Branding and Designing

What is branding?

Branding is the process of creating and managing a company’s identity to differentiate it from other similar products or services: 

• What it includes

A brand’s name, logo, visual identity, mission, values, tone of voice, and more 

• What it does

Helps consumers feel comfortable purchasing a product or service, and ideally, makes them want to buy from you 

• Why it’s important

Allows you to position your company as an industry leader, offering benefits no other competitor can offer 

• How it works

People form their perceptions of your organization by combining all past experiences and future expectations 

Some goals of branding include:

• Ensuring that all stakeholders understand your position
• Increasing your relevance in the market
• Enhancing your visibility
• Making your company have a good reputation before the public 

Types of branding, but we are concerned with the visual audio part

There are many types of branding, including:

• Corporate branding: Involves the entire business, including employees, products, and services. This type of branding plays a big role in a business’s reputation. 
• Personal branding: A way for individuals to brand themselves, often used by self-employed people like influencers, freelancers, and affiliate marketers. 
• Product branding: Product branding is the process of associating a product with a name, design, or symbol to create a recognizable identity.
• Basic Product Branding: Basic Product branding is the process of creating distinct brand identity for a product in the minds of customers.
• Line Branding: Line branding is a marketing strategy that involves selling a group of related products under a single brand name
• Range Branding: Range branding is a strategy where a company groups related products or services under a single brand name and focuses on building a collective brand image for the entire range. Instead of promoting each product separately, the company builds a brand image for the entire range
• Umbrella Branding: Umbrella branding, also known as family branding, is a marketing strategy where a company uses a single brand name to sell multiple related products. 
• Source/Double Branding: Source branding is a brand model where a parent brand, or source brand, is the origin of a system that includes daughter brands. The source brand is well-known and guarantees quality, but takes a backseat to its products, e.g. Maruti Suzuki
• Endorsed branding: Endorsed branding is a branding strategy that allows different product or service brands to be positioned separately from their parent company while still maintaining an association with the parent brand. This strategy is also known as endorser branding, e.g. Nestle.

• Retail branding: A type of branding designed for retail businesses. 
• Geographic branding: A type of branding that focuses on the unique traits of a specific region or area as a selling point. This type of branding is often used in the tourism industry. 
• Service branding: A type of branding that focuses on the customer and providing excellent service. 
• Activist branding: A type of branding that involves using a brand to make a positive social impact. 
• Offline branding: A type of branding that happens off the web, such as through business cards, merchandise, print products, and personal branding at client meetings. 
• Generic branding: A type of branding where a brand has lost its distinctive traits and become plain and generic. 

Effective brands are developed through consistency, clarity, creativity, commitment, and consultation. 

What is Designing?

• Definition

Designing is the process of using creativity to solve problems by envisioning and planning the creation of objects, systems, buildings, and vehicles: 

Designing is the activity of creating visual, material, spatial, and experiential environments in response to a given problem. 

Advertising design is the process of creating visual elements to promote a product or service. It’s a combination of marketing, creativity, and communication, and the goal is to drive consumer action. 

Advertising design is a specialized type of graphic design that focuses on creating visuals for ad campaigns. It includes: 

Logos, Branding, Print ads, Digital ads, Video and commercial ads, Display advertisements, and Email banners.

Advertising design helps businesses create a brand voice and visual identity. It should accurately describe the brand and what it stands for. 

Here are some things to consider when creating advertising design:

Collaboration: Advertising designers often collaborate with marketing teams, copywriters, and account managers. 

Target audience: The design should speak to a specific consumer segment or target market. 

Goals: The ad should have a clear goal, such as getting people to buy a product, register for an event, or donate. 

