What Is Brand Experience Design?

Learn all about brand experience design, how it is different from product design and how it can help put your products and brands on the map.

Brand experience, and with it its design, are disciplines in marketing that are very successful in turning your audience into loyal customers and putting them in awe with creativity and trust-building strategies.

But, how to design a campaign like this? What makes it different from any other type of marketing? How can it help you achieve great user experiences and be noticeable among the competition?

Let’s start with the basics: defining brand experience first.

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What is brand experience?

The emotions, sensations and memories the customers have towards a brand, is the best way to summarize the definition of brand experience. It is the long-lasting impression a customer gathers after being in touch with the brand in any environment or any stage of their customer journey.

Or, as it is defined by researchers in the paper “Brand Experience: What Is It? How Is It Measured? Does It Affect Loyalty?”: Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments.

Brand-related stimuli

The researchers mention brand-related stimuli, which are used to evoke a response. Now, let’s go one by one and explain to you what these stimuli are and in which categories we can put them.

Brand identity elements: Every single element that characterizes the brand and is constructed in order to make it distinguishable and unique, is its brand identity element. Such elements are logos, fonts, brand colors, shapes, slogans, mascots, background design, brand characters, etc.

‍Marketing messages and channels: The tone of voice, marketing goals and campaigns, as well as the channels these messages are spread through, are also an important element that is tied to the brand and the way people perceive it.

‍Environment: Stores, pop-up shops, branded cars, events the brand participates in and other inside or outside environments are also part of the brand-related stimuli.

‍Customer experiences and journey: The experience of customers with the service, marketing and nurturing, possibilities of personalization and recognition of celebratory moments, smooth onboarding and even offboarding are part of the customer experiences. All these elements need to be documented in a journey mapping that will help the company enhance the personal experience of each customer.

What is brand experience design?

Brand experience design is a method of creating products and features with an approach that puts the brand first and has strict knowledge of how to incorporate marketing into product experiences without interfering with the user's experience.

Designers that specialize in brand experience have generally worked on both digital goods and brand systems. This designer should be knowledgeable about the company's mission and branding approach.

What does a brand experience designer do?

Designers that specialize in brand experience have generally worked on both digital products goods and brand systems.

This designer should be knowledgeable about the company's brand identity, mission and strategy.  

Since this position is likely to be part of the product design team, these designers should also have expertise in product development too.

This sort of designer should know where there is a change or escalation in emotion in a product or campaign, and how to employ these moments to create a branded product experience.

Some of the elements a brand experience designer creates are:

• Experience storyboards: A storyboard is a visual mapping of sorts, in which a designer can visually present each stage of the BX design process.
• Journey mapping: Similar to the experience storyboard, but instead of mapping the design, here they create a visual map of each step of the brand experience journey for the customers.
• Tools and materials that are used in brand experience: From visual tools to real-life materials that could be used in, let’s say, a pop-up shop, the BX designer needs to know and be able to use each tool.
• Brand experience elements (could be visual, audio, multimedia, interactive, motion design, etc.): The BX designer will create the final elements used in brand experience as well.

BX designers have responsibilities comparable to those of a product designer, but they can traverse and shape emotional relationships across a wide range of consumer touchpoints.

These designers should also be able to serve as a bridge between the marketing team and the final customer: to foresee the reaction and emotion in the final recipient, but also to be able to understand the ideas and needs of the people that create the brand experience campaigns.

Why is brand experience design important?

People make a purchase based on emotion. The main reason why a brand experience needs to be designed well, with this main goal in mind, is that it can foresee and plan the way they react to products and experiences.

Jon Howell, brand and product designer, says in an interview: “[…] when consumers make decisions, they’re influenced by emotions from previous experiences they’d like to repeat. These experiences with the brand can build or detract from brand equity, which has a significant impact on purchase intentions.”

He goes on to explain that business owners should use these experiences to promote customer loyalty through brand experience design if they want to keep customers coming back.

The sum of wonderful and memorable brand experiences within the product is what helps establish trust, drive preference and generate affinity for the things we know and love.