problem solvers. I throw no judgment towards designers just starting out; there was a point in my development where I added gradients to everything because that is what people seemed to like the look of. I’ve moved on.

How do you create the correct brand associations for a net new brand? That’s just another problem that an expert designer could solve.

259 names brainstormed

259 names considered

1 name chosen

Generating a Company Name That Fits The Ski Lifestyle

https://brandmarketingblog.com/articles/branding-how-to/naming-a-lifestyle-brand/

You can have a good company with a bad name, but it’s growth will be inhibited. A name is an opportunity to signal what your brand is about; in this case, we want to signal two things: 1) snowboard /ski lifestyle and 2) personal care products.

We used the Multiply Method to generate names. We came up with a list of words associated with mountain sports, and a list of works common in personal care. We combined the words in a table. After brainstorming hundreds of names, we eliminated them based on workability, length, domain name availability, social media handle availability, and the opinions of our stakeholders.

We arrived on a great name and registered a 7-letter .com domain (through!) But you are going to have the read the article to see the name.

What makes a good logo?
https://brandmarketingblog.com/articles/design/what-makes-a-good-logo/

Does your logo hold up to these standards? If not, contact me.

Lifestyle Brand Plan

A strategy is the best position for success, and tactics are how you plan to get from where you are to that ideal strategic position. How do you create a plan to build a lifestyle brand? Work backward. You may not have the domain knowledge to know every step. Ask your suppliers and hire consultants. Write action-oriented steps; resources and timing will come later. This can be overwhelming work so take your time.

Read the full article on BMB | Brand Marketing Blog

Product Titles and Customer Expectations

A product label is what you name your product in to communicate to customers what they are buying. The product label sets the customer’s expectations.

Some industries have set product labels that rank in a hierarchy, e.g., motel, hotel, resort. Marketers can add adjectives to product labels that modify expectations, e.g., performance tires.

Setting an expectation and not meeting it in reality damages a brand. It is common sense that delivering a level lower than expected is harmful, but it is also wrong to deliver a higher level. People are most comfortable when they receive what they were expecting, and a higher level of service is not repeatable because it becomes a new standard. Instead, we want to aim to meet expectations plus add elements of surprise and delight. Just be honest with your product labels.

Read the full article on BMB | Brand Marketing Blog

What Your Logo Font Says About Your Brand

Read the full article on BMB | Brand Marketing Blog

What your logo font says about your brand.

Link: https://brandmarketingblog.com/articles/design/what-your-logo-font-says-about-your-brand/

Infographic

I also created an infographic that summarizes it. Enjoy:

If you haven’t read it, we took the top eSports team logos and pitted them head to head in a round robin, then semi-finals, then finals. The winners of all of these “games” were chosen by a team of graphic designers as well as myself.

Unfortunately, those pesky other designers… I mean gracious, giving designer friends(!)… eliminated some of the logos that I was really taken with. I am not upset, we had really great discussions about them and their point of view was valid, and it reminded me of the needs for multiple viewpoints because they were so different from my own.

But I thought that I would share who would have won the tournament if I had scored it alone.

Wings Gaming

Bronze Medal

The Wings Gaming logo is just interesting and well designed. It has a military vibe to it; like it could be the logo for a squadron of F-22s. The negative space W is a nice touch; this was a talented designer. I show it here in the original cyan, but it is now featuring an awful gradient, which is a big no-no for sports team logo designs because of printing / stitching on apparel.

Astralis Gaming

Silver Medal

The Astralis Gaming logo is just such a simple and unique emblem. I can’t tell you how hard it is to find a unique geometry like this. The designer struck gold. A simple and unique logo like this will work in any context, but it really doesn’t look like a sports team logo, unlike our winner.

Rogue eSports

Gold Medal

The Rogue eSports logo was the winner of the eSports Logo Tournament and would win again if it was just up to me. The illustration is technically well executed, the theme of the assassin works for an eSports team, and it is just a badass design. Does anyone know who was the designer?

