Design is often thought to be a subjective process, yet how does this work when it comes to branding for your business? Your target audience is key to your marketing success, so building a brand on your personal tastes and feelings alone won’t necessarily work. So, does there need be a balance of subjective and objective thinking? Let’s explore this concept below.

Balance subjective and objective thinking

Developing your brand is incredibly important and it’s easy to be led by your own preferences, but in fact, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to create a brand identity that suits only your own tastes. Whilst design should be influenced by your personal values and opinions, you’ve got to keep in mind the audience who you’re trying to target. Their tastes could be the total opposite to yours, so a purely subjective approach won’t suffice.

Always listen to your clients 

Let’s look at some examples of where this might happen. Joe Bloggs is a 45-year-old male who runs a children’s play centre. Sam Space is a 30-year-old female who runs a Stag Do activity service. John Doe is a 52-year-old male who owns a women’s skincare range. Based on gender and age alone, what do you think would happen if they let their own tastes lead the development of their brand’s visual identities? This is where design has to become objective. If these individuals want to develop a brand that resonates with their target audiences, they’re going to have to work on branding that isn’t necessarily influenced by their own feelings or opinions. Your branding and the way you communicate it visually is there to serve the purpose of attracting new business. It’s got to get your audience engaged. So, as the business owner, or as anyone else representing the business, your own tastes become irrelevant because the opinion that truly matters is that of your customers.

Research, research, research

A key part of the process when we work with clients is to research their target audience and explore their competitors, in order to establish how we can transform their brand into a market leader. We often find that it’s helpful if you share your brand identity with a variety of different people, each with their own demographics, and get them to critique it. This is a good way to see how it’s viewed by different individuals and whilst you’ll find the feedback varies, it’s a key part of getting your branding spot on.

Remember that good design and branding is about successfully communicating ideas into real forms to an intended audience. At Creative Fire, we want to try and marry your values and personality with the needs of your target audience so that we can create a brand that will truly resonate with them. We want you to love your brand, but together we can balance the subjectivity of design with a little bit of objectivity too.

If this sounds good, get in touch with us today for an informal chat about your project!