Mariana Amaral’s research while affiliated with Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and other places

The purpose of the article is to study how the brand’s visual identity contributes to the understanding, accessibility and enjoyment of information, adapting the message to different cultures and profiles of people, users or target audiences. Identity promotes sustainability and respect for people’s quality of life. The methodology used is mixed, including a non-interventionist phase consisting in the study of competing brands, audience map and persona method and an interventionist component through project-grounded design research, which includes participatory methods such as co-design and Design thinking. The results are a visual identity of the mountain olive oils brand that acts simultaneously as an interface of representation of the collective, the individual and the region (internal audiences), fulfilling the expectations and needs of the target public and other stakeholders. Design principles and good practices are also defined to ensure that visual identity continues to function as a cultural interface of the territory in a sustainable logic and not just business requirements.

In the scope of Branding projects, the (re) designing of the Visual Identity of Brands or in the scope of audits of Brand Image, we proceed to the research on Brand Marks. This analysis falls on the Brand Marks that will be intervened, but also on Brand Marks of competitors or cases considered as good practices. The research stage on Brand Marks is common in academic or professional projects and students and professionals have difficulty in giving meaning and usefulness to the information collected. The most widely used visual analysis tools allow for the characterization of samples made up of Brand Marks, but these do not help in the extraction of specific conclusions centered on meaning and design. This article describes the development of the competitors map, the Visual Research Tool which allows the objective analysis of Brand Marks, which allows for decision making about the design effectiveness of an isolated Brand Mark or about its (re) design by comparison to a sample of competing Brand Marks. This Visual Research Tool has been developed through literature review, analysis of other tools, the inclusion of a semantic, syntactic and pragmatic analysis, which also includes classifications such as the iconicity scale or the Vienna Classification, as well as principles of visual rhetoric. Using visual and symbolic data, this Visual Research Tool supports professionals and students to create strategic strategies for Brand Visual Identity. This article reports on the creation and evaluation of the Brand Marks’ competitor map.