Having trouble defining the essence of a brand? There might just be a simple tool that could help you brainstorm ideas, narrow down your strategy and filter out all the cluttery jargon.
Introducing The Brand Deck, a simple card game that can help you define your brand's personality.
Scott Thomas, former design lead for the 2008 Obama campaign and founder of Chicago design and technology studio Simple. Honest. Work, is behind the idea and describes the concept of the cards in the video below.
"I think one of the most important things with starting any company, or any brand—the sort of core characteristics that define who you are—even if you're focusing on the visual perspective of that brand, communicating certain attributes is key," he says. "We really need a simple tool to be able to determine exactly what those core characteristics were."
There's a Kickstarter for the project, which explains the game this way:
Are you "simple" or "complex," "conventional" or "experimental," "practical" or "imaginative"? Defining who you are and who you are not is crucial to building a successful brand. Whether you are designing, writing, directing, building, or planning, a simple set of adjectives can be your North Star, guiding difficult decisions through the process. Despite the importance, deciding on just a few terms to describe the complexities of an organization can be like finding a needle in a haystack. This is why we created a simple tool we call The Brand Deck.
The Brand Deck consists of 100 adjectives, 50 on the front, and 50 contrasting terms on the back. For example, one side might read "simple" and the other "complex." Each card is placed into one of three piles, You are, You are not, and Not Applicable. The catch—it's best played with a group. Best to have the same number of decks as people in the room. The conversation of why each person choose certain words is where the magic happens. The objective—get the entire group to align on, at most, 6 cards defining who "You are." The cards become the brand or product's core attributes.
They've raised almost $35,000 of their $45,000 goal thus far. They've even teamed up with Cards Against Humanity's co-creator, Max Temkin, to create a special NSFW version of the deck, if you donate $58 or more. Learn more in the video below.
