Branding and the Visual Response

Ian Paget: So Peter, you've written the book, Branding and the Visual Response and you kindly sent me a copy, which is fantastic. So I hope today in this conversation, we can talk through some of the topics of that book. But I think before we jump into that, do you want to do a bit of an introduction for yourself and maybe provide a little bit of an overview of the book and then we can go from there?

Peter Sher: Of course, yeah. Thank you for having me here on your show. Really appreciate it.

Ian Paget: You're very welcome. I'm thankful for you agreeing to do this.

Peter Sher: Okay. So I'm Peter Sher, I'm a brand strategist and I'm running studio called Zwoelf, Budapest-based here in Hungary. Me and my team of seven designers, we are actually focusing on branding for start-ups and small and medium companies. And I started this business like 20 years before, and I collected a lot of experiences and I also been lecturing on different Hungarian universities as well. So I had quite large expertise in this field. And I've thought if I would like to... No, I have to jump back. And I stopped doing lecturing for these different universities, and I started to build my own brand on education. And this is the Brandguide. And it was a logical step if I want to build a brand on branding, that I could write a book about on that topic. So, this is the initial part of the book.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think I've no noticed a lot of graphic designers that growing up I really admired, they all have a book. And I think in terms of establishing reputation and becoming really known for something, it makes a lot of sense to write a book and what you put together. I haven't read it back to back, I'm being entirely transparent, but I've gone through enough of it to know that it's very comprehensive. I'm impressed, it's a very good book. So I'm looking forward to going through some of the topics. So obviously we can't go through everything because there's a lot to cover, but let's see what we can go through in the 50 minutes or so we have and we go from there. So I'd like to start by talking about the steps of the branding process, which is one of the first parts of the book. So do you want to talk through what those steps are?

Peter Sher: Just to reflect on what you mentioned before that, I agree that if you'd like to build an expert brand then probably, you cannot avoid to write a book because... I saw on your website, you also like books and-

Ian Paget: I love books. I have such a collection.

Peter Sher: Yeah, me also. I'm also collecting books like crazy. And also-

Ian Paget: I think every graphic designer does, I don't know any graphic designer that doesn't at least collect design books. They might not necessarily read them, but they are definitely collecting them.

Peter Sher: That's the other point that most of them, I read most of them-

Ian Paget: Yeah, same.

Peter Sher: ... and I learned a lot of them because here in Hungary, it's a small country. We are 10 million of people, so this kind of books on branding or graphic design are really rare in Hungarian language. And actually, that's why we need to buy books from Western Europe, from the United States. These are all of course in English language and to be honest, the Hungarian population is not famous of their English knowledge. And this was also a point where I thought that I should probably try to write a book on branding because there's not so much Hungarian literature on this topic. And this was, I guess a good decision because at first, I did 500 pieces on the printers and I sold them in two weeks. And that was-

Ian Paget: Wow.

Peter Sher: ... this was the point that, oh, this is something which is probably useful for others as well.

Ian Paget: Yeah, probably.

Peter Sher: Probably. So I was a little bit angry that I was thinking whether to print 500 or 1000 at the first time, but I was more thinking, "Okay, 500 is enough." And also, this was the point when I thought that if this is something useful for designers, maybe I should translate it in English and then try to sell it outside of Hungary. And there are we at the moment. And also, it's important to say that the German translation is also underway. So a German version will be also available for the Austrian and for the German designers.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I'm sure listeners in those parts of the world will really appreciate that. Because I know that I have an international audience listening, so yeah. I think anyone that's into branding that doesn't necessarily want the English version, they want the Hungarian version or the German version, they're available. So that's pretty exciting. So yeah, congratulations for-

Peter Sher: Thank you.

Ian Paget: ... putting it together and having the balls to get it all translated and congratulations on your immediate success. Selling 500 within two weeks is good, and I'm sure that since then you've been selling more and more. And out of curiosity, have you been getting clients from this? Because reading through it, it does feel like you've tailored this book more towards the, I guess clients rather than graphic designers.

