Brand Perception, Beauty, and its Effect on Business

All the biggest companies know it: branding is a very powerful force in this world. They spend millions of dollars each year researching brand perception and carefully positioning themselves to influence consumers and employees alike, ensuring their brand image is not just positive but as compelling as possible. Good design captures a viewer’s attention, making them feel more comfortable and sometimes even imparting a sense of awe. Conversely, design that is actively bad can repulse potential customers and severely reduce the impact a company can make with what it has to offer.

A New York Times article titled Why We Love Beautiful Things explains how beautiful designs are interpreted in the brain. Certain colors, shapes, and even patterns can change a viewer’s perception of an item; curves generally tend to appear more welcoming whereas sharp angles elicit fear, awe, or some combination of the two. Colors noticeably impact the perception of a brand, as do font choices, sizes, spacing, and style. These associations likely stem from early human life, where the correct interpretation of natural environmental cues determined harm or survival. Most interestingly, a person’s instinctive attraction to a design may be determined by the speed at which it is processed by the brain.

This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as recognition has always drawn people in, whether by recognizing someone a party, being in a town they grew up in, or seeing a familiar brand on a shelf. This naturally plays an advantage to the more established and well-known companies, but is also something younger companies without a brand identity can take advantage of, using design principles to imbue a viewer with that sense of recognition.

More than your leadership, your products, or your buildings, your brand is the most public and visible sign of who your company is. The foundations of design and art have remained consistent over human history, meaning what you’re communicating through your brand, logo, and messaging will have a large impact on how people perceive you and how well your business does, just as it has over the centuries.

Make sure you’re communicating what you want to with your brand. At the Articulation Agency, an award winning branding, marketing, and communications firm, we utilize these principles to create brand identities and messaging that resonate with people. The Los Angeles branding agency the Articulation Agency can assist in any branding, advertising, and communications needs your company may have. Click here to learn more.