Branding is the process of creating and managing a company’s identity to differentiate it from other similar products or services: 

• What it includes

A brand’s name, logo, visual identity, mission, values, tone of voice, and more 

• What it does

Helps consumers feel comfortable purchasing a product or service, and ideally, makes them want to buy from you 

• Why it’s important

Allows you to position your company as an industry leader, offering benefits no other competitor can offer 

• How it works

People form their perceptions of your organization by combining all past experiences and future expectations 

Some goals of branding include:

• Ensuring that all stakeholders understand your position
• Increasing your relevance in the market
• Enhancing your visibility
• Making your company have a good reputation before the public 

Benefits

Branding and designing can help in many ways such as:

Profitability: Branding can help you increase profits and ROI. 

Recognition: A unique design and consistent branding across platforms can help consumers recognize your business and products. 

Trust: A professional design can help build trust with potential customers. 

Credibility: A strong logo and brand identity can help establish your business as an industry leader. 

Customer loyalty: A distinctive brand identity can help consumers create a positive emotional connection with your brand, which can lead to increased customer loyalty. 

Emotional connection: Well-crafted advertisements can evoke emotions like joy, excitement, or nostalgia, which can help forge deeper connections with your audience. 

Word-of-mouth marketing: Positive interactions and satisfaction with your products or services can encourage word-of-mouth marketing. 

Internal morale: Branding can help build internal employee morale and pride. 

New product introduction: Branding can help you easily introduce new products. 

Types of works

Branding and designing in India is a dynamic and rapidly growing field that blends traditional values, cultural diversity, and modern aesthetics, many a times Popular Branding Trends includes Storytelling that is, brands use narratives that connect emotionally, often reflecting Indian values or aspirational goals. Also there is a Sustainability element, Eco-friendly branding and design are gaining traction among environmentally conscious consumers. Then there is a Minimalism with Tradition approach, many brands combine contemporary minimalistic designs with traditional Indian motifs.

Here’s an overview of key elements to consider when discussing branding and designing:

Visual design identity

Creating a visual design identity for branding is an essential part of communicating your brand’s personality, values, and message to your target audience. A cohesive visual identity ensures that your brand is recognizable, memorable, and consistent across all touch points.

Key parts of Visual Design Identity

Logo

A Strong Logo Is Essential For Brand Recognition. A logo is the face of your brand. It should be simple, scalable, versatile, and unique. It requires conceptualising, designing and testing.

Since logo is a thing that you can’t again and again therefore it should be best. Flexible and adaptable logos that fit across digital and physical mediums.

There are many types of logos like Wordmark (e.g., Coca-Cola), symbol/icon (e.g., Apple), or a combination mark (e.g., Adidas). Then there is 3D Logos whose purpose is to add depth and realism to the brand, and then there can be dynamic logos High-impact visuals for advertising campaigns. also there can be digital logos for websites, presentations, videos and use in animations for social media.

Logos can be made on 2d softwares like photoshop etc., animated softwares or 3d softwares

Costing:- Designing a Logo Could Cost Around 500 To 5000 INR. This Range Is For Simple and Basic Logos. They May Be Created By Beginner Free Lancer Beginner Freelancer Designer:- 1000 To 10000 INR Experienced Freelancer Designer :- 10000 To 50000 INR

Brand identity

Apart from logo brand identity is very important since it represent the brand, therefore it requires colour selection, conceptualisation, planning, testing etc. it may include Typography Colour Palette, Imagery and Iconography, Graphic Elements, Brand Voice in Design

Typography like Primary Fonts: Used for headers and logo. Secondary Fonts: Supporting fonts for body text. Font Personality: Choose fonts that reflect your brand’s tone (e.g., serif fonts for elegance, sans-serif for modernity, or decorative for playfulness). Regional Fonts: Use of Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali, and other scripts to cater to vernacular audiences.

Colour Palette Core Colours: A set of 3-5 colours representing your brand.

Psychology: Colours evoke emotions. For instance:

Red: Energy, passion, urgency.

Blue: Trust, calmness, reliability.

Yellow: Happiness, optimism, youthfulness.

Consistency: Use the same shades (RGB/HEX codes) across all media.

