Proporta Branding: Everything Covered
30.09.2008
VGroup have just completed the new brand strategy and identity for Proporta.com, designers and manufacturers of mobile device cases. We’ve also been putting the final touches to the Proporta Brandbook, the name we’ve coined for their brand guidelines, an essential part of the rebranding process for all our clients.
As always, before we put pen to paper or mouse to screen, we used the ‘Discover’ stage of our Brand-Vision project blueprint to really get under the skin of the company and identify their cultural and emotional values through research, analytics and workshops.
We looked at their competitor’s branding and products as well as their audiences. We interviewed all Proporta staff through an (anonymous!) online survey to establish how they felt about the company’s values.
So, after all that, why did we come up with an armadillo as a symbol? The research we conducted revealed that Proporta are seen as a quirky, friendly and humorous company. Also, most of Proporta’s cases are specially designed to protect devices in a stylish and hard wearing way and an armadillo’s armour represents this perfectly. Most importantly we felt the brand was lacking a symbol. Most leading consumer brands have a symbol of some sort - we all know the symbol for Apple, HMV and Nike and consumer product recognition is undeniably helped with the use of one.
As we’ll eventually be passing the reigns to Proporta’s in-house design team, we created extensive brand guidelines to ensure the brand stays on track, but also has room to grow and evolve with them. VGroup have many years experience writing brand guidelines; these play an important part in building a successful brand. We believe brand guidelines should work a lot harder than simply explaining where to position a logo on a page - they are also crucial in educating and reinforcing brand culture within an organisation.
We’ve also come to realise that there are no set parameters when creating brand guidelines. The format, depth of detail, tone of voice and allowance for design freedom in our brand guidelines are bespoke to each client, in order for them to motivate and be used correctly.
For Proporta’s guidelines we opted for the more friendly term of Brandbook. This set the tone of voice as more approachable and informal than usual as we wanted to work with Proporta in evolving their brand instead of being seen as just an authoritative role in the process.
We felt it was appropriate in this case to work with Proporta’s in-house design team, who will predominantly be using the Brandbook, to ensure they were understood and offered enough flexibility whist still retaining brand consistency.
If you would like to speak to VGroup regarding branding and brand guidelines, contact info@vgroup.com
November 4th, 2008 at 10:01 am
[...] also a highly interesting and visual journey that they’ve kindly documented in their latest newsletter (I came into the picture after the completion of the visual branding, slogan/strapline development [...]