Posted by Heather Hester on Wednesday, July 29, 2020
This week we want to share a few design-world insights on why matching or coordinating your commercial interior design with your brand identity can be subtle but very beneficial for brand positioning.
If you are already wondering what brand identity is — don’t worry, we’ll cover that as well as why it is important that it is well defined. You may also be wondering how to match your building’s interior design to your brand image and why that matters anyway. We’ll get to that too! By the end of this blog, you will be well suited to get an exciting plan going!
What Is Brand Identity?
Brand identity consists of all of your company’s visual elements — color, design, graphics, and the words used in your company name, as well as the overall tone these elements express. With a thoughtfully created visual language, brand identity can communicate company values as well as evoke emotion. Great examples of successful brand identity are Apple, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks.
Why Is Brand Identity Important?
Brand identity is important for several reasons. First, when you creatively market with a strong brand identity design, you are bound to establish consistency and user recognition. Ultimately, the goal is to gain brand loyalty, recurring customers, and the ability to charge a higher premium for your goods and services.
Why would brand consistency increase your top-line revenue, you ask? When you showcase an organized and well thought out approach to your brand, you show potential customers that you know what they want and how to provide quality service. Their initial impression of your professional brand conveys your experience and reliability. In addition, a strong brand identity makes you memorable and differentiates you from your competition.
Benefits of Matching Interior Design with Brand Identity
Matching your interior design with your brand identity may sound daunting but it can be done simply and effectively by breaking it into a few categories.
First, it allows you to convey your company’s mission and values by means of your brand colors and design, as well as through the use and placement of messaging throughout your commercial space.
Let’s look at Apple as an example. Their logo and color scheme are simple: an apple combined with black and white. The interior design of its stores is minimalistic and lacks colors. This allows for the focus to be on their product and their customer service. Clean lines and no fussy extras speak to our subconscious: a quality product that is better than the competitor. Arguably, there are products out there that are as technologically sound as Apple products, but Apple matches their interior so well to their brand identity, that they blow the competition out of the water.
Second, matching interior design to brand identity allows you to convey your experience as well as your reliability. What this kind of coordination between commercial interior design and brand elements communicates to your clients is consistency. The visual consistency invites them to intuitively transfer this experience to the other areas of your work — how you handle the business, for example, and perceive your brand as persistent and reliable.
Third, matching interior design to brand identity differentiates you from the competition. An example of a company that does this well is Starbucks. You could walk into a Starbucks anywhere in the world without seeing their exterior signage or even a coffee cup on the way in and know that you are in Starbucks, not Dunkin Donuts, Peets, or any other competitor.
You should aim to continually extrapolate these assets in order to ensure that they strategically aligned with your growth.
How To Match The Interior Design With Brand Identity?
I am willing to bet that you are already brainstorming ideas on how you can do this with your company.
The interior elements that you should aim to match with your brand identity could be broken into three categories:
- Use of color (including paint and wallcovering) and design;
- Furniture and other large fixed items;
- Accessories including wall hangings such as branded pictures and photographs.
Using color and design is the most obvious aspect. Pull the color theme and design style from your brand identity and use that to guide the other two categories. The design style should guide your furniture choice as well as the placement of larger fixed items like a reception desk and surrounding area, office layout, and the like.
The final touches of accessories, pictures, and photographs (think employee award wall), as well as paint, will help you make those detailed final touches that will solidify a beautiful interior design as well as a strong brand identity.
Hester Painting & Decorating has long been known for its artistic craftsmanship. Two of the most stunning and impactful ways to tie together your interior design and brand identity are to incorporate a hand-painted logo and/or faux finish in your interior design.
A hand-painted logo not only adds beauty but also communicates that you are willing to go the extra mile to provide a great product or service. Using a faux finish, whether on an accent wall, a single room, or throughout the building sends a subtle message of elegance and attention to detail. Either way, you can’t go wrong.
Contact us today at (847) 677–5130 and our talented staff will help you design and create a hand-painted logo or assist you in choosing the perfect faux finish for your brand identity!
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