Blog #2

These days, customers feel as though companies and brands should not tell them what is right and what is wrong, or that a person needs to buy their product because of this or that. Customers want to feel connected to a product or brand on a personal level. This means the design and branding process becomes more individualized.

In the past people tended to be a little more care free about their money. But because of the recession, people now feel more vulnerable. It is because of this vulnerability that people feel they deserve to choose wisely where they spend their money. This causes branding become even more competitive and to push even further in order to show the consumer they deserve a product.

When people hear a brand’s name they instantly think of the brand’s design. Take Nike for example, people instantly think of the swoosh along with which pair of Nike’s they loved the most or the pair they dream of having. Or even remembering walking into the overwhelming Nike store where you were mesmerized by how many shoes and colors there were. It is this instant connection with a brand’s design that makes people want to come back for more.

Nike has never told customers they need to buy a pair of shoes. They intrigue people to want to buy their shoes. And now that Nike has established itself within the shoe world and proved to people that they are a high quality brand, people can fully rely on them for years ahead.

Individualization is key these days. People have been told for years to speak freely and express themselves. Today, we can do that. With such things as creating our own look of shoes and personalizing M&Ms to putting our own artwork on our laptops and phones. We are in this era of personalization and brands must try to keep up with it.

I enjoy the Skinit website where you can choose to customize the look of anything you own like your digital camera, musical instruments, external hard drives, gaming devices, mp3 players etc. You can choose to use the different thousands of artwork they supply or you can personalize it even more and choose to put your own artwork/picture on the device. You can also choose different artworks for the different sides of the device (front, back, sides). Pretty fun and pretty exciting to play around with! http://www.skinit.com/loadCustomizer.php