This afternoon The Savy Agency completed the initial design phase of the Harmony 4 Women branding project. We’ll use Savy’s 10-step design process to narrate the project from first meeting to design finalization. We hope this post will provide insight into how a typical branding project with The Savy Agency works, and also to perhaps help you prepare for your next project with us.

1. Needs Analysis. An idea of what you want to accomplish with your brand, such as your vision, goals and objectives, are a great few items to have ready before you get into the needs process. It’s also helpful to consider what you expect from the final product before beginning the analysis. In most cases we work through this step with our clients. This is a critical first step because knowing where you want the project to go helps avoid multiple, resource exhaustive directions.

The Harmony 4 Women team was fantastic. They had the vision and a clear concept of the message they sought to accomplish before we hit the drawing board. In our initial meeting, we discussed images, themes, colors and color treatments, such as 2-color or 4-color designs, shapes, styles, significance and all those subtle, underlying tones that form the foundation of the brand.

2. Finding the Right Designer. Finding the right designer for each project is critical. Luisa from the Savy design team was an excellent fit for this project. Her natural, Brazilian, bold-yet-feminine-style, and ability to listen to and understand the client and project needs matched the essence of the Harmony 4 Women brand.

3. Establishment of Priorities. During this time the designer and project director get a feel for the needs of the project. We were able to accomplish this in our needs analysis meeting with Luisa, Christina and the Harmony for Women team.

4. Concept Design. The first concept designs are in many ways the most critical. They attempt to capture the essence and direction of the project and convey the brand’s message via design. At Savy, we use Illustrator and Photoshop to mockup our initial concepts rendered to pdf and sent digitally to the client. As a green marketing agency, Savy runs paperless, thus in this stage, we provided Harmony 4 Women the first set of concepts. Perfect. Luisa captured the entire essence of the brand in the first run.

5. Implementation of Feedback. In order to develop a brand that meets your needs over the long, your your opinions, suggestions and feedback is critical through to the final design. Harmony 4 Women was excellent. Nancy and her team, including Chelsea in team PR, were articulate, thorough and visually illustrative even down to providing pictures of jewels to emulate in the final design colors.

6. Development. This is a great phase. The clients are excited, the initial direction of the logo has been chosen, and now it’s the minor details and finishing touches that make our designs sparkle, and our clients happy.

7. Final Design. Now that both parties are satisfied and the necessary design is complete, we meet to discuss and finalize pantone colors. In the Harmony 4 Women color selection process we moved from the initial reds into deep, rich jewel tones. After sampling a jewel color swatchbook and incorporating it into the logo, we met and selected the pantones to match. The final product accomplished the project vision and the Harmony 4 Women team was ecstatic with the design.

8. Production. Once the design is finalized, it is incorporated into all marketing collateral before it can be launched to the world. The final design was prepared with embedded pantones, fonts and texts for press. Now it’s time for the next phase, marketing and promotions.

9. Marketing & Promotions. All successful brands need to be marketed and promoted. In order to get the most from your brand, a marketing plan should be developed. To avoid an exhaustive explanation of this step, just give us a call to discuss. The Harmony 4 Women team had event-specific marketing and promotional objectives: their upcoming holiday event. Now it’s time to rollout the flyer, poster, registration form, event tickets and program.

10. Plans for Updates, Changes and Additions. The marketing and promotional collateral of every brand will need to be updated at some point. It’s a good idea to plan for who will be responsible for making the changes to the brochure, the business cards, the digital materials like the website and blog, who’s updating content, keeping upon on SEO and search marketing? You may want to continue to hire the same agency to perform these services, or you could keep it within your company with some support and training for the agency. What strategy you choose should fit the needs of your business, but it should be considered, or you’ll find yourself with outdated content or collateral a few months down the road.

Thank you Harmony 4 Women for a wonderful first phase or your branding project. The Savy Agency looks forward to continuing to build your brand!