Peter Sher: Yeah, of course. Because my studio, the Zwoelf, it's called Zwoelf. And this expert brand, the Brandguide, goes hand in hand because I collected all the expertise in Zwoelf and then, I'm lecturing or also giving back to the community in Brandguide. And the people are getting in contact with Brandguide and these are clients, these are graphic designers. So of course, I got in contact with a lot of people who were inviting me to their company to just give them lecture or they have a project in mind where I could help as an expert, or even we could bring it into the studio that we are making their branding from strategy till the mobile application design. So of course, this is good for both the studio and for the expert brand as well, the Brandguide.

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly. And I would say it's useful. The content that you've written in is basically a training material that would be useful for anyone that's into, or branding or wants to get into branding. So yeah, it's all good. Okay, cool. So I wrote down some notes, but should we talk through the steps of your branding process?

Peter Sher: Of course, I think I did not invent anything new. Actually, what I think is that... I heard your discussion with Melinda Livsey as well, and I totally agreed most of the things you've been discussing. That everybody starts as a graphic designer and then, there is a point when you see that this isn't enough because if you would like to give more value to your clients, then you need to go into strategy and you need to find out more about your client. So this was the case at my business as well, that we did quite good looking identities and logos. And there was a point where we thought that we need more, and that was the point where I started to collect those books and find your podcast as well. And of course the future guides and a lot of sources are ready now on the internet. And we started to learn branding processes. And also, we not just learned it, we started to use it and got quite a good experiences and we changed a lot of things and made it as our own framework or how to say.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think I just want to interrupt, sorry. I think that's one of the important things with the branding process. And actually, why it's so useful having a podcast like this, is because something I've learned is that, everybody works in a slightly different way. That there're similarities, but it's so useful to hear how other people work, to see how they approach things. And then what you can do, is you can take that and apply it to your own process and see if it works for you because everybody works in a slightly different way, and you can pick up tips and tricks from everybody. And it's why I have so many books. You can have 20 books on branding or graphic design, but you're always going to learn something new from them in some way.

Peter Sher: Yeah, I totally agree. And I would like to add that even every project is different. So you cannot say that I have this framework and I'm using it for all of the projects. Because I believe if we are designers, we are problem solvers. So in every project we face a different problem to solve, that's why it's good to have a wide toolset, a framework, and then you can pick for that project what is needed and what is really useful for your client. Because every project we start, there is a little bit of... we don't know how the outcome will be. But we have the tool sets, we have our framework and then we start work together with the client, we get all the information we need. We have to be a little bit expert of every industry we face in this project, so we have to understand how the market works, how the target audiences, how to reach them.

And that's why if you have this tool set, then probably, you will reach some kind of goal which is good for the client. But at starting the project, you don't see what the end result will be. And this is something really cool at this profession, I think.

Ian Paget: Yeah. And I think that's why it's so important that you mentioned about strategy. Because I know when you start out as a graphic designer, it's very easy just to take the company name and know like what product or service they do, and then put some ideas together. And I mean, that's okay that you are going to get by as a logo designer taking this approach. But if you actually want to solve the client's problem and actually create something that's going to be successful for them, then you need this process at the beginning, like you described. Where you're going through the target audience, positioning and so on, so that you understand exactly what you are dealing with. And if you don't do this, then you're just basically creating a pretty picture. But if you're able to understand this and apply it to your graphic design work, your branding work, your logo design work, then you're going to have a better product. And therefore you can charge more money.

Peter Sher: Yeah, of course you give more value. I always say.

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly.

Peter Sher: And then you can take more money as well.

Ian Paget: Exactly. I want to ask you something that was really cool in your book that I haven't seen in any other book, is something that you described as the brand spiral, and it's this really cool the spiral image. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I don't think I've seen that anywhere else.

Peter Sher: Yeah. There's a funny story that usually when I take shower, I get the most creative ideas. I don't know why it happens, but maybe the water on my skin it... And one day, I was taking a shower in the evening and I was thinking about how to visualise the branding process. Because we saw that there are the brand pyramid, the Brand Onion. There are different ways to visualise the brand and the brand asset. But I was thinking that the branding should be something more organic. So I was thinking maybe a spiral, which is a part of the nature or a main part of the nature. You can find spirals in most of the vegetables, and flowers, and stuff like that. I started to draw... after the shower of course, started to draw spiral in Illustrator and started to put there the different brand assets and brand stuff there.

