First impressions are everything, and for your customers, 55% of the ones they encounter are visual. From your logo to social media profiles, the design of your brand’s identity will be, for many people, the first introduction to your brand. This intro can be a multidimensional experience for those potential customers or clients.

But making this interaction count begins with a brand design that resonates with them.

Whether you have a new or established business, a brand identity discovery session can reveal what is or isn’t working visually. It pulls apart every part of your company’s mission, goals, and current visual assets to create a new identity representing the brand’s visual identity.

Here are a few essentials you need to know about this type of branding service.

What is a brand discovery session?

Designing a new brand identity is a collaborative effort between you and your design team. A brand identity discovery session examines your business’s design and strategic elements, including its audience, industry, and competition. Then, your brand designer produces all the visuals needed to create a strong brand identity.

What happens during a brand identity discovery session?

Think of the discovery process as one part investigation, one part market research, and one part strategic meeting. Before designing a single piece of your new brand identity, your design team has to understand what your business does, who it serves, and what it stands for.

Any brand identity creation or overhaul aims to connect your message with the customers’ expectations to earn their trust and, eventually, their loyalty.

So here’s what happens during the session when you collaborate with your design team.

Share what you respect about the competition
Designers want to know who your competitors are and what you respect about them. Note the word “respect.” When you can go beyond talking about their tactics and articulate what your competition does well in the industry, you can better compare your business to theirs.

Because you’re talking about what they do well, it gives the brand designer more tools to show how you do it better.

Conduct a brand audit of your existing brand elements
During the brand discovery phase, designers will request that you share all the existing sales and marketing materials used in your business. These are the assets that help tell your brand story. From there, they’ll lay out all of these different components and compare and contrast them with you, noting what’s working and what doesn’t.

Remember, this is a time to objectively look at your brand, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and how they support your business and its goals.

Identify your target audience’s expectations
When people encounter your business in the wild, they evaluate your brand’s appearance during those first few seconds before deciding whether to learn more about it. The impressions they take away from those interactions mean something to your customers.

So, at this stage, your design team wants to know who your customers are and what they should expect from your business, from first touch to purchase and future dealings with the brand.

Define what you offer to customers
Your ideal clients and customers aren’t only buying a product. They’re buying a solution, a lifestyle, or a dream state. The people who form a genuine bond with businesses and feel like they reflect their values, on average, 50% more valuable than lukewarm buyers.

Knowing what problem you solve for your customers is critical to the brand identity discovery process. It influences your logo design, chosen colors, and fonts because your identity system communicates more than its visuals—it symbolizes your brand’s personality.

Involve any additional owners in the brand discovery process
Before starting with your design, consider if there’s anything else you want your design team to keep in mind. Brand identity discovery sessions are intensive and often involve multiple moving parts and stakeholders with strong opinions.

It’s essential to take their thoughts into account during any brand refresh. Their insights are where some of the most significant revelations come to light.

Brand identities designed for the future

Designing a new visual identity is a worthwhile, collaborative process, and its end result can visually position your business as a legacy brand.

Since discovery involves breaking down what your business represents on a fundamental level, all the details collected will influence the design of the brand’s new identity.

Embarking on a brand identity discovery can help separate you from the companies you want to surpass in a competitive landscape, showing off the brand’s one-of-a-kind personality.