How Important Is Branding? Guest Post By 'If Destroyed Still True'

We are constantly working on improving our branding and frequently ask our customers for feedback. 2016 holds a number of exciting ventures for Ayten Gasson Lingerie, and we have been working with new Brighton based graphic design company If Destroyed Still True on a few of these projects. So I have asked creative director Gray Simpson to give me some advice on branding, which I'd like to share with you. I hope you find it as helpful as I have!

Your Brand Is Everything

Your logo is not your brand

Your logo is vitally important. It’s the face of your company and a powerful and visible identifying mark. As such it needs to create a good first impression but don’t think of it as your brand. Your logo alone can’t express the core values important to your business such as trust, passion or reliability. However, the right logo can come to symbolise those values and ultimately convey what’s so special about your brand.


Okay, so what is my brand?

If your logo is your ‘face’, then your brand is your personality and your character. It’s the culmination of the stories of who you are. It’s essentially everything you, and your company, represent.

You can’t simply decide what your brand is and then rely on heavy promotion and overexposure to indoctrinate everyone into your way of thinking. Your brand isn’t what you claim it to be, but how it’s perceived by others. It’s every single thing your business does or creates that other people experience. It’s your logo, website, customer service, tweets, staff, tone of voice, colours, products, packaging...everything.

How can I control my branding?

All the best brands have a clear underlying vision which drives them and provides a platform for how they engage with the world. Your brand is your big idea, so it’s important when you’re launching a new company or thinking of a rebrand that you can articulate what that is.

Ask yourself some tough questions in order to shape your company ethos. What values are important to you? Why should people care? This will give you and your designer a set of core principles and maxims from which to shape your visual identity. If you stay true to that vision and deliver the best product or service you can, you’ll find that in time your brand ideals are reflected in the minds of others.

It starts with shapes and colours

Your logo is usually the first point of entry to your brand. Eventually it will become shorthand for everything you stand for, but when you’re starting out it’s simply something that needs to represent your company as best as it can. It should form part of your brand identity - a defined visual system of typefaces and colours which create a cohesive brand architecture to build awareness, increase recognition and offer an edge over the competition. The key is finding the right designer. You need to find someone you trust and who you feel relaxed enough to be honest with. The right person will ask the right questions and be able to use the information you share to create the perfect brand identity for you. Do your research and seek recommendations.

At the end your brand identity should communicate your uniqueness and quality, giving you a consistent and distinctive voice to tell your brand’s story. All you’ve got to do, is live up to the hype


Gray Simpson
Creative Director
If Destroyed Still True