And I also believe that brands can only work if they have a true purpose, because the purpose is the starting point of everything. If you have your mission, if you know why you are doing what you are doing, if you think about Simon Sinek's stuff as well. I put the purpose in the starting point and started to draw the spiral. And as it came out, it worked quite good and it's also spectacular, so people do like it. I also show them in different lectures and it got a good feedback. So that's why I put it into the book as well.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah. I mean, it's a cool way to visualise it. Because when it comes around the process, and I guess it's similar to what Simon Sinek did with start with the why. But you are starting with certain words in the middle and obviously it goes out to the identity stuff, but you can't have the outer spiral without doing the inner spiral.

Peter Sher: Yes that's true.

Ian Paget: So it's a nice way of visualising it and seeing the process. Okay. So in terms of the process, I wrote down some bullet points from your book. So target audience, positioning, we've already spoke about that. So, do you want to talk a little bit about positioning? Because I don't think I've spoken too much about that on the podcast, and it'd be useful to get some insights on how you are positioning your clients within the market.

Peter Sher: That's a good question. It depends. It depends. I think it's the answer.

Ian Paget: Okay.

Peter Sher: Our process was based on the brand sprint, which was developed by the Google Ventures earlier. And we started to work on that framework. And as part of this framework, is also that you get to know your target audience, you get to know your market as well, which players are on market. And if you are good and the market is that way, you can somehow visualise it as well on different axes. This is one point we should consider. The other thing is that in most of the cases, there are products which are new to the market. As I mentioned, we are working quite a lot with start-ups. And these start-ups do have digital products and these products are most of the time, I wouldn't say distracting products, but new products which are not easy to understand for the target audience. And for example, in positioning, it's really important to have a clear message and a clear positioning, which for example, has to build a new categories.

Peter Sher: This is also something David Aaker is also teaching, that it's easier to put into people's mind that this is something new, this is nothing you can compare to the previous one. So this is also a tool which is used often by us. But as I mentioned, every project is different. What is really important to know the market, to understand the other players of the market, what do they do? Why do they do that? And then to decide whether we want to compete with them in this field, or to make another field for ourselves. This is something which works quite often in positioning.

Ian Paget: Yeah. And just so that the audience can imagine it, if you can imagine putting a cross on a piece of paper, and you say... Something that you might look at is maybe quality, so like low quality versus high equality and maybe cheap versus expensive. And you have this on an axis with one of those cheap on one end and expensive on the other. What you can do is, you can take all of the competitors in the market and plot them. You should be able to see areas that are maybe empty and if they're empty, what you're able to do is basically show your client that there's a unique opportunity to basically position yourself there. And then what you can do is you can take that knowledge and apply it to your work. And I know, I mean this is... It's a logo design podcast, but branding falls into it. But you can take that knowledge and basically make your product look like high quality on a budget.

There's visual ways of doing that through graphic design, through packaging, through marketing, all this sort of stuff. I mean, it's not like a logo is one piece this, but once you understand that, then this knowledge can be applied to everything that the company does. So get in the positioning or understanding the positioning and finding a space that's available is incredibly valuable. And this is one of the reasons why doing this pre upfront strategy work with your client is so valuable to clients, because you are basically making their life easier.

Peter Sher: Yeah. And to be honest, most of the times after the workshop, our clients say, "Oh my gosh, we should have done this years before." Because they are in business, they are doing their daily task and jobs and never stop to think about target audience, they never stop to think about competition, they never stop... Or, I say never. Of course, they made thoughts but not so structured the way that we sit down and we take every aspect in account. And then usually, the situation is much more complex that you can say that cheap and quality, and you can put there your sign or cross, but the idea and the model behind it, it's that what you mentioned. And of course, if you are positioning company or a service, then you need to find all the possible axes and you have to find all the possible positions in that way, because not only cheap and quality may be the result of-

Ian Paget: Yeah. I mean, that's a basic example, but you could use different words, or like there's endless different ways that you could-

Peter Sher: A three dimensional axis can work, so.

Ian Paget: How does a three dimensional axis work? How would you physically produce that?

Peter Sher: Physically, you can broke it down to two dimensional or three, two dimensional, but I cannot give you now an example, but there are-

Ian Paget: It's hard because we're working with audio as well.

