EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
The brand experience derives from the emotional connection generated by language, physical design and typography. Brittany Golob explores the five senses
The brand experience is all about the five senses. Taste and smell are often the realm of brands in the food and drink, retail or consumer goods sectors. But all businesses must address touch, sight and sound when developing or reinforcing their brands.
Sight is often the most prominent sense addressed – through language, typography, wayfinding or the built environment. Touch and sound act as complementary, but often inherently instinctive senses – things like a tweet notification and a catchy advertising jingle or the consistent suppleness of Louis Vuitton leather and the familiar depression of Apple’s home button – that immediately prompt brand recognition.
The ways in which brands manipulate the sense of sight are among the most apparent and most-distinctive elements of the brand experience. Design, of course, plays into this. But a design or brand can only be implemented through the effective use of language, type and creation of the built environment.
Neil Taylor, creative director at language consultancy The Writer, says language, in the corporate world, is often an afterthought. "Language is like the forgotten cousin in the cellar," he says. Getting companies to reassess the way they use language, either internally or externally requires a bit of stealth to jar businesses out of the doldrums of corporate-speak. “It’s like making an intervention for someone with an alcohol problem. Where can you get someone where they least expect it? Language is the tool that we’re using to get people to think about their behaviour.”
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Type set and ready? One of the key communications tools for designers and brand creators alike, typography, is often relegated to the choice of “What’s on my system?” rather than “What should I be looking to communicate?” They’re missing a trick. Typography is a powerful tool with a powerful psychological influence for building a brands and conveying their core message. Clients often ask why should we care about typography, or fonts at all? The answer is simple; it’s about brand voice, the unique personality that identifies a product, service, person or place. Design is the vehicle through which we can express a distinct personality and the selection or craft of a proprietary typeface becomes as important as the use of color, photography or support graphics in deploying a meaningful, credible and distinctive brand experience. In the past decade, we’ve seen typography enter mainstream culture; from Gary Hustwit’s documentary film Helvetica, to Bruno Maag’s controversial love of Comic Sans. And yet, all too often we are still met with confusion as to the importance and opportunity of such a detail. There is a tendency to forget that typography is the foundation of human communication. Typography evokes human emotion by combining simple form with narrative text. It’s this unique combination of simplicity and meaning that gives typography its communicative strength and inherent value. The purity of simple form; be it serif or sans, bold or italic, typography has the power to transform brands and ultimately shape contemporary culture. Good type design is a marriage of aesthetics and functionality. As with any great fashion, or product design, typography is a human artifact that blends aesthetics and functionality at the same time. If one were to examine Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chair, considered futuristic when it was first launched in the ’60s, it perfectly reflected the aspirations of the time (emotive value) with functional ergonomic design. Likewise, a great typeface should activate emotional response and deliver functionality – legibility in print, screen-based media and ease of implementation across platforms. Like furniture, product or fashion design, type design is a craft that ultimately blends art and science. A good example is Burberry, whose visual identity leverages characteristics reflective of luxury and a brand steeped in heritage and style. At the heart of the Burberry brand identity is its bespoke typeface – a modern serif font that beautifully blends brands heritage with contemporary aesthetics of fashion. The sharp, elegant lines of the typeface highlight the minimalist, couture-style of the Burberry product and in have created distinctiveness and emotional appeal. Take Apple for example: In 2002, Apple started using a variant of the Adobe Myriad font family in its marketing and packaging communications. As new revisions of its products were released, the font evolved from the previously used serif based Apple Garamond to the sans-serif Myriad as a means to reflect the brands ethos of simplicity, ease of use and humanistic, beyond- business relationship with users. The use of Myriad went beyond product and communications and entered the realm of the environment. I’d even argue that one reason Apple stores look so good is the careful and consistent application of Myriad – simple, clear ‘human’ and relevant. ------------------------------------------------Clive Rohald is siegel+gale’s executive creative director for EMEA |
A company must address both content and tone of voice in its writing, Taylor says. If the company has an established personality, typically one that stems from the corporate leadership, drawing out its tone will only be a matter of patience and skill. Determining how the company perceives itself, how it communicates externally and the ways in which employees already communicate internally can all inform the resulting tone of voice.
In the case of Mavic, a storied French bicycle company that sponsors the Tour de France, employees were pleasantly surprised with the company’s lingual makeover. A sparse, yet well- paced tone was adopted which gave the company a more well-defined character. The content shared about the company’s heritage and accomplishments better communicated the brand’s values internally.
