Interior Design and How it Relates to Branding
If you’ve been to our office, you’ll know how much we care about interior design and environmental branding. Almost everyone who steps through our doors comments on how Nice our office is. (Score!)
At first, it seems like branding and interior design are two different things, but they come together purposefully in the process of environmental branding. Interior design is designing a space, and environmental branding is branding a space through interior design and graphic design.
Your interior space is a major customer touchpoint you can't afford to miss. It's an opportunity for a huge impact on anyone who encounters it and it's a valid avenue to build your brand in a big way. Coming at interior design from the perspective of branding provides one more way for you to seal the deal with consumers.
Branding is More Than a Logo
Business owners often relate branding to logos, marketing materials, signage, and color schemes, but it goes a step further. Branding is bigger than fonts, colors, and logos; it’s truly about what the consumer feels when they interact with your brand at every customer touchpoint. There are many ways they can interact with your brand, and one is how they interact with your space. Whether you have a storefront, office, or restaurant, consumers need to feel your brand essence when they come into your space. Whatever environmental space you have needs to be a reflection of your brand.
What Are Customer Touchpoints?
Customers feel your brand through touchpoints: things they see, read, touch, and feel when they come into contact with your business or assets that represent your business.
Great branding harnesses each of these touchpoints and makes each one count. Your brand has to be executed to its maximum potential at every step of the way throughout the customer journey because every encounter makes an impact.
If you think about it, the majority of these interactions come through either the world wide web, an offsite meeting, or in your physical space. Your office space, restaurant space, or storefront has to be impactful, and that impact is created through branded interior design. Branding your interior space is the process of analyzing the customer journey through your space and then determining the best course of action to create impact and connection.
Things to Remember: Everything Matters with Environmental Branding
If it’s visible in your space, it’s sending a message about you, which is why every single thing has to be addressed. From the flooring and wall color to the chairs, lights, furniture, and decor, everything has to align with your established brand direction.
If you decide to allow Nice Branding Agency to build your brand, we will first establish the visual direction for your business before embarking on the environmental branding phase. We will use your brand's visual direction to dictate your environmental branding.
Starting with a floor plan of your space and a deep understanding of your customer journey through your space, we create an interior branding design plan that pinpoints our selections for every finish, fixture, piece of furniture, lighting unit, and wall installation. Finally, we address the graphic design needs for wayfinding and other signage so you lead your customer through the journey with your brand.
The Customer Journey
The customer journey is the process someone goes through to interact with your brand. It’s their walk through your door, across your floor, and up to the register, or their walk through your shop to each rack of clothes, or their first step into your office and into your meeting room. It’s the way a customer moves through your space.
A good assessment for the branding of your interior is to check on the assets throughout your customer journey, from the door handle they touch to get in, to the floor they will walk on, to the chair they will sit in or the counter they will lean on.
The Exterior
This might seem random, but we really can’t leave it out: don’t forget your exterior! The outside is important, too. Your signage, displays and window graphics can go a long way, so use them to your advantage to get people in the door.
Just like the graphic design of your business card, everything within your physical space works together to create a cohesive design — your interior design. Textures, materials, wood, fabric, lighting, tile, countertops, chairs, and everything combine together to create your space. So don’t forget your interior! If you skip it, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to impact your consumer with your brand.
Ready to bring your brand to life in your space? Send us a message to get started today!
If you came looking for home-based interior design tips, go to this blog post to dig deeper into residential interior design.
