What is the difference between a Brand Strategist and a Brand Designer?
We're living in an era where it is relatively 'easy' (I'll put this one in brackets because it's easy to start but it's not really that easy to keep up right?) to start your own business. And when you made that decision you need to come up with how you are going to call yourself, you need a title. But unlike when you work in the corporate world where your title is linked to responsibilities & salaries and where the rules are managed by an HR Department, with your own business you can decide what to call yourself. There are no rules that anyone will hold you to.
And while having the freedom to do whatever I want is one of the reasons I made the jump from the corporate world to the business owner world, it also causes quite a bit of confusion, especially when it comes to things as titles.
The most common one in the branding world that I have come across is what the difference is between a Brand Designer vs a Brand Strategist.
So, let’s discuss what exactly the difference is between a Brand Designer and a Brand Strategist.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
What a brand designer is
What a brand strategist is
When to hire a brand designer or a brand strategist
And when not to hire a brand strategist
But let's start with some definitions about the difference between your business, your brand and branding:
Your business is the organisation that offers services
Your brand is what people say about you (how clients perceive your business)
Branding is you intentionally influencing what people say about you
So how can you intentionally influence how people see your business?
Through creating a brand strategy (done by the brand strategist) that establishes the base of your business; your foundation.
And through your visual brand identity (done by the brand designer), which is the look and feel, that will help you express what your brand is about.
I hope this already shows you there is a difference between a brand designer and a brand strategist but let's dive in a bit deeper.
What is a brand designer?
A brand designer will help you create your visual brand identity. This is the look and feel of your business which is made up of your logo (and all the logo variations), the color palette, patterns, and your fonts. Once this is made, you will receive brand guidelines so that you can make sure you use your brand identity consistently.
That's pretty clear, right? These elements are clear (almost tangible) deliverables that you would expect from a brand designer.
And you want them as soon as possible after starting your business. Which I totally get, there is nothing more exciting to come up with your name, picking colours and creating a logo when you start. This makes it feel more real, more tangible because you can actually see it.
But, this is also the most common mistake that I see a lot of business owners make.
Why? Remember that I said above that your visual brand identity will help you express what your brand is about? So how do you know what your visual need to express is, if you have not established the foundation (that what's not visible) of your business?
Makes sense right? You're basically putting the cart before the horse.
So what happens then, is that the logo and colors are picked are purely based on your personal preferences (probably your favourite colors) instead of that they are based on what you're business is about and what will resonate/attract your ideal clients.
And I get it, I have been there. I wanted to get my business out there and designed a logo, created a website and came up with my services by combining services I saw from other designers. And the more elements I added to the business, the further away I went from my original mission. I had no clear direction, and the consistency in my branding was well … non-existent.
About a year in, I realised that I had skipped some steps in the beginning and had to go back to the foundation and build my business back up from this base, I was ready to work with a brand identity designer.
It was the best decision I made. That feeling that everything is coming together and falling into place is amazing. When you are clear on where you want to go, you have the strategies set up to get there and the visual identity to back it up, everything in your business is in alignment. But to get to this point, you need a brand strategist.
What is a brand strategist?
We talked about what a brand designer is and that brand strategy needs to come before brand identity design. So now let's look at what a brand strategist is.
A brand strategist will help you to establish the base of your business; your foundation.
I know strategy is very intangible. While you might have a document that outlines your strategy it is not something that you can hold or really see, unlike your visual brand identity. And I think this is one of the reasons, as business owners, we gravitate towards creating our visuals while we should focus on the foundation first to build the visuals upon.
But why is this so important?
As I mentioned before, you want to create a brand that will resonate/attract your ideal clients, you want to build an emotional connection. You do this through authenticity and building trust. But you can also connect with them through shared values. And here’s a statistic to back that up: 77 percent of consumers buy from brands who share the same values as they do (HavasGroup, 2019). This means you need to know what you stand for and understand what your ideal clients stand for.
And this is where a brand strategist comes in. They will help you to develop your:
Internal brand: purpose or why, vision, mission, goals and values
Brand positioning: who are already targeting your ideal clients (competitors), what is the difference between them and you and how can you position yourself so that you can connect with your ideal client better than your competitors
Brand character: what is your brands personality and voice?
Brand messaging: how do you talk to your ideal clients so that they resonate with your message.
Once this is clear you will have more clarity, feel more confident, have a clear focus and direction. You will know who your target audience is and how to speak to them. And you will know where to invest your hard-earned money because you know what strategy to follow to increase brand awareness and convert clients. And as a result, you will reach your income goals.
