The Short Answer… Yes.

So you’re wanting a rebrand, but you’re thinking of just asking Artificial Intellignece? Let me convince you otherwise…

AI design is everywhere at the moment. It is cheap, quick and very intriguing when looking for a source to make your new brand, especially when you’re a new business. Plus, it is very tempting to want to keep up with trends and make your business look hip, hop and happening. But it’s a common misconception that all you need is a logo. A logo is the central point of your brand, and without it you would struggle to sell anything. 

But you need so much more.

How AI Works

AI works by analysing existing data to identify patterns, and make decisions to generate visual content from existing designs. This means millions of similar variants. It circulates the internet and pulls small features to build an overall design. Often misspelling words or illustrating images inaccurately. 

You enter the name of your business, suggest a theme and out pops a generic design. And we get it, super easy! However, what people don’t realise is there’s no consideration, individuality or strategy. When you use an AI logo it is the same pool of fonts, shapes and layouts as thousands of other businesses.

Strategy First

Unequivocally important for any business, and can’t really be relied on when using a computer model. A human designer starts fresh, researching your market, competitors and audience before even considering a font or shape. Assuming you’ve got a good designer, the project in question will have been researched meticulously, to reach the actual goals of the client or group in question; a chatbot hasn’t got this ability, especially not in the space of the 30 seconds it takes to generate a logo.

You need this knowledge to build trust, loyalty and recognition with your audience, because emotion sells. 81% of consumers need to trust a brand to consider purchasing. This process might feel long winded at first, but it will add immense value and establish long-term credibility to drive growth.

Key Elements of Brand Strategy

• Purpose: Consider your brand’s core mission and how to communicate the purpose to your target audience.
• Brand Values: What is important to your brand and what is important to your audience. How can you align the values to match?
• Tone of Voice: Your brand’s overall personality and language will need confirming as it can vary depending on the output.

Why Human Branding Is Superior

After the initial research, the next stage is to start creating considered ideas. While a human designer will keep researching and learning throughout the whole process, it’s now time to put together a brand visual.

What’s in a Brand Visual, Exactly?

• Logos: A graphic mark of the brand name. The logo suite will include a primary logo – the main most detailed logo, and a secondary logo which is more simple, with reduced components.
• Brand Mark: An illustration or icon that sits with the primary logo but will work alone when scaling.
• Colour Palette: A hand selected set of colours, often consisting of around three primary colours and a selection of secondary colours.
• Typography: Selected fonts to be used across all formats. The primary font can be decorative for logos, headers and promotional material. The secondary font is used for body copy and needs to be accessible.
• Brand Imagery: Many brands choose a range of images or a style of photography to keep the colours and visual language the same.
• Icons & Illustrations: A set of small images, hand drawn in a style to reflect the tone of the brand. Used for identification on website pages, packaging and social media.

More than you’d think, right?

Authentic and personal branding is very important. Having a strong brand identity is essential for you stand out, particularly in an overcrowded market. Your brand’s visuals need originality, purpose and to relate to its audience, you use the research and convert it into considered visuals.

The designer will hand-select colours that fit with the right psychology of your brand and evoke desired emotions; choose fonts that are accessible and compliment the brand’s voice, customise lettering to make them unique to you, hand draw illustrations and brand marks. Neatly wrapping everything in a bow, called a brand guideline, to document all the design choices and set clear rules for applying the design across various channels, to keep it all consistent.

A Logo Isn’t Just For Christmas

A logo isn’t only going on your website, it can be utilised for social media profiles, on business cards, packaging, merchandise, wrapping a vehicle, a shop sign, for email signatures, stationery, or anything and everything else you desire. A designer will consider this and design in a format called a vector. What is a vector? In short, a vector is a scalable file type which remains high quality and versatile. A typical AI generator will produce a logo as a flat raster file which looks pixelated and low-quality.

Vector File                                                        Raster File

And just in case you needed any more convincing, here’s a quick game of spot the difference:

Why Unit Digital Is Right For Your Brand

When you commission any design with Unit Digital, you are getting a hands on team of professionals to help every step of the way. Our expertise and experience helps from end to end, so you get high quality and timeless visuals that won’t look outdated within a month!

You receive full ownership of the outcomes. Anything designed is individual and authentically you. Something AI can’t guarantee.