Building Your Brand (Part 1)
Establishing the Basics; Correcting some misconceptions
Whoops!!! It’s been Four weeks since my first post (see here to read) and I appreciate all the love and support I’ve gotten since then. This post should have been out since last week (🙃 ) but I just couldn’t put it out, so I gave myself a deadline to ensure it doesn’t exceed today (which was yesterday, 👀), but finally here we are.
What I will be discussing is something I love talking about and always wanted to write about. For me to be able to do justice to it, I have decided to break it into a series. In this first part, I will be laying the foundation for the topic and correcting a misconception that has become very popular.
Whether you own a business, work in a company or do freelance work, you have to deal with the importance of building a brand either for your personal brand or corporate brand. Also as a consumer or user who needs the product/service of a person or business, there are a number of factors that helps you make a decision to buy/use a product/service. After every first encounter with a product/service, your experience using the product/service is a very important factor that determines if you are going to continue using it or not. These experiences build our perception and impression of the brand.
In the business/corporate world, one of the buzzword people use a lot is BRAND/BRANDING. Over the years, I’ve seen the word BRAND being used loosely and one of the most common example is people referring to their “LOGO” as their BRAND.
Spoiler alert “YOUR LOGO IS NOT YOUR BRAND”
To even make matters worse, I now see people refer to a Mock-up as their logo.
Another spoiler “A Mock-up is not A Logo”
There has been a rise in the marketing of Mock-ups as Logo. I see ads on Facebook and WhatsApp where a designer advertises images of Shiny Mock-ups as Logo for prices like 5K, 2K or even as low as 500 Naira and you see people flock to patronize them. The popularity of this representation has led to a great misunderstanding of what a Logo is and also led to warped design expectation from designer (Trust me; I have seen very funny and ridiculous logo design brief).
I have seen this particular idea of what a Logo is become very popular among WhatsApp and Instagram Merchants and Business people. In 2020, I saw a lot of people launch their online business portraying “images of what they sell or do in mockups” as their “Business logo” and some even go as far as using the Mock-ups in some other fliers meant to promote their business. I am very sure you must have come across this or even commissioned one, but I am here to tell you, this is not how it should be.
And now you must be wondering what then is a “Mock-up” and what is the right way to use a Mock-up.
According to Wikipedia, “A Mockup, or Mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes.”
In other words, it is a prototype i.e. it is used to test the design before implementation or production. It is used in acquiring feedbacks and makes it easier to make corrections. Mock-up has a wide range of use beyond Logo design. Engineers, Architects, Industrial Designers, Product Designers and a whole lot of other professionals make use of Mock-up. In the case of Logo Design, It is mostly used in presentations to help the client or stake holders visualize the Logo in real life application and use cases without exactly producing/printing it.
In the example above, the Mock-up (on the left) vs the Final result (on the right).
Most times designers use Mock-ups to help the client visualize what the design will look like when finally produced. Therefore portraying a Mock-up meant for presentation purpose as the Logo or final product itself is a misuse of the Mock-up. So when a “designer” sends this to you, you should know better and ask for the logo in it plain state.
There are times I sit down to think about what went wrong and how we got to this point where when a client asks for a Logo and they expect you to deliver a mockup to them. I ask myself “Which designer miscommunicated with a client or which client misinterpreted what a designer said and brought about this abnormality we see everywhere?”
Now that I’ve explained what a Mock-up is, your next question will be, What then is a Logo?
In the next part of this series, I will be addressing the following;
What is a Logo Not?
What is a Logo, Brand Identity, Branding and a Brand?
The value of a Logo
Is investing in a Logo worth it?
What makes a Logo successful?
Connect with me on Twitter and Instagram to keep the conversation going.
Great read! It's nice to see someone talk about the "mockup as a logo" problem.
Awesome one... I love this.
It has become very popular amongst entrepreneurs using mock-ups (probably due to its attractiveness) to represent their business.
Thanks for the knowledge shared. More wisdom 🙏.