Peter Sher: Of course. But if you bring in a third objective or a third pairings of objectives, then these two dimensional plot will change into three. So I don't know if that's an answer.

Ian Paget: Are there 3D examples in your book?

Peter Sher: No, actually no. People are asking me whether I'm afraid that people will use that knowledge and that framework, that is written in the book. And I always answer that this is a good starting point, but when I wrote the book from that point, it's only a snapshot of my knowledge and I-

Ian Paget: Yeah. I mean, it's a fairly... What is it like? One and a half cent... It's quite a reasonable size book. How many pages?

Peter Sher: 160.

Ian Paget: Yeah. 160 pages. And I mean there's endless different approaches to branding. So creating an introduction, creating a starting point makes total sense. So I think if anyone wanted to look into the 3D approach, I guess Google it, I think what I'll do is, I'll put some links in the show notes because I think this is the type of thing that's very visual, and it's hard to picture without actually seeing it. So I'll put some links in the show notes and yeah, people can go down that rabbit hole of discovering for themselves what these things are.

Peter Sher: Well, I wanted to add to this that we are learning project by project, day by day. So this 3D version came up after I wrote the book. So that's why it doesn't contain this one. So-

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's why I was interested in that.

Peter Sher: So the next book will for sure-

Ian Paget: You can probably do a whole book on positioning and have the different approaches that you can take, different things that you can look at and show the 2D and 3D stuff. I think that will be really cool.

Peter Sher: I also have a plan to have a full case study with really detailed information on the tools and communication with the clients. So a whole case study which helps to... If you are a starter, then it could help to start with the branding.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think it's really important to be able to see how you can approach these techniques. And it's something that Marty Neumeier did. He's got his books on branding and strategy and they're fantastic, they're useful, they're brilliant, you can learn so much from them. But then, there comes a time when you need to apply it and know how you actually use these things, know how you use the objections. And you brought out this story called Scramble and scramble, it's a story written from the perspective of somebody that's basically doing branding and using strategy. And it's got all these different personas from the person that thinks, "Oh, this is just a waste of money, why do I need to spend time doing this to the person that's really into it?" And so on.

So, I think you're right to look to do something like that, because it's good for people, not just to understand the step by step, but actually how to do it. Because can you learn to swim from a book? Not really. You have to go out there and actually start to use what you are learning to really understand it and make it yourself.

Peter Sher: Yeah. But actually, I think this book also helps to find the good starting point. And at that point where we realised at that Zwoelf, that we need something more, I would have this book on my desk. It helped me a lot not to go into that learning curves we had to do at that point. So I think from this aspect, it's also really useful.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Cool. Okay. So I was going through the steps. So target audience, positioning, and we covered that briefly. There's a part where you're talking about self-analysis. What is that step?

Peter Sher: Self-analysis, it's really something I mentioned before that you have to be clear about yourself and you have to find out all the information, what is lost during the day by day. I'm speaking now from a client's perspective, they need to understand their services, also what we already mentioned, the target audience is their values. Why they are doing what they are doing. And also this is something where help clients to find these answers. So this is an analysis we are doing together.

Ian Paget: So it's basically understanding. So, in terms of learning the target audience, that's doing research, looking at the positioning is understanding. And I guess the self-analysis is really understanding who the company is, what they do, what they believe, what their why is, all this sort of stuff. Am I right?

Peter Sher: Yeah. We are asking questions all the way. We are asking a lot of questions. We are asking questions till that point we understand everything, and then we can start thinking about how we can solve the problems we are facing.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Now we can go into the stuff the graphic designers are excited about, like you call it the development of communication and the next step after that is creating the brand book. And I think this is the sort of thing that most people listening will hopefully understand in detail, how you are taking all of the strategy work, all of the understanding, all of the positioning, and analysis, and target audience and stuff and taking all that information and applying it visually. So yes. So the next section in your book, you have a part called the visual response, which is obviously taking everything that you understood and now turning that into visuals. And there's a couple of core things that you speak about in the book. And there's this one page where it has two you pictures and you speak about how shapes have a sound, which I thought was kind of cool to see how you have... Well, I'll let you talk about it because you speak about how shapes have sound. Do you want to tell us more about that? Because I found that really interesting.

Peter Sher: Yeah. Before I do that, I would like to give an overview-

Ian Paget: Sure.

