Reject cynicism.
Defy apathy
Celebrate good.
When an organization calls us about their brand, the request usually arrives framed as a design problem. The logo feels dated. The website is broken. The colors don’t feel right anymore.
Sometimes, a design solution is exactly what’s needed. More often, the design problem is a symptom of something further upstream: somewhere along the way, the organization stopped asking the right questions.
At BitterSweet Creative, we’ve come to believe that most brand problems are listening and storytelling problems. That belief shaped a new resource we’re publishing this week, a free (and short!) brand assessment called Are You Listening? Here are a few of the ideas behind it.
Our creative director, Obi Okolo, breaks listening into three questions: Who is it for? What is it for? When is it for?
The first is about understanding your audience. The second is about the work itself, and what gap your brand addresses. The third is about the societal and cultural landscape. (That’s the one almost nobody asks.)
By taking the time to ask these questions, you’ll have a better understanding of why people care about what you do (or why they don’t), what makes your work valuable, and how it fits into the broader trends in your sector and across culture.
We have a simple rule for new projects: If you hire us for a rebrand today, we won't design it for today. Instead, we’re designing it for two years from now.
Brands anchored to the aesthetics of the current moment are already behind by the time they launch. (They also cost more, because you end up paying to redo them sooner than you should.)
By setting a finish line just out of reach, we ensure that we and our clients avoid making easy, trend-driven decisions that aren’t founded in strategic thinking.
A strong brand reflects what you know about your community and your role in it. When your mission or operational strategy evolves, your brand has to evolve to keep pace.
That doesn’t mean we expect your organization to change its visual identity every two years. It just means that your brand is held with an open hand.
Your goal should be to maintain a tight connection between what you’re learning in your work and what you’re saying as a brand. At its best, your identity reflects the work as it is rather than how it used to be.
Storytelling is the medium through which most audiences actually meet your brand. It’s also the arena in which trust is either built or slowly eroded.
The organizations we see doing great storytelling avoid familiar tropes (like the founder hero or the grateful beneficiary), make room for voices beyond leadership, and place equal value on hard truths and hopeful ideas.
It’s great if your line spacing and kerning are dialed in. But it’s not the priority.
We created a quick brand assessment to make all of this more concrete.
It’s simple: just 20 statements across four sections, each rated 1 to 5. You’ll be able to finish it in five or ten minutes.
Every brand has its own strengths and weak points. Your final score isn’t a grade; it will just point you in the right direction to turn those weak points into your greatest assets.
Visit BitterSweetCreative.com/brand-assessment to take the assessment.
By Obiekwe "Obi" Okolo, Bittersweet Creative Creative Director