Workflow

It's best to reserve an entire day for the Brand Identity Sprint, even though you probably won't need all the time. Generally, the Brand Sprint will be done in the morning, and the Visual Identity Sprint in the afternoon. The page contains a rough outline of the workshop. For a detailed walk-through please refer to this document.

Brand Sprint (3 hours)

The Brand Sprint will set a solid brand foundation in which a company roadmap, purpose, core values, audience, personality and positioning all come into play.

20 Year Roadmap (15 min)

Often, we tend to think short term, but a good brand lasts forever. This exercise allows or forces you to think in the long term. Where will the company be in 20 years time?

What, how, WHY? (30 minutes)

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle allows you to zoom in on the purpose of the company and get an answer to the question: WHY does the company exist at all? It’s perhaps the most important question of the day as it will be thé reason the audience will engage with the brand in the first place.

Top 3 values (30 min)

Lots of companies have a huge list of core values. Only a few can bring it back to 3. This exercise makes you think about what's really important.

Break time! (15 min)

A short break

Top 3 Audiences (30 min)

For who does the company exist? Or in other words: who’s opinion does the company value most. This exercise lets you find out. Broad answers like end-user are fine, but it really helps to specify it to for example end-users with busy lives.

Personality Sliders (30 min)

Think about the company as a person. What would the character traits be? This exercise should force participants to choose between two extremes.

Competitive Landscape (30 min)

What other companies are offering similar services and how do you want to express yourself differently? That’s what this exercise is about.

Lunch (30 min)

Visual Identity Sprint (2.5 hours)

The brand has been defined. Now it’s time to get visual! The main purpose of a Visual Identity Sprint is to narrow the scope of visual exploration that will take place in the design stages to come. When you start from a blank canvas ie a new brand — the possibilities are quite literally limitless.

The second purpose of this is to work with the client to shape their visual identity. This has several advantages:

• They have some ownership of the outcome (it's much easier to accept something if you felt involved in the process)
• They become aware of the possibilities — they are exposed to typography beyond the fonts packaged with MS word, they see colour schemes that are not primary, they see the emotional power of design and begin to see it as a tool to convey their message.
• It forms a visual contract between designers and the client — they know what their money is going into and the designers have concrete evidence of what the client means when they say what they say.

For details see the walkthrough

Preparations

Preparations for the client

• Come with an open mind, and willingness to get involved
• Have the CEO and all other participants keep 6 hours free in their calendars for this
• Arrange a room that is large enough to contain about 10 meters of whiteboard, preferably with the whiteboard already there
• Make sure there is a TV in the room
• Think about who will be the decider
• Send (or ask your PM to send) all sprint participants homework. Do this at least a week beforehand so that you have time to prepare

Preparations for you

Preparations Brand Sprint

• Prepare some slides based on the template found in resources
• Print out enough copies of the Brand Sprint also found in resources
• Bring a lot of Post-its
• Bring a lot of voting stickers, at least two colours
• Bring a roll of magic whiteboard or brown paper
• Bring tape
• Bring board markers
• Bring sharpies
• Bring a time-timer

Preparations Visual Identity Sprint

• Collect a total of about 30 visual samples per visual category
• We have a printed stack of predefined examples. Check which ones are applicable for the brand you’ll be hosting the sprint for. Digital versions can be found in resources
• Collect custom visual samples. Don’t forget to include the examples provided by the client:
  • Colour — palettes, posters, book covers any strong example of colour usage/combinations
  • Patterns/textures — examples of brand patterns /textures in use
  • Image treatments — brand specific ways of treating imagery, duotones, pattern overlays, masking etc
  • Photography — photographic styles: shot types, lighting, perspective, focus, depth of field, content types: people vs machinery etc
  • (Typography) Layout — grid systems, contrast, image/type interaction, hierarchy
  • Typefaces — letterforms, typefaces, detailing use of line-rules, customisation, lettering
  • Icons — macro/micro fun vs serious, detailed vs simple.
  • BONUS: Data visualisation — light vs dark, at a glance vs detailed, grads vs flat etc
  • BONUS: Illustration — flat vs 3D, mono-line vs filled, geometric vs fluid, loose vs clean.
  • BONUS: Animation — Functional, playful, light, guiding, subtle, engaging, on-brand, snappy, etc.
• Print and cut the samples. This could take a while. Use the InDesign template for this.

Learn more

• Visual Identity Creation - Walk-through
• What is note-and-vote
• Three Hour Brand Sprint by GV
• Workshop resources and examples (Hike One only)
• Brand Identity Sprint Debrief (Hike One only)
• Deliverable examples (Hike One only)