How does brand aesthetics impact your fashion design process?

1 What are brand aesthetics?

Brand aesthetics are the visual elements that define and communicate your brand personality, values, and message. They include your logo, color palette, typography, imagery, packaging, and website design. Brand aesthetics help you create a distinctive and memorable impression on your target audience and differentiate yourself from your competitors. They also help you build trust, loyalty, and emotional connection with your customers.

2 Why are brand aesthetics important for fashion design?

Brand aesthetics are not only important for your marketing and branding strategy, but also for your fashion design process. Your brand aesthetics influence your design decisions, such as the fabrics, patterns, shapes, silhouettes, details, and accessories you use. Your design choices reflect your brand aesthetics and style, and vice versa. Your brand aesthetics and style also help you define your niche, target market, and positioning in the fashion industry. By aligning your brand aesthetics and style with your design process, you can create coherent and cohesive collections that showcase your brand identity and appeal to your ideal customers.

3 How to define your brand aesthetics and style?

Before you start designing your collections, you need to have a clear idea of what your brand aesthetics and style are. To define your brand aesthetics and style, you can conduct a brand audit to assess your existing elements and review competitors. Additionally, creating a mood board is a great visual tool to collect and organize inspiration sources such as colors, textures, fonts, and icons. Moreover, developing a brand style guide can help you outline rules and guidelines for using your brand elements consistently and effectively. This document should include specifications for your logo, color palette, typography, imagery, packaging, and website design. Ultimately, a brand style guide will help maintain your brand aesthetics and style across all your touchpoints and platforms.

4 How to align your design process with your brand aesthetics and style?

Once you have defined your brand aesthetics and style, you can apply them to your design process. To start, create a concept that will guide your design process. This concept can be inspired by anything, such as a story, a mood, a culture, a trend, or a problem. Afterward, choose fabrics and materials that match your brand aesthetics and style, as well as your concept and customer needs. Consider the sustainability and ethics of the fabrics and materials too. Then, experiment with patterns and shapes that complement your brand aesthetics and style, as well as your concept and customer preferences. You can also use different techniques, such as draping, pleating, or quilting, to add interest and variety to your patterns and shapes. Lastly, add details and accessories that accentuate your brand aesthetics and style, as well as your concept and customer expectations. These details and accessories can be used to create contrast, balance, or harmony in your garments.

5 How to test and evaluate your design process?

Once you have completed your design process, it is important to test and evaluate it to check the quality, functionality, and appeal of your garments. This can also help you identify any potential issues or gaps in your design process. One way to test and evaluate your design process is to conduct a fitting session. This involves trying on the garments on a model or customer to assess the fit, comfort, and movement. It can also help you receive feedback from the model or customer. Additionally, creating a lookbook with photographs of your garments in different settings, poses, and styles can help you display the features and benefits of your garments to your target audience. Finally, analyzing your results is essential for measuring performance - use metrics such as sales, reviews, ratings, comments, shares or awards to evaluate how well your design process met its goals. You may also want to use surveys, interviews or focus groups to collect feedback from customers and stakeholders.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?