Visual language trend

2009/2010 TREND REPORT:

THE VISUAL * LANGUAGE OF BRAND.
DAVID ANSETT + TRULY DEEPLY *BRAND IDENTITY, PACKAGING, ADVERTISING, RETAIL SPACE, WEB, LIVERY, SIGNAGE

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2009/2010 Trend Report; The Visual Language of Brand.

Dedicated to all businesses who actively leverage their brands and their brand visual language.

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2009/2010 Trend Report: The Visual language of Brand

A REPORT IN MAJOR VISUA LANGUAGE TRENDS IN BRAND IDENT
Trends in the visual language of brand identityare driven by many factors from the ‘me-too-ism’ of designers and their clients mimicking the visual language of market leaders, to new and emerging trends such as ‘sustainability’ that draw a similar and en-mass visual response from designers all over the world

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2009/2010 Trend Report: The Visual language of Brand

HOWEVER THE BIG QUESTION ON TRENDS INBRAND VISUAL LANGUAGE IS ‘WHAT EXACTLY DO WE DO WITH THEM?’

When it comes to brands, the thing about visual language is that it not only communicates the essence of a brand and its (hopefully) unique proposition to market, but also provides its audience with cues relative to the other brands in the marketplace. The more a brand is a leader in its market, the greater meaning it’s visuallanguage has and the more influence it commands. The brand visual language of the Tiffany’s blue - especially when combined with their iconic ribbon and box - is a powerful identifier. It clearly communicates a series of well understood cues such as quality, elegance, sophistication, femininity, design and premium to a broad cross section of its markets in every country they do business.

When the designof visual language appears consistently and repeatedly across a number of brands we identify that as a trend. When a trend is leveraged positively it offers brands the opportunity to communicate an existing set of cues or meanings within a market to their advantage - whether that be a local business wishing to look global, or a global business wishing to look local. Yet, when misunderstood ormisused, trends can create inappropriate or confusing visual messaging to the detriment of the brand. When the most popular trends become widely misused the original brand cues become meaningless. The last decade saw the popularity of the ‘all lowercase logotype’. Using all lowercase letters was seen as a way for brands to show their ‘friendly’, ‘down to earth’ and ‘approachable’ side. As this aspectof brand personality became increasingly popular, more and more brands adopted the trend for their visual language, culminating in the re-branding of the National Australia Bank to ‘nab’. In terms of trend relevance, when a big bank - any big bank - adopts the visual language of ‘friendly’, ‘down to earth’ and ‘approachable’ the cues of the trend have become compromised.

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5OVER THE PAST 12 MONTHS WE HAVE COLLECTED MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DIFFERENT BRAND EXPRESSIONS SPANNING ALMOST EVERY MAJOR INDUSTRY AND CATEGORY OF THE WESTERN WORLD.

The brand expressions we tracked included existing, new and refined brand identities, product packaging, newspaper, magazine and billboard ads. The scale and breadth of these brand expressions allowed us to identify the major brandvisual language trends of a broad range of market leaders for the last year. Whilst the majority of the examples presented in this report are recent, many trends are not in themselves new. It is our interpretation of the groundswell of take-up of a trend and the influence exerted within their market by the brands involved, that leads us to define the most compelling and influential trends.

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