Peter Sher: ... because the title of the book is Branding and the Visual Response. And I found it important to have the visual response in the title as well because during our work at Zwoelf as well, at that time we did the strategy, we were proud that, "Oh, we know what to do." And we found out a couple of times that the design, what we did at the end was not resonating with the briefing, what we've been working beforehand. And that was the time I was starting to look at tools, how we can convey different messages with different visual elements or visual tools. And in the book, I also break it down into forms, colours, typography. And the one you are pointing on is the Bouba-Kiki experiment, Wolfgang Köhler show two images to different people.

And the one image is more curvy and more fine. And the other is more edgy. And 90% of the people at... and the question was whether, which shape is Bouba and which shape is Kiki? And 90% of the people said the edgy one is the Kiki and the rounded one is the Bouba. And there is no exact answer why people are answering this, but it has a lot of aspects like how you form the voice, how you see the elements. And of course, an edgy one is more related to a Kiki, which is if you'd say it's quite much more-

Ian Paget: I think it's in the sounds like the K, the Kiki, it's very sharp and blunt. And you would expect if that sound was going to be converted into a shape, it would be like K, K it would be very straight. But the B, it's like, ah, ah, ah, it sounds like it should be rounded and so on. Okay. So understanding this, so being able to convert a sound into a shape, would you apply that in like say if you had a company called Kiki or something like that, would you actually make the shapes of the logo, sharp and angler because of that?

Peter Sher: You have to know what you want to convey or what the goal is.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I was expecting you to answer something like that. But yeah, it's one of those things that you can use if you feel it appropriate to basically.

Peter Sher: Yeah. If you want to be edgy and if you want to be sharp, then of course. But this is the great thing in our profession that if you know your tools, then you can reach the goal of what you would like to visually convey. And this is the favourite part of the book because... my favourite part of the book because I think this is something... this is the magic in graphic design and if you understand the brief or who the target audience is, what is our message we want to say? How we want to say, and we can bring in the colours, the forms, the typography, and the imagery, and to make it... It's not the logo who will tell the whole story or convey the whole message. But if you think as a complex system about this, then it's important to think about these real little elements.

Because clients normally say, "Oh, you can choose whatever colour you want, it doesn't matter. We will sell this stuff anyway." But this isn't true because these small, little, tiny titles bring a whole picture together. And this is something the clients should also understand.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Something that I found useful in your book is the... I can't remember exactly who the study was by, but there's part where you're looking at certain shapes. And so basically taking the basic forms, like circle, triangles, square, and all these different shapes. And charting it in terms of how people respond to them. I find that really interesting and I have books on colour and stuff like this, but I think having this understanding even if from like a basic perspective is actually really useful, because when it comes round to creating the whole identity or be that the logo or the broader identity, you can take this understanding on visual elements and interpret the brief. And I actually really like the title of your book. Now, I understand it, the Branding and the Visual Response. Basically, you are doing the branding, which I find it interesting, because there's a lot of graphic designers out there that say branding, but actually most graphic designers do identity design.

They don't do branding because when you do branding, it's much broader than just an identity. It affects every element of the company, including things like writing, tone of voice, photography, video presenting, everything. Affects every single aspect of the business, including the product and how you communicate with people and all that sort of stuff. So I find it interesting that you call it the visual response because what we are doing is basically taking the brand and then finding the response to that visuality, which is really interesting.

Peter Sher: Yeah. That's why I said this is my favourite part because, I was searching for that thing on the internet, for books and I did not find the literature on that part. And that was the idea, "Okay, let's research it and let's find all the aspects I can collect." And actually also, we use it in our everyday life because when you are presenting a design to the client, the client will ask, "Why did you use a circle? Why did you use the yellow colour?" And if you can give a good answer, like based on research that a circle is well balanced and stuff like then, "Okay, I understand, you are the professional. I agree with you." This is really important to be able to build a relationship with your client like that.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I've found that to be one of the most important things. Because I've been a graphic designer now quite 15 plus last years, it's been a long time. And I remember when I started out, you basically try and make something look nice. I was quite shy at the beginning and I'd do something nice, I'd think it was great. I'd show it to... I mean, it wasn't a client at that time, but like my manager. And they would have changes, feed back, all this sort of stuff. And I had that same scenario for a number of years when I was starting out that you'd... and it just felt like part of the job that you'd designed something, and then the client, be that your manager or your actual client would come back with changes and it was kind of expected.

