Beautiful and True: How Brand Identity Shapes CX

Branding is dead. Long live CX.

Lots of people are saying it. 

We agree with the CX bit – but even in the new world of Customer Experience (CX), the death of branding has been greatly exaggerated.

Great branding doesn’t compete with CX. Great branding is the foundation of CX.

What goes into a great brand? It’s much more than a logo or identity. We live by that. In fact, we wrote a whole article about it.

But even in a RevOps growth model for SaaS companies, we’ve still found ourselves redesigning the visual foundations that make up the brand identity.

Let’s explore how a great brand identity leads to creating a great CX.

Branding is about much more than a logo. Credit: Laurenz Heymann on Unsplash.

Personality Meets Purpose

Great designers are seriously stylish people. Beauty is a given in their world. In fact, they’re so good at making things beautiful, it’s become second nature. 

But great design begins with purpose over beauty. It starts with asking a deep question: why?

In that way, designers have always been champions of CX. What’s the purpose of a client’s business for the customer? What does it mean in people’s lives?

A great designer knows their job is to find the truth in a business – and communicate that truth to everyone.

Before they lift a pencil (or stylus, or mouse), our designers dig deep into the purpose behind every brand.

A lot of thought goes into great branding. Credit: Explorenation on Unsplash.

Briefing Builds Strong Identities

Figuring out the essence of a company, its value, and how that translates into its brand is a strategic approach to finding the underlying brand purpose. 

At Hunt & Hawk, we always, always create a detailed briefing that’s exclusively about the visuals.

It captures context and finds meaning by examining the competitive brand landscape, the visual language of the industry, and the meaning behind the name.

A solid brief leads to a series of high-impact visual concepts that illustrate the brand.

But conveying meaning in less than a second is no easy feat.

Choosing the right visual brand identity for your company can make the difference between being forgotten or being remembered. Careful consideration goes into each decision, from typeface selection to colour and even graphics and art.

It starts with a comprehensive brief. Credit: Faizur Rehman on Unsplash.

Beauty and Truth

Brilliance can’t be imitated. Inspiration can’t be discounted. And beauty can’t be denied. But great designers know, the creative should always be strategic. And the beautiful should always be true. 

We know that aligning expectations with reality is at the core of CX. And when it comes to designing a powerful brand, it’s about being intentional and distinctive, so clients can stand out and be remembered. 

Our clients have strong visions on how to change the world. But branding is too often an afterthought, a confusing mess or an exercise in history. 

So, we elevate conversations around brand away from preferences into profound meaning.

At Hunt & Hawk, our design team is on a mission to design with purpose. They know exactly how to translate insights and intel into high-impact designs that make clients proud and their customers delighted.

It all adds up to beauty and truth – the right foundation for CX.

Clearly, the aim is to stand out. Credit: Kristian Egelund on Unsplash.

Meaning and Context

A brand is not what a company says, but rather what their customers perceive. Expanding market share through brand power relies on designing a strong brand identity with context.

Great brand identities strive to bring simplicity to complex businesses, products, and solutions – easier for the customer to see and understand.

We follow design thinker and technologist John Maeda who uses  ‘The One’ rule – keeping design simple by subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. Brand identity that nails the truth can unite all of the important moments with customers.

At Hunt & Hawk, we want our clients and their brands to be meaningful and easily remembered. In a world where everyone is competing for attention, a powerful brand combines simplicity, purpose, and context to make a serious impact.  

Strategic brand identities combine simplicity, strategy, and beauty. Customers and the CX itself need that more than ever.

Simplicity, purpose, context. Credit: PMV Chamara on Unsplash.

Let Us Help You With Your Branding

Are you curious to know how reshaping your brand can accelerate growth? Drop us a line to discover what’s possible.

Reach out to the team at Hunt & Hawk for a discovery conversation.