A brand aims to distinguish your product or company from those of your competitors. Increasing brand awareness using a consistent logo, tagline, graphics and colour scheme, helps consumers to remember you. A consistent brand is important as consumers are far more likely to invest in something they feel familiar with, in turn creating loyal customers.Nobody can fail to recognise the distinctive ‘Cadbury purple’ or the ribbon font of Coca-Cola because this branding is used continually across all product packaging and marketing collateral. When consumers are looking at what to buy or where to buy from they will have associations in their minds about the company behind the logo. A good example may be someone who is looking to try a new chocolate bar who may be persuaded to buy a Cadbury bar because they have enjoyed other treats this company produces, or because they use fair trade ingredients or because they like the personality of the brand – all feelings associated with that little logo or that recognisable brand colour!When we create a brand for a retailer or shopping centre, we keep all this in mind and we are careful to ensure that this is carried throughout all of the artwork we provide, whether we are designing general brand awareness posters, signage or flyers for an event.Jackson Square Shopping Centre, a scheme we provide design services for in Bishop’s Stortford, has a particularly distinctive purple and green colour scheme, a diamond shaped logo and the memorable ‘Be Inspired’ strapline. It is important we incorporate these into general awareness campaigns to reaffirm the brand, its values and personality into people’s minds.

It is, at times, difficult to put every brand element into a design especially when it is trying to promote something specific like a special event or new launch. In these cases, the design doesn’t always lend itself to be the brand colours, brand poster layout or to include the centre’s strapline. In this case we will use complementary elements of the brand so it is still recognisable in customers’ minds yet is not fighting with the event messages being promoted. A good example is the event creative for Jackson Square’s Food Lovers event as it adds new, not necessarily “on brand” colours to the palette but the use of logo, recognisable layout and diamond shape in the background shows that it is an exciting event hosted by this particular shopping centre.

“...the beauty of a good brand is that it is simple and memorable and, above all, recognisable even when translated for a particular promotion or event.”

Cadbury’s cleverly use this technique in its television adverts. Although each advert is different and promoting something new, the quirky style and the distinct use of purple allows the audience to know they are viewing a Cadbury advert but that the main focus is the particular product they are promoting.