Introduction

Brand identity design. Who needs it? Every company in existence. Who provides the service? You.

But how do you win big-name clients? And how do you keep your work relevant in the ever-evolving design profession? If you’re like me, one of your goals as a graphic designer is to continuously improve your skills so that you can attract the clients you want to work with. So it’s vital that you keep learning and growing.

This book is about sharing with you everything that I know about creating brand identities so that you can stay motivated and inspired, and make smart and well-informed decisions when procuring and working with your clients.

But who am I, and what reason do you have for heeding my advice?

For almost 10 years I’ve been sharing design projects on my self-named blog at davidairey.com, then later at logodesignlove.com and identitydesigned.com. Readers have been walked through the individual stages of not only my own identity projects, but also those of talented designers and studios around the world. I put emphasis on how to seal the deal with clients, how to translate details of design briefs, and how to help reach consensus with clients before they sign off on an idea.

If my Google Analytics are to be believed, my websites currently generate one million monthly page views, with hundreds of thousands of designers visiting regularly. My readers tell me how much they appreciate seeing “behind the scenes” into the design process, and that it’s difficult finding such insights elsewhere. They tell me the content I publish is helpful and inspiring (and no money changed hands during our conversations).

If you search through the portfolios of the most successful design studios, you’ll find plenty of examples of final design work. Some portfolios might even show one or two alternative concepts. For the most part, however, there’s very little of what actually happens between designers and their clients: the questions the designers ask to get projects started on the right foot, how they generate ideas after creating and studying the design brief, and how they present their designs to win client approval. Those details are like gold dust to a designer.

And so, the idea for this book was born.

The first edition was published in 2009 and is available in 10 languages, with the English version reprinted a number of times. Five years later, it became obvious to me where I could improve on the content. The result is this new edition that benefits from my additional experience, containing new case studies from new contributors, and new insights from a wealth of design talent.

When you finish reading this book, I hope you’ll be well-prepared to go out and win your own clients and create your own iconic brand identities. Had I known about everything contained in these pages when I started my own design business in 2005, I would definitely have saved myself a lot of worrying and restless nights.