I facilitated a group of the top industrial designers (Chadwick Harber, Nichole Rouillac, Grayson Byrd, Mika Becktor and Norio Fujikawa) to comment on the latest smart speaker designs.

I chose smart speakers because the visual aesthetics are such an important part of the experience. These things are decorations as much as consumer electronics. While all of these designers acknowledge the paramount importance of usability of electronics like a smartwatch or a laptop, we don’t need to consider that to have a valid conversation about the designs.

What you didn’t get are my opinions on the designs. So here we go:

Amazon Echo Plus and Amazon Echo Dot

Bottom line: Let’s move away from cold and sterile.

I appreciate that these are at a slight disadvantage, being the longest in the market without a refresh. But the designs do not project what they need to: approachability and style. There is nothing unexpected here and not a treasure you want to display in your home.

The good news for Amazon is there are some clear directions they can go, and this article could give them the insight they need.

Google Home and Google Home Mini

Bottom line: My favourite.

My preference is towards the Home, and less the Home Mini, but both are scuptural and appreciated the role of decoration the speaker has. The matte white plastic combined with the fabic gives the Home’s a comforting appearance.

I own a Google Home Mini, but I would love to get a Google Home and display it prominently.

Apple HomePod

Bottom line: The engineers ruled the roost.

Expectations are high when Apple enters a marketplace because they have a track record of designing things in a way that made all previous designs look silly. But that did not come true when they entered the smart speaker market. The design is on par with the best, but not a leap forward.

It was clear when I was researching the story that they were focusing on the acoustic experience and the engineering that went into it. I feel as if the engineers arranged the speakers, and the designers just skinned it. I think of that as typical for a Dell or a Samsung, but you would expect a more integrated solution from Apple.

Sonos One

Bottom line: Where’s Waldo?

I feel like the designers from silicon valley featured in the article knew something about Sonos: that they value blending into the environment. They shun the spotlight.

That is a fine choice, and they succeeded at that. This speaker could go anywhere in any style room and barely be noticed. Finding the speakers in their press photos is almost a game of Where’s Waldo?

But this is a bit of a lost opportunity. A smart speaker is different than a classic speaker because someone talks to it. While you do not need to face these speakers to use them, a lot of people address them with their body. They should have a presence.

Harmon Kardon Invoke

Bottom line: They designed a piece of consumer electronics when everyone was designing a houseware.

Harman Kardon has a legacy of unique speakers designs with a lot of lateral thinking, which is why it is so surprising that they designed a speaker that looks very typical of a computer peripheral.

No judgment; I might have designed it this way depending on the direction from executives.

But the opportunity here was to design a nice home decoration that people would like to look at every day. This is design isn’t a feast fo

Why Brand Marketing Works

I reviewed why brand marketing works so effectively: we are biologically set to form reputations, relationships and associations from our evolution to survive. We use these same processes to guide purchasing decisions in the modern world.

Review of Brand Seduction

I read and reviewed Brand Seduction by Daryl Weber. This book talks about the science of branding and how neuroscience and psychology can help us make better decisions as marketers. I gave this book my highest recommendation.

Changing business models with a brand.

In this article, I review how Walmart wants to strategically realign their brand to focus more on online sales and purchased Jet.com to get them back into the race with Amazon for mass merchandise supremacy.

Daryl Weber Interview

I had a thoughtful chat with Daryl Weber, author of Brand Seduction, about how neuroscience and psychology can influence how we go about brand marketing.

Definition of Brand Equity

I defined brand equity and used Apple as an example of how brand equity is part of the value of a company’s market cap.

The Compounding Effect of Brand

In this article, I talk about how the primary effect of branding is compounded because positive brand associations lead to positive experiences, which strengthens those positive brand associations. It is a virtuous cycle. It can also go the other way where negative brand associations can lead to poor experiences, which is a negative brand spiral.