A well-designed color and trend strategy strengthens the relationship between a brand and its community.
How?
By first, understanding and explaining what a brand’s specific audience will love and value in the future. And then, by showing how this knowledge can be used in the design of products, color palettes, stories, and experiences that will resonate and connect with the brand’s community.
In this issue, I’ll share the process I use with my clients to create their custom color and trend strategy.
Let’s dive in.
Understand the Brand
The first step is to get a clear understanding of who the brand is.
The basics are a solid starting point - What’s the history of the brand? What’s their market? What products do they make?
But, then go deeper. What are the brand’s values? What makes their products, approach, storytelling, and community unique? What is their mission and purpose? How do they show up in their industry and community? What are they known for and known as?
Next, define what the brand’s goals are. The goals could be related to growth, positioning, process, products, sustainability, budget, market share… really anything meaningful to the brand. The idea is to get a big picture understanding of what is important to the brand as it looks to the future so you can start to envision the path to get there.
I find it extremely helpful here to personify the brand. Think about the brand as a living thing with distinct attributes that will evolve and change as it grows, learns, and responds to changing circumstances.
Also, at this point, gather the creative assets that show how the brand is currently approaching color and trend, as well as how it has done so historically, and how it plans to do so for any future seasons that haven’t been released publicly yet, but have already been finalized internally.
Susan Wilkinson
Understand the Community
Next, understand the brand’s community.
Yes, I mean consumers. However, I encourage you to use the terms “community” or “people”. This helps to remember that the people that engage with a brand (or the people a brand hopes will engage with them) are not just sales transactions or 2D demographic customer profiles but are complete humans with a vast array of interests and priorities both outside and inside of the brand’s arena.
Just like with the brand, define what values the community holds dear. What is meaningful in their lives? What constitutes a life, a day well-lived? How do they work, play, relax, take care of themselves? Notice patterns in behaviors, routines, preferences, aspirations, lifestyles.
Look at what is going on around the brand’s community, with both a global and local lens. What initiatives or crises (economic, political, environmental, cultural, etc.) are impacting their lives, their mindsets, their futures? What is going on in popular culture, entertainment, or sports that will influence them?
Create a clear picture of the complex, elastic community that this brand focuses on.
Understand the Relationship
Now, look at the intersection of the brand and the community. Understand the dynamics and mechanics of the relationship.
What tangible needs does the brand meet for their community? What is it about the function and presentation of the brand’s product(s) that appeals to the community? Why do people choose this brand over others?
What intangible needs does the brand fulfill for their community? What is it about the personality, ethics, and vibe of the brand that attracts people? What aspects of themselves do people see mirrored in the brand’s identity?
What builds trust and loyalty between the brand and its community? How solid is this trust and loyalty?
What expectations exist?
The goal here is to understand what makes the relationship thrive. And, if it’s not thriving, to understand what could change that.
Susan Wilkinson
Gather Research + Inspiration
The next step is to gather research and inspiration relevant to the brand and its community. It should be based on the work above.
Last month I went into detail on how I collect and distill trend and color information at the global level. This entails consistently tracking and organizing emerging influences, innovations, and shifts happening at the universal, cultural, and/or hyper-local level. It also includes continually gathering inspiration on color, trends, pattern, shape, and design.
All of this informs what I call The Global View: the worldly, arising shifts and innovations affecting how people live, behave, feel, work, and interact that shape what people will want and need in the future.
Now, use those same principles with a brand-specific filter to create The Brand View: the emerging trends and influences that will affect the brand, its approach and goals, and the expectations, needs, and desires of the brand’s community.
[Need a refresh on how to do this information collecting? Read: How a Color Designer + Trend Forecaster Does Her Job.]
When I am working with a client, I start by analyzing the global trend and color information I have already collected through the lens of the brand and their community. I pull all relevant inspiration and examples into the client-specific research, where it creates the initial framework for the brand’s macro trends and shows me where I need to focus my research going forward.
As I continue researching, I am studying how different points of data can be connected, where new concentrations and pathways are forming, and what this could mean for the future of the brand and its community.
Create the Trend Strategy
From the brand-focused research, organize the information into macro trends relevant to the brand, its industry, its goals, its community and their relationship, and the season that you are working on.
Typically, I advise focusing on three macro trends per season. These key trends should capture the major influences that will affect the brand and all its community. The trends can overlap with each other - likely they will; they do not exist as individual silos but rather illustrate the myriad of factors impacting the brand’s space.
Communicate the meaning of each macro trend by presenting the following information for each:
Definition: Create a clear definition that is understandable and easy for people to share and repeat.
Influences: Give high-level witness support that shows the key influences contributing to the trend.
Innovations: Share innovations that are on the leading edge, contributing to this trend.
Inspiration: Show designs, products, experiences, and other examples that are embodying this trend.
Ideation: Outline how the brand can incorporate this trend into design, marketing, and business operations.
Strategically decide how to adopt and combine elements of each trend. What achieves the brand’s goals, is most meaningful to their community, and is feasible?
Susan Wilkinson
Create the Color Strategy
Finally, create the brand’s color strategy. Color strategy includes color palette design, color stories, color usage, and color merchandising. It is informed by the brand’s trend strategy as well as the color-specific research and inspiration gathering.
First, determine the brand’s guardrails and needs surrounding color for the season. This creates the framework for their color strategy based on business and product logistics, capabilities, and bandwidth. To determine it, follow the advice outlined in The Math of Color.
Next, organize the color inspiration by color family and trend. (I like to do this digitally first, then physically.) Pull in the most recent brand color palette(s), noting which colors will drop, which will carryover, where there are opportunities for new. Highlight the color direction in the inspiration images that will work best for the brand given the trends as well as the jobs that color needs to accomplish this season.
From here, begin to pull color chips, usually multiple color chips, for a particular color direction. Gradually refine the colors based on how best they embody their needed role(s), how they capture the essence of the brand, how they look in combination with each other, and how they tie into the macro trend narratives. The palette should sing. Each color should be incredibly powerful on its own and in combination with other colors in the palette.
Once the palette is defined, build the strategy for how the colors will be used. Show the key colors per trend, per community segment, per product collection.
Define the purpose of each of the colors. Will they be used as all-over colors or accents, across all categories or only some, for all material types or only certain ones, to attract attention or be subtle daily drivers?
Outline how colors should be used in combination with each other so that there is consistancy throughout the line. This can change slightly from collection to collection, but strong cohesive threads should be noticeable in the complete line.
Design the color merchandising plan that explicitly shows the color stories and color usage across the entire product line. The merchandising plan illustrates how color flows from collection to collection and how it is used to amplify each product’s targeted purpose and audience.
Put It All Together
Finally, weave the verbal and visual narrative that pulls everything together - the brand/community/relationship understanding, the trend strategy, and the color strategy. Use the insight unlocked in this process to strengthen the connection between the brand and its community. Use it to create what matters most.
