Developing Clickl’s brand identity: behind the scenes

Just like every excited kid wants to share their artwork, we at Unikorns want to shed light on how the events unfolded in this project.

There was something special about the client we worked with – a sparkle in the eyes and love for what they do. But don't be quick to think they're romantics who don't get business. They've got everything under control, but love is still in the core of what they do. And as empaths, we felt this and wanted to lead the client team through our process with all the caring we could give them.

We want to share what our steps were that led us to what we’ve got.

Sounds boring, but let’s be honest – designing without proper groundwork is just a guessing game and it’s not the one we like to play. Before we even start thinking about what would be the best direction for brand identity, we collect the information. We can be really annoying but we ask only the questions that can be helpful to us. If you’re a potential client reading this, prepare for a decent engagement but believe us, it’s worth it.

In this matter we rely on our meticulously crafted brief and a kick-off workshop where we make clients look at pictures, talk about values and hopefully have fun. What’s important here is that these two parts make the most sense when combined. We have a solid brief and a workshop is pretty informative too, but when used together, they highlight the inconsistencies in the answers and give a possibility to get to the truth. We ask questions and switch on our analytical side.

We stay true to our own words: strong identity doesn’t start with inventing something that doesn’t exist, it’s about revealing the core values. However, good ideas don’t lie on a surface. This is where brainstorming comes into play.

It’s a philosophical process when we need to act neutral to avoid bias but at the same time this is the situation when our human side is much needed, and being human means having feelings. However, we think it’s perfectly fine if you’re working on a brand that aims for doing the same.

We ask ourselves questions like “what could be a storytelling basis to lead the whole identity?”, “what metaphor or visual forms could help to build a connection with the brand?”, “how it should be perceived?”, “how do we design the whole thing so it connects business goals and conveys values?”. And there are many more of them that help us invent.

In Clickl project we even had to dig deeper and conduct a small research on the meaning of home. Sure enough, we've reflected on this topic ourselves too.

This is the moment when we’re exploring the visual dimension of the brand without actually designing anything. Every agency has their own approach to moodboards. We use them to show how certain ideas may be translated into visuals without agreeing on copying them in the exact same way. Creating a unique brand identity doesn’t mean it’s not possible to show even rough examples just to reassure the client and make the whole process a little bit less stressful for them.

We create moodboards having the big idea in mind (one big idea per moodboard), it’s not just images but a coherent system. We can adjust the typography references but we can’t swap images and ideas within the moodboards because each image had been thoroughly chosen to match the idea. And of course, we don’t rely on luck hoping that stakeholders team will understand these images exactly as we do. What we rely on here is well written description that guide a client through the moodboard and leave no room for guessing.

Basically, every step including mood boards is a sync up – clients may reveal something important at any moment so it’s really worth having a good consistent process which clients are the part of.

And here we mean something we call conceptions – a set of custom graphics, logotype, color palette, typography, imagery, and any other visual artifacts that need to be shown to present the brand identity. All this is a translation of values and the big idea into visual language. We already covered the conception presentation topic in one of previous posts but here are the key things we keep in mind:

A good conception is based on the big idea that finds its place in specific techniques or use cases. Idea and visuals should co-exist and complement each other.

Does the brand have a solid social media coverage? Should it have outdoor exposure? Does its communication encompass offline events? We don't conjure mockups from nothing, we envision their likely appearance.

Adding trendy graphics might seem simple, yet without a practical application in mind, they shouldn't be included just for aesthetics. We only introduce techniques and recommendations that are thoroughly explained and will be applied in the brand guidelines.

The brand concept should encourage creativity rather than confine us to what is presented. At this point, it's important to explore whether the suggested techniques can be applied differently or on a larger scope. If we have this knowledge already, it might be beneficial to visualize it.

We like to treat brand guidelines as setting the base for growth and not just the pdf that clients get at the end of the whole process. Actually, it’s the beginning rather than ending and we want to set the client with all the information about the brand that we can provide to make it easier to work with. We try to make this presentation helpful by actually describing how things work and whether there’re any rules that need to be kept in mind. We just put ourselves in the shoes of a person that will apply this branding in real life and it gives the understanding of what we need to include.

It’s not a specific stage that has its beginning and ending, because changes may happen in any part of the process. But they are no harm and are fine in general if you develop a certain mindset. There’s no one correct way to do something so it’s pretty natural that design evolves during the project with the help of client’s feedback or just internal tweaks here and there.

In Clickl project we had iterations too (happened during the conceptions stage) but we are happy to say that they didn’t involve a complete re-doing and only made the final result better. Our team as well as stakeholders felt safe during iterations because of the trust and professionalism they saw in us and we think that it is the reason why iterations scared no one in both teams.

Our journey with Clickl was full of trust, desire to make the world a better place (however cliche it may sound), and good design of course. In a close collaboration with the client, we created the brand that will transform the real estate market in the region by bringing the original idea of home back to life.

With out help, the client got everything to kick start their business journey. For us, it was a valuable experience and opportunity to transform an idea into something tangible.

For a closer look at how our design philosophy translates into real-world solutions, explore a full version of Clickl case study.