What’s in and what’s out in branding in 2023
What’s in – and what’s out – in branding for 2023
We’ll never stop talking about how powerful branding is to differentiate your business from competitors and to build a loyal customer base. If 2023 is the year you refresh or rebrand, check out our branding in’s and out’s so you can bring some ideas to the table.
In
Dopamine dressing
After years of playing it safe, we’re all craving joy in our lives and for many, joy takes shape as colour.
This year, introduce bright and even clashing pops of colour and multi-colour gradients into your branding; maybe a variation of your logo to celebrate a significant day in your industry or product packaging like Winekind’s wine bottle labels.
When we did Winekind’s branding, we chose vibrant colours and quirky illustrations to speak to the company’s mission to ‘make wine fun again’ and to help the bottles stand out on the shelves. We set it up to allow Winekind to adjust the loudness as needed – for example, dialled down for their classic NV Prosecco and dialled right up for their quaffable 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon.
Nostalgia marketing
Take us back to the good old days! Nostalgia marketing is where you leverage well-known concepts from previous decades and trends and apply them to newer ideas and products.
For The Freestyle Dance Co. we designed the logo with a retro-style font to hark back to the 1970s to 90s. This is to not only appeal to your sense of familiarity, but to also celebrate the period when hip hop and its cultural movement started skyrocketing in popularity!
For more short-lived applications than your brand logo, you could apply nostalgia marketing to event posters and branded merchandise. Inspire throwbacks with vintage-inspired fonts and vector artwork on posters like the US’ National Parks posters in the 1930s and 1940s.
Movement
More than ever, we want motion, not stagnation. When it comes to branding, we can express movement through simple animations like kinetic typography, which is moving text. Kinetic typography makes words more impactful and is super mesmerising to look at. You could use kinetic typography to boost your branding via website banners and social media GIFs – we can set up customised GIFs for you in this style to use on Instagram and beyond! Contact us here to get started.
Even without animations, thoughtfully designed elements such as the Nike tick can also create a sense of motion – the ‘swoosh’ represents the sound of someone running past you!
Humanised brands
We’ve never craved connection more than we have over the last few years and this applies to the relationship we have with businesses too.
You can create a feeling of connection via branding with elements such as hand-drawn illustrations and hand-drawn fonts; these give an honest, authentic feel that brings to mind a handwritten postcard from a loved one!
For Bobbin and Thimble Tailoring, we drew elements on their logo by hand to emphasise the handcrafted nature of the business.
Out
Product packaging that isn’t informative
As consumers, we want more credibility and transparency from businesses. We don’t want to have to dig around in pamphlets and websites to find out ingredients, production, origin, recyclability and more.
When we design your product packaging, we’ll work with you to decide which details are most important to communicate. Then, we’ll do so succinctly and compellingly through iconography, illustrations and copy!
This is exactly what we did for The Natural Food Emporium, a WA-based company that makes gluten-free pantry products and does so locally, by hand and with natural ingredients. When we then designed their Recipe Card gift packs for Christmas 2022, using hand-drawn illustrations.
About to launch a new product? Contact us here to get the ball rolling on your packaging.
Typography that isn’t unique
We’re tired of rules and restrictions and we want to live outside the box! When it comes to typography, we want to see fonts being used creatively, rather than just sticking to the template.
This can mean a whole host of things. It could be creating a brand new font, mixing and matching sans serif and serif fonts or combining typography with illustrations and collages. For LUX Bathroom Renovations, we stuck an ‘L’ in their eagle icon to tie in their brand name and create a unique logo for them.
It could also involve adjusting elements like the tittle (dot) above i’s and j’s, which is what we did for Winekind – we turned the tittle above the ‘i’ into a playful squiggle, reminiscent of a corkscrew!
As the pandemic grows smaller and smaller in our rear view mirrors, branding is becoming bolder and more invigorated – and we’re so excited to see where it’s taken in 2023 and beyond.
Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention AI. If you haven’t had a play with the text-to-image AI generators, have a go at Jasper right now for free! Nobody can deny how captivating the images are and while some designers may fear AI, we think it still lacks the human connection and personality that is needed for brilliant design and sticky brands. Keep an eye out for our insights on how we believe AI will elevate our design work.
If you are feeling inspired for a refresh or rebrand, we offer complimentary 15-minute enquiry chats where we’ll pinpoint what you would benefit from most! We can discuss any styles and trends you’re loving – or not – as well. With 3 different branding suite options available, you’ll be getting a bespoke design solution for your business and we’ll have a LOT of fun along the way too!
As always, stay classy! ✌🏻
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