Mithat Konar on Branding

Mithat Konar

2011–11–22

Mithat Konar on Branding

Prepared by Mithat Konar
For COME 336 :: Interface Design for SW Engineers

Branding

American Marketing Association’s definition:
- A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.¹

Branding

Mithat’s definition:
- A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them that frequently creates usability problems, especially in desktop applications.

Examples

Ok

Bitdefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices

Marginal

Bitdefender Antivirus v10 (Windows)

Not Ok

SpiderOak for Linux

Not Ok

SpiderOak for Windows

Complexity

As with many things in interface design, balance is key with branding.
- Simplicity with branding may be ok.
- Complexity with branding is asking for trouble.
- Web-centric interaction is making stretches with branding on the desktop more acceptable.
- Mithat’s maxim: If in doubt, do the default.
- Corollary of: Assume you have bad taste until proven otherwise.

Endnotes

¹Lake, Laura. “What is Branding and How Important is it to Your Marketing Strategy?.” Marketing – Information and Advice on Marketing Strategy, Marketing Plans, and Marketing Careers and Jobs. http://marketing.about.com/cs/brandmktg/a/whatisbranding.htm (accessed November 20, 2011). (Emphasis added)

Image sources

Bitdefender Antivirus v10: http://www.techmixer.com/bitdefender-10-antivirus-free-edition/ (See also http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/antivirus.html).

All other images by the author