Seeing Your Brand

Greg Goldsberry, of Stevenson Color, delves into visual language and how great brands help consumers to see their products.

Written by Greg Goldsberry

Imagine walking into your favorite retail venue and seeing all of the packages bereft of any information. No brandmarks, no photography, no words…nothing at all. How would you navigate that shopping experience with no information? I think it would be safe to say it would be virtually impossible to shop that venue with any clarity or confidence. We experience the world around us as sensual beings. We use our sense of hearing, taste, touch, smell and sight to help us decipher information.

As consumers, we are constantly seeking out brands that speak to us and when we find it, a little bit of magic happens. P&G calls it the “first moment of truth”. It’s when a brand’s packaging engages the consumer, differentiates from the competition and helps to create relevance in a manner that leads to trial. It’s a moment in time that every brand must face. And to be successful, a brand has to win that moment time and time again.

Retail venues are visually complex environments. Each brand tries to woo the consumer to look their way. Consumers, inundated with visual information, must try to sort it all out. Much like the aforementioned packages with no information, an overload of information can also compromise consumer clarity and confidence. So how do great brands help consumers to see their brand?

There is a hierarchy of human visual perception that great brands exploit over and over. Consumer packaging, as a discipline, has the enviable role of developing a brand’s visual language. It is in the development of a brand’s visual language that this 4-level hierarchy can be applied.

Color is the first element. Consumers visually recognize color before any other element on a package. For instance, Coke is red, Tiffany & Co. is robin’s egg blue and Tide is orange .These brands own their colors and turn them into consistent visual brand equities that connect them with their consumers on a functional and emotional level. Color is also used as a versioning or segmentation strategy within a portfolio of products to denote different flavors and scents or tiers, respectively. In certain categories, color versioning norms are so prevalent that some colors are inextricably tied to the flavor or scent of the product. For example, in the ice cream category the flavor vanilla is recognized as being a blue variant in most versioning systems. Color can have many roles in a brand’s visual language strategy. Owning an equity color that drives immediate consumer recognition has proven to be the single most important role that color can have for a brand.

Shape is the second element. This can include the shape of iconography, visual architecture and, most recognizably, packaging structure. The ubiquitous use of the famous Coke bottle silhouette in promotional materials is a testament to that legendary structure’s recognizable shape and marketing value. For an example of powerful iconography that has helped to build positive brand equity consider Dove, the personal care brand. Their brandmark’s gracefully rendered dove symbol and soft feminine letterforms, combine to create a powerful identifier within the category. Like the use of color, proprietary shapes are visual short hand that helps consumers find a brand.

Numbers are the third element. They are oftentimes used to tier a particular product line. This method of product differentiation is used extensively in the automobile industry. However, it can also be used on packaging initiatives that require a step-program for a group of products meant-to-be used together in succession. The quick read of short numeric messaging allows consumers to make snap decisions concerning product value or usage.

Words are the fourth and final element. Because words are visually complex, relative to color, shape and short numerics, they are the last elements that consumers perceive and ultimately comprehend on a package. That is not to say that verbal messaging isn’t of extreme importance, but rather to understand that words should be relied on to connect with consumers after they have navigated through the other elements within the hierarchy of visual perception.

Great brands use these understandings of human visual perception to elevate their offering in a complex selling environment. Creating visual language that leverages color and shape to engage the consumer and differentiate the brand are essential steps in capturing the eyes of the consumer so that relevance can be ascertained. If executed well and the product delights upon trial, hearts and minds should follow.



Greg Goldsberry is creative director for the creative services group at Stevenson Color, Inc., where he manages and directs all brand and design initiatives for clients. He previously worked at Fisher Design within the packaging group as senior design director.