Future Of Web Design Recap – Lea Alcantara

Lea Alcantara – Lealea design – Session: Building a brand through design

Lea talked about the process of building a brand and how she built and designed her own personal brand.

A brand is not a logo. It is an idea, the perceived value formed by its intended audience about a product, service or culture. A brand is like a person. The total person is similar to the overall idea and appeal. The face is like the logo – an immediate visual appeal and impact. The muscles are like the warranties, the quality and performance of a company. The heart of a brand is the culture, people, attitudes, environment, values and customer service. The bones of the brand are the process and systems and procedures. Branding is consistency and credibility. The more consistent you are the more people will trust you. The act of branding is a conversation between you, your clients and the customers. Brands are built about what people are saying about the product; when you have a great product and you get people to spread the word about it.

You have to think about who you are and why should anyone care. if you brand yourself properly you differentiate yourself

The process used is discover, design, deliver. You need a set process but it has to be adaptable.

Discovery – encourage everyone to have amnesia…you have to find out who you are – what peoples perceptions are about you. Find out what everyone thinks about you, bring it back to basics. Who am I, what am I, Where am I, Who are you? Stereotype yourself- simplify the image. When preparing her personal brand she interviewed friends, family, colleagues, blog readers. She asked them all to give her three adjectives to describe her. Some of the best dialogue was driven from the negative feedback when she explored it. She then put it all into a brand statement and a creative brief.

When moving onto Design, she has some rules:

• always start in black and white. it focuses you are the overall.
• use a vector program.
• get testy – test your designs against everything
• let it be for a day or two – leave it alone for while and come back
• gather feedback
• think about web specifc rules – adaptabilty and flexibity and user expereince and typography
• typography..you have to think about websfe fonts etc

Rachel Clarke thinks a lot about digital strategy and blogs at behindthebuzz.com and bibrik.com.