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Brand essentials workshops

Turn abstract ideas into a tangible visual language to describe what your brand is all about, and use this as a base for decisions about your product’s visuals, voice, and identity.

A tangible visible language

The goal of our brand essentials program is to turn abstract ideas into a tangible visual language to describe what your (new or revamped) brand is all about. This deep understanding makes it easier to take decisions about your product’s visuals, voice, and identity, and allows us to distill a clear brief for the designer that will be creating the visual identity.
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1. Brand sprint

We use 6 exercises to get an understanding of your existing brand or to set the foundation for your new brand:

20-year roadmap for a long-term vision
Golden circle (by Simon Sinek) to highlight the purpose of your organisation, and to separate the ‘why’ from the ‘how’ and the ‘what’
Top 3 values to make your purpose more specific and get to the core of the brand
Top 3 audiences to prioritise the brand’s target
Personality sliders for the attitude and style of the brand
Competitive landscape to position your brand relative to others

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2. Visual identity

After getting an understanding of the brand, we define the scope of visual explorations to follow. We talk about very practical topics such as colors, patterns and textures, images and photography, layout, typography, icons, data visualisations, illustrations and animations.

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3. Visual inventory

If your visual identity already exists, we can do a visual inventory. This is where we map out visual elements you have and decide which ones you want to keep and/or iterate on. Of course, we can omit the inventory if you currently don’t have a brand or if there’s absolutely nothing of your existing brand that you want to keep.

Activities

Get an understanding of your existing brand or set the foundation for your new brand
Define the scope of visual explorations to follow
Map out visual elements you have and decide what to keep and/or iterate on
Summarise workshop outcomes
Create 2-3 style tiles
Optional: Set up brand essentials in Figma

You can use the workflow outlined in our UX Playbook to outline the essentials of your brand – whether it’s a new or existing one. If it turns out to be fuzzier than expected, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Would you like a quote?

Leave your details and we'll schedule a (remote) consultation to discuss scope and approach, so that we can send you a custom quote.

From absent to incidental

From incidental to structural

From structural to integral

Characteristics

User research is incidental and ad hoc.
Fragmented and outdated user journey maps.

Insights are not findable or accessible for every team.

No set of fixed methods.

Initiating fixed working methods.

Systematic.

The user journey becomes the starting point for the workflow.

Central storage of insights. Rights and access are managed.

Continuous user research, testing and implementation of improvements.

The same, interchangeable methods for collecting user data throughout the organization.

It is clear who can (and must) make the decisions.

Every product team - in all relevant chapters and departments - has the same way of working.

Hike One helpt

We start with a short audit.

We help you realize your first successes.

We give you the tools to work based on user data. We collect input from your target group.

Depending on where you are, Hike One can take responsibility while we take care of the implementation together.

We help with creating structure, defining roles and selecting the right tools.

We help to coach your (new) experts in-house.

We ensure that you can deliver consistently high quality with less effort.

Together we continuously map and manage the user journey, with responsibility increasingly shifting to your own team members.

We help you get the entire organization working based on user journeys.

We spread the gospel across all silos and we help coach the coaches.

If necessary, we help develop the business case and present it at C-level.

Hike One brought a range of approaches that helped us get from nothing to exciting very quickly. Their creative explorations pushed us into really innovative territory, and their collaborative spirit helped our work gain traction across the company. I would recommend Hike One to anyone with a product at a similar life stage.

Tom Harle, Lead customer research and connected services at Lightyear

About Hike One

Hike One supports organizations in designing and improving their digital products. We mainly work for corporates, SMEs, and government agencies. In 2023, Hike One was named the best UX design agency in the Netherlands by Emerce 100 based on customer feedback. Hike One's clients include ASML, Heineken, Liberty Global, Municipality of Amsterdam, Marktplaats, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Philips, Rabobank, Rituals, and Signify.