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Here, you'll find a selection of Deji's UI Design works spanning across landing pages & web pages to mobile screens..
Maximizing productivity among students.
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Empowering businesses through exceptional customer support.
Helping Africans achieve economic and financial growth
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Helping Africans achieve economic and financial growth.
Invoking the sexy life of corporate women.
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Discover what others have to say about Deji's outstanding work as some of his satisfied clients share their experiences.
A series that explores our surroundings in developing concepts and ideas for graphic layouts.
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Recently, I have been getting a lot of inquiries about what I do, what it means, and what are my roles. Therefore I am writing this article with the sole purpose of highlighting who and what a brand strategist and brand designer are and also the connection between both of them.
A brand strategist is a professional who collaborates with executives of a company or creative team (founder, CEO, Marketing Lead e.t.c) to define what the brand’s persona is (who it’d be, if the brand was a person), where do they want to be (brand’s vision), how are they different (brand positioning), what’s the reason the company exist (brand purpose) and who does it exist for (brand’s target audience). Defining these questions help the company / brand gain clarity and structure, giving them an edge over their competition and helping them focus on things that pushes the brand forward.
A brand strategist conducts research, analyze market trends and anchor strategy workshops. They also ensure that all communication medium reflects the brand’s purpose and personality. A good brand strategist is known to have but not limited to, good copywriting, strategic, planning & thinking, communication, research, creativity and project management skills.
A brand strategist is not only limited to defining who & what a brand should be, they also work on campaigns and advertisements. They can work in creative studios or agencies, consultancies, freelance and full-time roles in companies.
A brand designer is a professional that basically translates the brand strategy into design. They breakdown the extracts from a strategy session/workshop (a.k.a Briefs) and then define the brand visually based on strategic contents such as brand’s purpose, values, positioning, audience, and personality. A brand designer is one who decides how the visual elements of a brand would look like, that is, how the logo should look like, what the typography should be, what are the color that suits the brand, patterns, photography & illustration styles that further helps in identifying the brand. All these visual decisions would be based on the brand strategy. After which, they then curate the guidelines for the proper use of the brand elements. They can submit the guideline plainly as a PDF or can go further to anchor a meeting explaining the guidelines to either the executives or the creative team of the company.
A good brand designer is known to have hard skills such as and not limited to Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Figma and maybe After effects 😞. They have soft skills such as and not limited to presentation, creative thinking, collaboration, project management and idea articulation.
A brand designer can work as a freelancer where they mostly work directly with brand executives to curate their brand’s visual elements based on the brief given, here decision-making is mostly within both the designer and the executives. Brand designers can also work in creative studios/agencies where they mostly work in a team and answer to the creative lead or director and they may be asked to attend strategy sessions & workshops, here they have minimal say in decision making. Another aspect in which brand designers can work is in the creative or marketing team of a company where they take ownership of the brand style, monitor the use of the brand guidelines and help strategically grow and position the company’s visual presence in the minds of people.
Basically, a brand strategist and a brand designer work together to create a cohesive and effective brand identity that helps a company stand out in the marketplace and connect with its target audience. Now, a person is entitled to hone both skills, personally I do regard to such a person as a mini creative director .These persons have the ability to visualize what the brand would look like even during the strategy session or workshop. They create the briefs and execute them visually. They have the ability to direct the visual aspect of motion and web projects ensuring that the designers relate the message and maintain the personality of the brand while making use of the brand elements and usage guidelines.
Even though having both this skills makes your work really stand out, it’s not totally necessary to have both, you can hone one of them, I.e you can be a specialist brand designer or brand strategist.
Conclusion: To execute a good branding project, one that actually solves identity and marketing problems, both must work together as a team. If you’re looking to know how to break in into these skillsets, watch out for my next article that discusses how to go from ( 0–50 as a Brand designer ).
I hope you enjoyed this article. I’m rooting for you to be the best you. ⚡️⚡️
See you at the top.
