Brand DESIGN
What is a brand? It is an organization’s identity, DNA, or culture. It’s what other people think of your organization based on what they hear, see, and experience. It’s more than just a great-looking logo. It extends from the leadership all the way to the logo.
Whether designing a logo, website, advertisement, store-front, etc, it helps to know the leadership and what the leadership represents. It’s great to know the vision, mission and values of the organization. It’s great to understand how the organization operates and who they reach. This is what helps a creative mind think of ways to reach the intended audience and helps a designer create consistent designs that relate to every experience. Below are examples of how a positive brand was formed, from leadership all the way to the logo.
Talkiatry
When arriving at Talkiatry, I remember seeing a sterile yellow color with a hint of light blue and dark green— not the most colorful appearance. Talkiatry was operating in three states with the hopes of going nation-wide. I quickly found that online psychiatry is tough to market and tough to visualize too. The goal was to rebuild the Talkiatry brand (visuals, mission, vision, values, design system, website, patient-intake, etc.), in order to make Talkiatry a familiar and accepting brand to those seeking mental health. What began as qualitative research with prospective patients, existing patients, clinicians, and leadership, led to design explorations and quantitative research of website and social media. Within six months, myself and the Design Team led by Adam Bunke and the Head of Content, James Molloy had redeveloped what we called the “Brand brain.” Not just a book or a brand guide, but a pathway to a healthy mind. When redesigning the logo, we decided it best to be simple and clean. From the ideas and iterations, we found out what our audiences cared most about. We designed for the audience! Bringing in a balance of warm and soft colors, along with cool, medical-like colors. We made illustrations that depict pathways and doorways to the mind (brain), along with fingerprints and talk-bubbles to show that we are human too. The new brand helped Talkiatry’s marketing target key audiences while expanding from three states into now 42 states. It’s still a work in progress. A brand is never finished, but there’s now a North Star to go after.
XR CHURCH
When I started working with XR, it was known as Crossroads Church. There are many churches across the country known as Crossroads Church, not because they are the same church, but only because the name is popular. As a result, there’s several website addresses listed as “Crossroads Church,” which makes it difficult to know which Crossroads you’re searching for online. Due to limited web domain options, this Crossroads Church settled for “xrchurch.net.” Other than the website, there was little that made this Crossroads Church stand out from others with the same name.
Pastor Derick Amsler had a vision to reach people in the local area which is known as a historic community, with popular photos of nearby railroad tracks crossing the Potomac river. Throughout the area are railroad crossing signs that have XR, to represent when a road is crossing the tracks. It is fitting that this Crossroads Church had a web domain where an “XR” took the place of Crossroads. So it made even more sense to rebrand the church by using XR as the church name. This would do a couple of things:
Clarify the name, setting it apart from other Crossroads Churches.
Help people search for the correct website that matches the name, XR Church.
With a well-developed vision and mission, along with leadership and employees who clearly knew the expectations and strategies, it was only a matter of time before people in the church were well aware of what XR stood for. Just like owning a building, the people felt proud to own a name that was unique to them. XR became common language in all communication, from the stage to visual engagement. The logo was simple, black and white like a railroad sign, but the brand stood out from the rest. As you see in the images provided, the logo was plastered in everything from the app to the website, to wall decor, apparel, coffee mugs, signs, media, etc. The strategic planning from leadership all the way to the logo resulted in an exciting brand that is growing a church, expanding from approximately 500 weekend attendees when the rebrand occurred, to 1500+ each weekend.
Rousawn Dozier
I first met Rousawn through XR Church. He was a motivated man who needed a logo, because he had a vision to help others through motivational speaking, consulting, writing and more. His leadership potential was high, as he was well-planned and confident, with a vision and mission already secure. It was easy working with Rousawn to develop a brand that matched his passion. It didn’t stop with a logo, because the logo just fueled his passion even more. He proudly shares posts, advertisements, and videos online through social media. After several consistently designed social ads for events, coaching workshops, books—all combined with an inspired communicator—it was no surprise that Rousawn was recently named a Top Entrepreneur to Follow in 2020 by Yahoo Finance. From leadership all the way to the logo, the Rousawn Dozier brand is expanding to new heights.