Imagery and Iconography Photography Style: Define a style for imagery (e.g., natural, candid, or staged).Icons: Simple, clean, and consistent with the overall design language.

Patterns: Optional, but they can add depth and uniqueness.

Graphic Elements Custom illustrations, lines, shapes, or textures that create a cohesive and recognizable look.

Brand Voice in Design Even visual elements should reflect your brand’s tone—whether it’s fun, professional, luxury-focused, or eco-conscious.

Branding experts such as brand managers or freelancers or branding agencies  can be employed for this function

Costings for creating a new brand identity or making changes in already established brand or business can be of wide range from low to very high, branding agencies or freelancers may charge small like ₹1000 for minimal work like logo design to lakhs of rupees such setting up a brand identity will include almost everything.

The actual cost of brand identity can vary based on your specific requirements and the market rates in your region. 

Printables

Printables are the basic things like

Brand identity (business cards, letterheads, etc.)

Print materials (catalogues, brochures, posters, flyers etc.

Product and Packaging design(Box design, Label design etc)

Here expert people might be needed for conceptualisation and setting design which can branding experts, 2d or 3d designers.

Costings for 2d designing like logo, label design can be less  from ₹1000 to ₹5000 onwards , whereas pricing for 3d design can be minimum ₹1000 for letterings and min ₹5000 onwards for 3d designs and which can go much more 3d designing. branding experts may charge small like ₹1000 for minimal work like logo design to ₹10000 onwards for designing catalogs, packaging design etc.

More details can be found elsewhere in this website.

Promotional visual identity

Promotional visual identity can include a large variety of things. It includes designing and conceptualisation

They can broadly include printed material like promotional stationaries like mugs, t-shirts, pens, gift items etc. Along with branding things like display stand like standees and poster display stands. Then for branding there can be canopy, promo table, Kiosks, Exhibition Stalls etc.

Wall/Pillar/floor branding which is primarily used for retail outlets is done by applying prints on the walls and pillars. Stickers and designs can also be put on floors. Glass branding could be done on a window glass or a partition, even one-way vision branding can be done. For outside banners, display boards, shipboards etc. can be put, these can be made to glow with LED or neon thus known as glow signboards, Lettering can be 2d or 3d, even the letterings can be lit.

Lightings is very essential, it can be of various types like spotlight, floodlights etc. it can be coloured light focussed on at particular product, service or information

Video networks could include in store TV, Video Wall TV etc. with music and sounds systems.

Interactive games or promotional offers can be there

All these things require designing on both 2d or 3d softwares like photoshop, 3d Max etc.

The cost of designing these items depends upon variety of factors like the complexity of designs whether the platform is 2D or 3D etc. designing can also be done with the help of freelancers or agencies who generally cost from ₹1000 to ₹10000+. designing standees, kiosks might cost around ₹500 to ₹5000+.

Overall Costings can depend on various factors and can range from ₹100 to ₹5000 per graphics, lettering costings depends and they can be from ₹500 to ₹2000 per letter.

Costings for standees can be ₹1000, for kiosks can be ₹5000+, promo table, custom stalls can be more higher etc. sticker priniting cost can vary anywhere from ₹2+ per sticker again it depends upon various factors. Flex printing costs depend on factors like size, quality and quantity. Prices can range from ₹10 to ₹100 per square foot. printing on flex or vinyl or acrylic can cause from ₹1500 to ₹10000 Large-scale printing projects may offer discounted rates

Boards costings can be anything from ₹50 sq ft to ₹500 sq ft plus depending on various factors. LED Signage is back lift or front late then costings can be 3000 to 50000

Back lit can be 300 per sq foot, led front lit can be min ₹1200 per sq foot, archgate lit can be min ₹25000. LED letter costing depends upon lettering and they can be from ₹500 to ₹2000 per letter

Audio identity

Various sounds systems can be used and music can be employed, not much designing is needed but creativity is needed for handling brand voice. Plus sound systems are also needed in videos representing the brand, Even visual elements should reflect your brand’s tone—whether it’s fun, professional, luxury-focused, or eco-conscious. Professionals like  Sound designer, music experts  etc can also be employed. Sound system can be owned or hired, digital or analogue, nowadays digital is the trend.