Ian Paget: But then the moment and I was able to explain everything that I did, the reason why it was the way it was done, then there was no changes. Because what you're doing is basically stating a fact. It's like, "Okay, so one of our goals is to target this particular audience, and how we've been able to achieve that is by doing X, Y, and Z. We want to come across as looking in a certain way which we discovered during the self-analysis, we wanted to look into this, this is our response to that." You're basically taking... you're stating facts and nobody would change it because they can see that you've thought about it and applied it. And that is one of the main differences that I found anyway, between fairly new graphic designers that are just starting out to people that get things done, get things signed off, get things approved by clients. It really is just about having the confidence to explicitly state why you've done it the way that you have. So I think that's good.

Peter Sher: Yeah. I totally agree with you, Ian. And also adding another point is that, we usually use these framework in a workshop format where we are working together with the client on a weekly basis. And these workshops last like one to two months. And during this time as we are working together, the point when we are presenting something at the end is getting more or less important because if we present there's something, which makes the client surprised, then we did something wrong in the previous two months. So I want to point on that if we are working together, we are sharing the same tools, we are sharing... they know what will come at the presentation because we know everything. If we are working good and we find every aspect... we find out every aspect and build on a good strategy. And on the strategy, we build a good visual language. Then these presentations are not that presentations where you show your client and you are afraid, "Oh, will he like, or not?" It's self explanatory or how to say it. Because-

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's like you're able to understand and then convert that into a specific solution for that, and that solution should be the expected result. And I mean, going through your book, you've got another section called the visual branding process. And I guess this is what most of the audience would be familiar with. How you have a brief at the beginning, and a brief would obviously come from the strategy and the understanding that you've done and we spoke about that already. But I like how you are... one of the first steps is concept/drafts. And you've got some examples in your book. And I think the best way to explain it to the audience is mood boards or style scapes.

And it seems like that's how you are presenting the identity. It is not like you are going out and doing everything, you are doing these really nice... Is that the best way to describe it?

Peter Sher: Yeah.

Ian Paget: You are presenting style scapes basically and agreeing to that. And then you're able to take that, after it's been agreed and then apply that to everything, to all of the identity based on what's been agreed.

Peter Sher: Yeah, because the mood board is a tool where we can share the same visual language with your client. Because if you say minimal, you have something a picture in mind and your client also has another picture in mind. But if you show a picture, I say, "This is minimal." Then this can start a discussion, "Oh no, this is not minimal. I will show you another one or even no." And they won't show anything, but it's really important to have a discussion about visual stuff, that way that you see images. And this is the part where we find the common visual language with the client, because we believe that of course, target audience is the most important that it should resonate with them. But also, the client should own his or her identity because he will see it day by day.

If he enters the office, the logo will be on the wall. And we did not do or work well, if he thinks every day, "Why blue? Why is it blue? Why is it blue?" So this is the place where we can get information about for example, blue is not the most favourite colour of the client. And during the design process, we have points of decision where we can decide to go the blue way or the purple way. And if we know the information that our clients is not loving the blue colour, then we try the purple way because it works with the target audience and the market fit as well. So that's why it's important to have this visual alignment with the client.

Ian Paget: And I think it's good that you said that actually. Because in theory, it doesn't matter at all what the client thinks of what you've done. I mean, if you-

Peter Sher: In theory, yes.

Ian Paget: ... yeah. In theory, if you are creating something that's differentiated from the competition and attracts the right audience, then in theory, it doesn't matter what the client thinks, but it does. Because like you said, they are the one that needs to live with it. So if for whatever reason, some specific colour reminds them of like a grandma's old wallpaper or something like this, something that triggers something in a memory or something like that, then they're never going to like it. And I know that that's a personal preference, and that personal preference doesn't matter. But if you are aware of that, just find another solution that's appropriate. And then that way, it fulfils the goal and the client likes it too. So I think that's a good... you make these compromises and I think that's good that you pull that up.