So a brand strategist can actually show you if you will need to invest in a brand designer to redesign your brand identity, or not.
When to hire a brand designer vs a brand strategist
Before I get into if you should hire a brand designer or brand strategist there is something else I want to mention first.
I am assuming that the reason you want to hire a designer or a strategist is that you want to change something within your business. Most likely something is not working or you keep struggling with the same thing like attracting the right clients who have the budget for your services.
As you keep having the same issues you try to find the cause of why you're struggling. Let's look at the example of not attracting the right clients who have the budget for your services.
You might think the issue is your website because your website does not bring in clients. To solve this problem, you want to hire a website designer.
Maybe you don't have a website yet but you DIY'ed your logo and picked the colors. So it must be the logo and the colours, so you hire a brand designer to solve the problem.
And while both can be the right diagnoses, there is a large chance that is just a part of the problem. Because your website and your visual identity reflect what your business is about. And if you don't know your ideal client very well or how you are different from your competitors how are you going to pick the right colors or write copy that talks to these ideal clients?
So the website or visual identity is not actually the problem and changing them won't solve your problem. The issue is that you don't have a clear vision or a strong foundation to build these visual elements upon.
So to conclude:
when you have not developed a strong brand foundation yet or an element like your positioning is changing you need a brand strategist
If you have this foundation, you can clearly communicate this and there is a disconnect between which clients your current visual identity is attracting and the ideal clients you want to attract, then you need to hire a brand designer.
Sounds quite straightforward, right?
So you might be wondering where it goes wrong? Where does the confusion come from?
Well, that comes largely because of that freedom in titles I mentioned in the beginning. When you look at the messaging of brand designers (but also website designers, marketing strategists, copywriters etc) it generally is a variation of intentionally, authentic, strategic or purposeful design. And the results they are achieving for clients is for them to show their expertise, look more professional and attract dream clients.
These are all great terms (and I am a bit afraid that I am sounding very critical of other designers, but I really don't mean it in a bad way) but if most designers say the same thing, how can you stand out?
So logo or brand designers started calling themselves brand strategists. I mean, it sounds great to call yourself a strategist. It sounds more important. And there is a lot of intention and strategy that goes into brand identity design. It's not just about creating something pretty, but something that attracts those ideal clients. So a lot is riding on it.
And I can get where the confusion comes from when the initial questionnaires or workbooks ask you similar questions like:
Tell me about your company like we just met
What is the mission and vision of your business
What are your personal and business goals? What are the deadlines?
What do you want your brand to represent? How do you want to be positioned?
What products/services are you selling? What would you like to in the future?
Who are your competitors?
What are you struggling with within your business?
For the brand strategist, this is to know where you are now and where you want to go so that they can develop a long-term strategy to get you there.
For the designer, this will be the information they use to create your brand identity design, so they rely on you knowing all of this and being able to clearly communicate it. They are not there to develop it. So if you don't know the answers to the questions and still go ahead with brand identity design, there is a large chance the design will not be what you were looking for.
So be sure to have a clear understanding of your needs before you hire a designer or strategist. And research who you are hiring and what their process is so that you exactly know what you can expect. While a lot of brand strategist used to be brand identity designers, not all brand strategists can help you with design (or they might not want to anymore), but they will probably be able to refer you or outsource the design. And most brand designers will not help with the development of your brand. And keep in mind: you get what you pay for.
When not to hire a brand strategist?
So we have talked about when to hire a designer or a strategist and have defined you first need to have a brand strategy before you want to hire a designer. But are there situations when you should not hire a brand strategist?
Yes, there absolutely are situations when you should not. Let me explain.
When you don't know yet what kind of service you want to offer, who you want to work with, what you can bring to the table or what your vision for your business is there is not much for a brand strategist to work with. Yes, we can help you create clarity and narrow things down, but if you're unclear of what it is that you want to do a strategist is not the right person to work with.
Another thing to keep in mind is that strategy is just the first step. After it comes to the implementation and there is a chance you need to invest in a brand or website design, a copywriter, a marketing strategist etc. So you need to be able to invest in the strategy as well as the implementation for it to work.
It is a good time to hire a brand strategist when:
You're changing your positioning
You have narrowed down your niche
You want to change your product suite
You want to work with a different target audience
When you want to scale
Final thoughts
So there you have it. I hope by now it's clear what the difference is between a Brand Designer and a Brand Strategist and when you should or should not hire them. And if you're not ready to do either, I hope your main takeaway was that branding is 80% strategy and 20% visual design. So if you’re struggling with the visual design of your brand be sure to go through the Brand Foundation Series where I talk in-depth about all the elements of brand strategy.
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