The image of a brand (Branding), is based on a set of features that seek to awaken a certain mental image within the audience of a company, organization or institution in particular.
Visually, these identity features can pose an analogy with the subject to which they are relating with, associating then recognizable figures from the world towards the entity to which they have been adhered. On the other hand, these references can also be arbitraries: shapes like a circle, square or triangle, cryptic ideograms or unintelligible things that one sees and understands as the mark of something just by the saturation of their use.
In most cases, this set of brand references are enclosed within an own space, either inside a shape or by the organization of the visual space of the identity. The purpose on the second case is to articulate and compose fragments, creating in that way a consistent whole. As a consequence of that, the brand achieves to be perceived as an isolated figure, separated from any background. For instance, it can be perceived as something different from the emptiness of a paper, as well as from the gray typographic pattern of a newspaper or other nearby advertising brands.
However, in current times, demands faced by brand images are not only to identify, define and differentiate any mark from others, but to work as a medium for expressing communicational strategies and even to project them. We are talking about a context where borders, cultures and languages are crossed by dynamic media, media that are supporting our marks.
Therefore, if we want to influence our audience by using the effect of a the brand image, it’s not fair to dissociate the experience that the mark can generate. In other words, what matters is not what the mark shows but what will remain as an idea, as meaning and feelings for the viewer. I mean the tale that should be read, one that has to involve the viewer into the story of the brand.
Corporate Art
To achieve the above scheme, marks have a performative space that is the corporate art. I mean to understand this art not as a collection of pieces owned by a company, but as the place where the brand can be expressed, where speaks to exhibit its soul.
As result of plunging and exposing under the art sensibility, the brand will open its encapsulation, offering an unique space of containment, building stable relationships with viewers as part of the imaginary exchange that affect stakeholders.
The brand works here not only as a traditional mark, but to also being background plus figure, becoming a full and dynamic identification and promotional system that fully envelop the spectator. It will engage viewers onto the drama or comedy that the brand embodies, provoking thus a dialogue, transference of personal emotions.
I believe in this approach, since I always tried to apply that on my designs.
© Sebastián Guerrini, 2014. www.guerriniisland.com