Peter Sher: Yeah. And I mentioned colour because most of the cases, colours are the topics which are really hot because as I experienced, the clients have the more connection with colours. That's why it's important to align on that topic as well. But if you show them typography, they won't find that much difference between A typeface and B typeface, because it's then a more professional topic, but colour is more emotional. As I wrote in the book, colours evoke emotions, of course. So that's true here as well.

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's one of those things I always find with colour. There's a lot of guides online that will give you the meaning of the colour, but at the end of the day, you interpret it how you interpret it. And everyone has a different interpretation. So yeah, it's understandable that that's one of the things that would be a bit of a soft topic with some clients. Okay. So we got about five minutes left or so, a little bit more than that. So I'll just quickly go through this. So the visual branding process, creating a brief, going through those concepts. So as we've discussed, you are putting together a mood board or a style scape, whatever you want to call it. You're presenting that to clients. And then what you're doing is developing that, and then actually providing the client with a final product and style guide. I think for the last five minutes, should we talk about that? So what would you actually give your client at the end of this process?

Peter Sher: Actually, I think we do almost the same as other design agencies as well as. So maybe there is something I prefer that every time, even if we do a smaller scale project as well, that a Brandguide or a style guide should be present anyway. Because I believe if you are... maybe the client change an agency or another designer, it's a really good point if the client can give the new designer a full package of information and the style guide or Brandguide can contain that information, what's needed for the further design. Of course, this is something which needs work to be done, but I think this is a professional way to hand over. And also of course, there should be a package with all the visual assets as well, and style guide our Brandguide contains all the branding strategy information, and also strategy. What are the important communication, verbal or visual communication goals? So I think these are really aspect.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it sounds like you are basically summarising everything that's been discussed throughout the entire project, everything that you've agreed. And then you are presenting that in a nice document. And if there has been choices on colour, typography, image style, layout, basically anything, I mean as graphic designers listening to this they know what I mean. All these different things that you've agreed to whatever scale, you document all of that within that final thing. And I just want to ask you, because this is one question that I always think of. So when you are a designer, I've seen some graphic designers basically just do a logo, pick out a colour palette, pick out fonts, put it in a guideline document and give it to their client. But something I've always found is that, you can't really document anything until you've actually used it and applied it and see how it could work.

So how I would approach it and be interesting to see if you do the same, I would create everything first. So I'd create the logo, create the identity, work out the image style, layout, all this sort of stuff through actually designing a brochure, designing a website, designing social media tiles, all this sort of stuff, basically everything that would need doing. And then the style guide documents the choices. And then that means that someone... so if you're going to give this to another agency, they have the rules of the identity. So they know the style that should be applied. Would you do it in the same way or do you sometimes make those choices and document it prior to putting anything together?

Peter Sher: No, I agree with you totally. That you cannot create rules which are not tried and tested. I suggest in the book as well, and normally we do it that way. That often, clients come us and ask for identity book or identity manual, and I say, "Okay, we can do it, but what should we put there?" So the same problem what you said. That first-

Ian Paget: Check in next situation.

Peter Sher: Yeah. Check situation. Also in UI project, we need a design system. Okay, we can give you a design system but before that, we need to design all the pages or the screens needed. And from that, you can pick up the rules, pick out the different elements, the same logic as in the identity manual. There are some cases where the project scope is smaller, then we usually do that way that we give only mock-ups yeah or put only mock-ups into the style guide. And this is something which helps to see how the identity could evolve, but not in a strict ruled way. It's just a visual way.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I mean, as a graphic designer, I find that's the best way to have anything because then it doesn't limit creativity and ideas that I think are needed for an identity to really flourish. But yeah, I think that's a good way to wrap up the interview. We've gone through the whole process and I think if people want to, I learn more about this, your book Branding and the Visual Response is a fantastic book for anyone that wants to learn more about the branding process and how you approach all of this from the strategy side of things, to the idea, generation, through to the developing the identity, through to the final thing. You've got some great resources in there for clients, that graphic designers could also take and apply to their own processes and learnings. But yeah, Peter, it's been fantastic to spend some time with you and to talk about this. I really pretty appreciate all of the valuable insights and I hope that the audience has as well. So thanks so much for coming on.

Peter Sher: Thank you. And I loved your questions. It was a pleasure to be here, so thank you again.

Ian Paget: You're very welcome.