A lot of my design thinking happens when I start designing. Putting it into words afterwards is harder for me, and probably harder for most of us. And, it gets even more harder when designing for enterprise brandings.

I need to understand what the company actually does well enough to explain it simply. Who uses it? What are they responsible for? What do they need to understand before they can trust it?

Those questions help me make visual decisions. And, we actually tend to think directly from client side, but the thing, main thing is actually thinking like their customer.

When we were exploring the identity for a shareholder research platform, the product context mattered: people using it needed to understand recommendations and stay in control of their decisions. That gave us something specific to work from when thinking about typography, imagery, and graphic elements.

Volition brought a different challenge. We were communicating data centers in the context of the neighborhoods around them. The illustrations needed to explain how the systems worked while showing their place in everyday life.

I keep coming back to that relationship between what a business does and how it presents itself.

What does this graphic help someone understand? Why does this typeface feel appropriate here? Can we carry the same thinking into the website, the product, and the next piece of communication?

We should care about the small visual details because together they shape how people read the company.

For us, enterprise branding starts becoming meaningful when I can explain why the design belongs to that particular business.