There are many software options for handling sound, including audio editors, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and audio mixers such as: 

Adobe Audition

A powerful audio editor with a customizable interface, recording tools, and audio processing tools 

Audacity

A free, versatile sound mixing software with an intuitive interface, multi-track mixing, real-time effects, and automation 

And many more…

Costings of sound systems can be anywhere between ₹2000 to ₹20000+, hiring specially of expensive sound systems can be minimum ₹1000 per day.  Sound designer can charge minimum ₹1000+ per project whereas music experts can charge ₹10000+ per project.

3d designing

3d designing is very essential as it can be used for 3d logo design, 3d lettering, product design, packaging design, stall designs for promotions etc.

In Logos and Lettering designing work can be 3d logo that can be lit or non lit, plus lettering can be 3d also. Generally they are made or acrylic, wood, metal etc.

3d designing can also be used for Advertising and Marketing Campaigns with a purpose: Making marketing visuals more engaging and impactful by 3D-rendered billboards and print ads, Interactive social media content using augmented reality (AR), 3D animations for video ads on platforms like YouTube and Instagram etc

Products can be Physical or digital, both can require product design. types of works may be Industrial design (gadgets, furniture, appliances), Digital product design (software, tools, apps),Prototyping and 3D modelling etc., Packaging Design is essential to improve attractiveness and information and it should in sync with the brand image and values. Type of work can be Box design, Label design, Sustainable packaging, Unboxing experience design

Interior Design work can be Designing indoor spaces for functionality and aesthetics like In shop Branding, Retail space branding, Event and exhibition design, Signage and way finding systems , Public art installations, Residential design (homes, apartments), Commercial design (offices, retail stores), Hospitality design (hotels, restaurants)

3d animated explainer videos can also be made for Telling brand stories through captivating visuals.

3d designing along with AR and VR Experiences can be given for the purpose of  building immersive and interactive branding experiences. Customer engagement, brand awareness, sales, virtual experiences, Fraud detection etc.  AR is comparatively easier and less costly as compared to VR as it can be displayed on smartphones and can be compared with real images also, whereas VR is fully immersing into virtual world, For these AR and VR equipments, headsets can  be used. AR/VR softwares can be developed and equipments can be purchased. AR/VR prints like AR printed cards, virtual design prints etc can also be done. 

Nowadays 3d printers are also there for 3d prints like 3d logos, 3d letterings, AR/VR designs etc but that can be costly and might not be much accessible to public

Tools used for 3d designing can be AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Adobe XD, Unity, Unreal Engine, Spark AR it requires professional experienced people to do the work.

Costings can be costly affair for 3d designing and branding, 3D logo design can start from as low as ₹1000+ with some free modifications, logo and lettering cost can be minimum ₹3000+ per logo with lettering cost can be minimum ₹100+ depending on the material.

Product and packaging design cost can be minimum ₹1500+ , interior design charges can be expensive with a percentage of project fees like 10% etc, it can be minimum ₹30000 to ₹500000+. Exhibition or stall designs can be from ₹5000 to ₹50000+

The cost of a 3D animated explainer video in India can range from ₹20,000+  per minute, depending on the quality and other factors

The costing of AR/VR/3D print can have huge variations in prices like for ₹10 per AR digital visiting cards to minimum ₹100000+ for the app development etc

The cost of AR depends upon software development and equipments which can be low for equipments like smart AR glasses can be ₹2000, whereas a simple smartphone can be used for AR can be low, other AR equipments can be more costly. AR softwares can be  like minimum ₹100000+ for the app development etc. The cost of AR prints can be ₹4000 per AR brochure, ₹5000 for AR QR digital code technology, ₹10 per AR digital visiting cards etc