The efforts made in determining tone can work wonders on a brand. Taylor says, “Most people care about language because their identity is so wrapped up in it.” Language thus, is part of the core identity of a company. Michael Lenz, head of brand experience, Cisco Systems says that his company’s transformation from technically-oriented, dull writing to more vibrant and descriptive language was a behavioural change. “A lot of this is ensuring that there’s a personality that reflects the core values of who we are,” he says.
Corporate language, however, is not only relevant in determining what tone communications will take and the content of said comms, but in reaching a multi-lingual audience with the same ease and effectiveness as when communicating in a brand’s home language.
Taylor says this is often not a difficult transition, as the brand’s personality informs tone, it’s just a matter of translation. Andy Myring from Maverick, which employs a number of linguists on its branding team, says attention to language is necessary, “As the world becomes more and more international and there are fewer physical borders, it’s vital that people still have a connection to their own language. [A multilingual approach] shows respect and recognises that those things are still very important.”
A brand plays a huge role in maintaining and building a company’s reputation, Myring says. By communicating in multiple languages, that brand can ensure its user experience translates across borders, as will its ensuing reputation.
Brand experience is related to a company’s reputation, particularly in the design of the built environment. This is most apparent in the retail sector in which brands like Apple, Abercrombie & Fitch and Nike stake out a strong identity based on distinctive design elements. The built environment should be, according to Myring, like a 3D magazine. “A vital part of connecting to a product is to use the things that people tap into – the associations, feelings and emotions – of which the environment and typeface all have a role to play,” he says.
The physical experience can be the most powerful point of connection and interaction around which a brand experience is developed. A promenade in Leeds, for one, features consistent storefronts that do not allow for branded signage. This detracts from the user experience because consumers cannot inherently know that they are headed to a certain store. Part of the role signage plays is in communicating instinctively to the consumer what a brand’s values are, Simon Belton, managing director at Signlex, a wayfinding and signage implementation company, says.
“The way the branding is implemented onto the built environment should reflect the brand into everything they ever do,” Belton says. However there are certain challenges that individual buildings and environments present. Law offices and colleges are moving toward bolder, more colourful branding that requires skill to implement within the constricts of old or listed locations. Materials also play a role. A brass McDonalds sign in York suits the building’s listed status in terms of regulation, but also in terms of the visual brand experience.
Internal attention to the brand experience is also vital to building a company’s reputation. “Your staff are your best brand advocates,” Myring says. “If they don’t believe in your brand or your company, then nobody else will. Brands tend to focus on the external audience and tend to forget the employees, which is absolutely disastrous.”
The internal built environment is reliant upon effective wayfinding and signage. Symbols and typography, in this case are the focal point. These, Belton says, should be an extension of the brand. In one student accommodation centre, signage was implemented in both English and Malay. But because the languages both used the Roman alphabet, differentiation was required to avoid confusion. Belton’s team posted English writing in black and, in the same size, displayed the Malay translation in a claret red. This allowed users to subconscious select the appropriate signage, thus enhancing the brand experience.
In the built environment, as well as in the brand’s design, typography has a crucial role to play. Get it wrong and a company will instantly fail at communicating its brand values.
“Type is a transformational tool,” typography expert Bruno Maag said at a London Design Festival event hosted by Siegel + Gale. “It’s about functionality and making the character work in its respective environment.”
The choice of typography can become one of the most important decisions a brand makes. In the built environment, that choice relates to the functionality of the wayfinding elements. Legibility should be taken into account when developing or choosing a typeface. If it’s not suitable to the built environment, it must be tweaked to become more legible, thus moving the physical experience away from the brand’s design. Within a brand,, type can communicate a company’s personality. “It can express what the brand stands for,” Maag adds. “It can help you define the tone of voice of a brand.”
Much of the response engendered by typography, or even language and physical design, is intangible, but vital to the brand experience. Using these elements to communicate brand values allows a company to create an emotional connection to its audiences. For that reason, functional typography, language reflective of the company’s personality and effective wayfinding – all ostensively subtle elements – are vital to the brand experience.
“A layperson cannot pinpoint what is different from one font to the next, but emotionally, they respond differently,” Maag says.
Appealing to the senses is the most effective way in which a brand can connect emotionally with its employees or consumers. This influences the type of music played in a store, or the particular etching on the wayfinding signage. It influences the distinct aroma of Starbucks coffee or the perfumed air of the local Abercrombie outlet. Most importantly, though, it influences the ways in which a brand is applied to its physical environment, using what language and what typography.
