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 marketing disciplines that help to turn your audience and prospective customers into loyal customers that have an emotional connection to your brand and choose it above all others.

‍But how can you get to this stage? How to design brand experiences that will set you apart from the rest?

Let’s start with the basics: brand experience definition.

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What is brand experience?

The best way to summarize what brand experience is are the customer expectations, emotions, and memories connected to a brand.

Brand-related stimuli

In order to make a customer feel good about your brand, they will need to experience brand stimuli. 

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 journey and experience: The experience of 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. 

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 how customers interact with your brand and understand the ideas and needs of the people that create the brand experience campaigns.

Examples of effective brand experience design

Now that you know what it is, and how it’s created, why not look at some real-life examples of brand experience design done well. 

Physical brand experience: Aesop

Like many modern cosmetic brands, Aesop’s brand identity design is all about minimalism: clean designs that represent their commitment to high-quality natural ingredients.

However, this brand also creates a great brand experience whenever you step into one of their stores. They don’t have a unified look, but each store has a striking interior design that fits their brand identity perfectly.

Although you won’t see the same colors and furniture in every store, they all create a cohesive brand experience, and you can definitely see there’s one design strategy in place. 

Although you won’t see the same colors and furniture in every store, they all create a cohesive brand experience, and you can definitely see there’s one design strategy in place. 

Digital brand experience: HubSpot

Hubpost is the leading marketing automation software, with modern solutions for email, social media, paid ads, customer service and much more.

Still, although not everyone actually uses HubSpot, almost everyone in marketing has heard of it.

This is because HupSpot has a fantastic omni-channel brand experience that helps to position them not only as a leading marketing automation tool, but as the leading experts on all digital marketing topics.

From their great social media posts with actionable tips and relevant information, to stellar blog content and downloadable resources - the one thing everyone can remember about HubSpot is their expertise.

Social brand experience: Surreal cereal

Social media design is extremely important if you wish to stand out in this visually crowded arena.

However, although brands occasionally manage to create a scroll-stopping post, few succeed in making their entire social media presence a memorable brand experience.

One thing most of the best brands on social media do is to create a unique approach for each individual platform. This can work very well, but taking a few risks can also pay off!

For example Surreal Cereal created this weird and funny post on LinkedIn, which is nowhere near the content we usually see on the platform (professional, informative, thought leadership, etc.)

On the other hand, their Instagram and Facebook feeds follow the same suit, with a great balance of promotional, cheeky and funny. 

Finally, they have the same witty (and slightly outrageous) YouTube marketing approach. Each platform works really well and helps to establish a powerful brand experience: you can always expect an in-your face promotion of the product, with a guaranteed laugh. 

Customer service experience: Wix

Now you may think that the point of a great customer experience is the agent’s interaction with a customer. Still, as a lot of customer service is automized nowadays, design plays a vital role in this area too.

One great example is the Wix help center (as well as their Chat support option). All the information is organized clearly, which makes a terrific UX design. 

On top of that they make great use of AI technology to help users find answers to their questions easily, which helps to increase customer satisfaction. For example, I’ve asked the AI assistant how to create a customer feedback survey and got simple step-by-step instructions in seconds!

Conclusion

Brand experience design is so much more than how your brand looks. A consistent brand experience design means you’ll build a lasting impression with potential customers, and customer loyalty in the long term. 

Brand experience design helps them remember not only your main product(s), but your brand as a whole. 

For more helpful tips on using branding for business success, check out these examples of the best brand guides and this read on the evolution of branding strategies.‍