Sometimes when I’m around designer friends and there’s a lull in the conversation one of us will blurt out, “What is branding, anyway?” Then we shrug our shoulders and chuckle, knowing that the answer is far too complex to sum up in a sentence or two.

有时，当我和设计师朋友在一起时，谈话变得平淡无奇，我们中的一个人会脱口而出：“无论如何，品牌是什么？” 然后，我们耸了耸肩，轻笑着，知道答案太复杂了，不能用一两句话来总结。

It is a crucial question, however. And answerable. This is my attempt to answer that question in a series of writings. I’ve been working on and thinking about branding for more than a decade now. First, at an agency working with global brands, then at my own startup and for the last several years embedded inside a growing, venture-backed tech startup.

但是，这是一个关键问题。 和负责任的。 这是我试图通过一系列著作来回答这个问题的尝试。 十多年来，我一直在研究和考虑品牌塑造。 首先，在一家与全球品牌合作的代理商中，然后在我自己的初创公司中，以及最近几年嵌入在一个由风险投资支持的成长型技术初创公司中的公司 。

Why is branding so hard to define?

为什么品牌很难定义？

First, we should make a distinction between an organization’s brand and its visual brand.

首先，我们应该区分组织的品牌和视觉品牌 。

A visual brand is made up of logos, icons, fonts, color palettes, slide deck templates and so on. This is most often what people, especially designers, mean when they say they’re “working on branding,” though what they’re actually doing is working on the visual brand.

视觉品牌由徽标，图标，字体，调色板，幻灯片模板等组成。 这是人们(尤其是设计师)在说自己正在“进行品牌塑造”时最常表达的意思，尽管他们实际上在做的是视觉品牌。

An organization’s overall brand is something much bigger and harder to define. I’m now convinced that an organization’s brand is mostly just its core values: the things that drive every decision of every team everyday. Every organization has a brand because every organization has values, whether they realize it or not. Sometimes those values are explicitly stated and other times they’re more ambiguous. But they’re always there.

组织的整体品牌要大得多，也很难定义。 我现在坚信组织的品牌主要只是其核心价值：推动每个团队每天做出决定的事物。 每个组织都有品牌，因为每个组织都有价值，无论他们是否意识到。 有时，这些值被明确声明，而其他时候则更加模棱两可。 但是他们总是在那里。

Branding helps to answer the question, “Why are we doing this?” and is much more nuanced than dealing with the question, “What are we doing?”

品牌有助于回答以下问题：“我们为什么要这样做？” 并且更加细致入微不是处理这个问题，“我们在做什么 ？”

Establishing an organization’s core values is grueling work. It must always start with the CEO, too, since it’s ultimately the CEO’s responsibility to ensure that everyone in the organization knows why they’re doing what they’re doing.

建立组织的核心价值是艰巨的工作。 它也必须始终从CEO开始，因为这最终是CEO的责任，以确保组织中的每个人都知道自己为什么做自己的工作。

Furthermore, an organization’s core values can shift and transform over time. The best brands remain consistent, though, and have strong opinions about what makes their product or service, and, therefore, their culture, unique. Brand is inextricably linked to culture, too. More on that another time.

此外，组织的核心价值会随着时间的推移而变化和转变。 不过，最好的品牌保持一致，并对什么使他们的产品或服务以及因此其独特的文化具有强烈的见解。 品牌也与文化密不可分。 再来一次。

In the same way a person spends years developing her own strong opinions, an organization’s brand is built only after many hours of learning and wrestling and hard conversations.

与一个人花费数年时间发展自己的强烈意见一样，组织的品牌只有经过许多小时的学习，角力和艰苦的交谈后才能建立。

Who owns branding?

谁拥有品牌？

After years of reflection, starting with the premise that design teams should own branding, I now believe that branding is a shared process among every team and must be championed in the c-suite.

经过多年的思考，从设计团队应该拥有品牌的前提开始，我现在认为品牌是每个团队之间共享的过程，必须在最高管理层中拥护。

The visual branding process should be owned by the design team. And because a visual brand serves as a constant reminder of the organization’s core values, it’s imperative that the design team work closely with the c-suite and many other stakeholders, including HR.

视觉品牌化过程应归设计团队所有。 而且，由于视觉品牌一直在提醒着企业的核心价值，因此设计团队必须与最高管理层和包括人力资源部门在内的许多其他利益相关者密切合作。

The core values of an organization help determine all kinds of visual brand decisions. An education startup focused on elementary schools, for example, might employ bright and bold colors and flourishy fonts — just no Comic Sans, please! — while an insurance company might go with a more traditional color palette and font.

组织的核心价值有助于确定各种视觉品牌决策。 例如，一家专注于小学的教育创业公司可能会采用明亮大胆的颜色和蓬勃的字体-请不要使用Comic Sans！ -保险公司可能会选择更传统的调色板和字体。

The visual brand is as important as an organization’s core values because nearly every customer touchpoint with the brand is made up of some combination of colors, fonts and graphics. Each touchpoint always reinforces the brand.

视觉品牌与组织的核心价值同样重要，因为该品牌的几乎每个客户接触点都由颜色，字体和图形的某种组合组成。 每个接触点始终可以增强品牌形象。

A design team can do much more than make the visual brand beautiful, too. They can often help the c-suite work through processes to determine core values and figure out the best ways to share those with the rest of the team. Designers have a unique skill, a way of solving problems that includes deep empathy and thoughtfulness, and this skill can be applied to myriad problems inside an organization.

设计团队所能做的不仅是使视觉品牌更漂亮。 他们通常可以帮助高级管理人员通过流程来确定核心价值，并找出与团队其他成员共享这些价值的最佳方法。 设计师具有独特的技能，一种解决问题的方法，其中包括深层的同理心和体贴，并且这种技能可以应用于组织内部的众多问题。

Put your design team to work on strategic problems. Every designer I know is eager to apply their design processes to other problems throughout the organization. This is often referred to as “design thinking” and many successful organizations are realizing that this is great for business.

让您的设计团队致力于战略问题。 我认识的每个设计师都渴望将他们的设计过程应用于整个组织中的其他问题。 这通常被称为“设计思维”，许多成功的组织都意识到这对业务非常有用 。

Is brand different from reputation?

品牌与声誉不同吗？

I’ve often heard people equate an organization’s brand with its reputation. They’re not quite the same, though.

我经常听到人们将组织的品牌与声誉相提并论。 但是，它们并不完全相同。

A crisp, white box with a gray Apple logo informs you that the product inside will be user friendly and thoughtfully designed. A Honda logo on the front of a car lets everyone know that the vehicle is well built and will be reliable for a very long time.

带有灰色Apple徽标的白色酥脆盒子告诉您，产品内部将易于使用且经过精心设计。 汽车前部的本田徽标使每个人都知道该汽车的结构合理，并且在很长一段时间内都会可靠。

Apple and Honda are established companies that have earned a reputation over a long period of time. Since reputation building takes a long time, an organization can have a brand and not yet a reputation.

苹果和本田是已经建立了很长时间的声誉的公司。 由于建立声誉需要很长时间，因此组织可以拥有品牌，而没有声誉。

But they do go hand in hand. A person earns a reputation by being consistent in her values and carrying them out in many situations over a long period of time. The same is true in business.

但是它们确实是并驾齐驱的。 一个人的价值观是一致的，可以在很长一段时间内在许多情况下贯彻始终，从而赢得声誉。 商业界也是如此。

That’s all for now. What else would you like to know about branding from a designer’s perspective? —Chris

目前为止就这样了。 从设计师的角度来看，您还想知道什么有关品牌的信息？ -克里斯