The cost of VR also depends upon software developments and equipments, A VR headset being the cheapest can be from ₹500 to ₹40000+, other VR equipments can be more costly VR softwares and equipments can run into lakhs of rupees like minimum ₹200000+ for the app development etc 

The cost of 3d printed model can range from ₹5–₹100 per gram for normal printing for personal or business depending on the material and the type of printing, The minimum price for single piece (non-bulk) orders can be around ₹2000, A 3d printer can cost minimum with entry-level FDM models starting at around ₹20,000. The cost of 3D printers using SLA technology starts at around ₹5 lakhs to very expensive 3d printers. As far as 3d printing apps are concerned they are not costly.

more details can be found elsewhere in this website.

Images designing

Various types of images might be needed for that shoots need to take place as they can be tailored according to the needs. Readymade images can also be used as they can be free as well as paid even graphics and vectors for representing the brand image sometimes needs to be designed.

For this Graphic Design and image editing will be needed for the Visual content for communication. Types of Work can be creating and handling visual design identity to Social media graphics, product and Packaging design etc. for fashion field more specialisation is needed like Apparel design (casual wear, couture, activewear), Textile design (fabric patterns, prints), Accessory design (bags, shoes, jewellery)

For this tools to be used can be Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Canva, CorelDRAW

Costings can include designing and Editing charges depending on the complexity and type  of work and experience of the designer.   For simplicity sake we can include editing in designing itself. This can be done by Freelancer Designers or agencies. Costings can be range from ₹500-₹2000 and more  per work. Generally designing of vectors, graphics is more than designing of images.

Animated designing

The Focus can be animated visual content for storytelling and entertaining by using Motion Graphics Design and types of Work can be animated logos, Video intros/outros, Explainer videos, Advertisements etc., for this 2D and 3D animation, Character animation, Educational or explainer animations, cartoon animation , GIF, animated infographics etc can be used

These are done using softwares like After Effects, Blender, Cinema 4D, 3D Maya etc.

Costings of animation design can be very high depending on the type of animation, the level of complexity, and the quality desired with 2d animation can cost minimum ₹10000+ per minute to 3d animation can cost minimum ₹25,000+, GIF can be the cheapest starting mimimum ₹2000, whiteboard videos can be ₹5000+ per minute etc. more details can be found elsewhere in this website.

Social media content

With the rapid growth of internet penetration, digital platforms and websites are a primary focus for revenue generation.

As such branding and designing comes into play in Social Media Marketing on Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube etc., even in Social Media branding and designing  of content like graphics, images, videos, motion graphics, use of colour designing etc of various shapes and sizes on content on platform like instagram, facebook etc. E-commerce Design since a strong online presence with user-friendly, visually appealing websites/apps is essential.

Types of Work can be like website design : Front-end design (layout, typography, visuals), Responsive design for mobile and desktop, Landing pages, E-commerce websites, Website design, Mobile app design etc. Content design of social media sites like facebook, instagram etc. 3d , VR , AR designs, email marketing  design etc

Tools to be used can be WordPress, Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, Canva, 3d Max, 3d Maya etc.  

Costings generally tends to be expensive and depends on the type of work, software used etc

Web design can start anywhere from ₹8000 onwards and ecommerce sites can be expensive, content creation like logo, images, 3d designs can be anywhere between ₹500 to ₹5000+, more details can be found elsewhere in this website.

Platforms

There are various platforms for branding and design material can be put up like

Softwares

Some Tools for Building Visual Identities

• 2D designing: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Canva, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, CLO 3D, Esko Studio, SketchUp
• Motion Graphics: Adobe After Effects, Blender, Cinema 4D
• Popular 3D Design Tools: 3ds Max.,3D Maya, AutoCAD, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, SketchUp, KeyShot, Revit, Rhino.
• Social Media Content: WordPress, Figma, Elementor.
• For Designing UI/UX: Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch
• Audio processing tools: Adobe Audition, Audacity
• For AR/VR branding experiences: Unity, Unreal Engine, Spark AR