📂 How to handle branding and design feedback

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Today's newsletter is written by my Conversion Factory cofounder, Zach Stevens.

He's the best designer I know and has deep experience with SaaS.

When designing a SaaS product, gathering user feedback ensures that the design meets user needs and expectations in addition to aligning with your business goals.

However, not all feedback is created equal, and you can quickly find yourself falling aimlessly through a wormhole of contradicting answers and feeling like every action is a bad one.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the branding sphere.

Everyone wants their branding to be successful and it seems smart to test ideas before encountering a faux pas like Gap’s new logo in the early 2000s. Especially in the digital age when everybody and their mother has a digital megaphone a la Twitter nested in their pocket, ready to fire off a scathing, 170-character arrow at the heart of your newly launched brand identity.

Founders and their teams find themselves neck deep in shade within the first few steps of their new branding’s race to glory.

I hope this newsletter gives you a shield of courage and logic to defend against the onslaught.

Establishing two different feedback types

One important consideration is how feedback varies within branding deliverables. In my experience it’s been helpful to group feedback into two categories:

Objective and Subjective

Objective

An example of highly objective feedback is whether a button works or if the mechanics of a website function smoothly as needed. No one disputes the need for a functioning sign up button.

Applying this to branding isn’t as difficult as it seems either, as there are plenty of binary elements to a successful branding project.

Some examples:

• Logo legibility If no one can read your logo (assuming it is supposed to be read and not an abstract mark), it ain’t gonna work.
• Scalability Does the new branding work in multiple applications? On product, on web, on advertising etc. You can experiment and test this with mockups.
• Accessibility Does the new color palette account for accessible combinations of text and background colors?
• Distinction Does the new branding stand out from the competition or are there similar tropes, colors, graphics, etc? During mockups creation, see if the visuals can be identified without your brand’s logo or name. There should be enough character in branded assets alone to draw distinction from the competition.

Other examples could be found as well, but you get the point. The reason this feedback are more objective than others, is that the answers to these questions are “yes” or “no.” There isn’t room for a grayed answer.

When you get feedback like this, cherish it.

Objective feedback is actionable, unbiased, it will help your brand be more effective and avoid silly mistakes that you don’t notice because you’re too close to the project.

Subjective

Subjective responses around branding, messaging, and other deliverables occur when the “right answer” doesn’t exist.

For example, even if you spend 10,000 hours on market and competitive research, there will still be hundreds, if not thousands, of options for a logo design.

As we’ve already noted, there are fundamental characteristics that brand identities should abide by to be an effective identification tool, but many options could get you there.

Similar circumstances apply to other, more expressive elements like supporting illustrations, graphics, verbiage, color, naming, and motion design.

Without fail, most founders wade in shallow feedback from questions akin to "Do you like it?” or “Does it look cool?”

This is where feedback gets messy.

Questions like these yield biased results that aren’t helpful.

Here’s why:

Unless the person you’re asking has sat through the hours of business strategy, competitive and market research, knows the founder’s vision, and has seen the creative explorations, they are coming into the project half-blind.

Regardless of whether they are part of your prospective user base, or even an active user of your product, questions like “Do you like it?” lead to feedback void of actionable insight.

Think about it… you can’t change someone’s opinion of whether they do or do not like your color palette, logo, or typeface selection. Nor should you try to do so.

The primary job of your brand identity is not kowtowing to the subjective wants of your user base. That is a zero-sum game.

You cannot please everyone.

The job of your brand identity is to confidently and boldly set your company apart from your competitors while accurately reflecting the values and character of your company.

Instead, focus on questions that provide more actionable feedback, such as “Does this make you feel x or y?” or “Does this feel more x than (competitor)?” or “Does this feel cohesive with your experience using our product?”

These questions will still have subjective answers, but provide guardrails to get more targeted feedback on things you can actually improve.

You must use subjective feedback to assess whether your goals are being achieved, not to gauge how much people like you.

Building a company takes guts.

No one will understand your vision the way you do or create a roadmap to the improved world your product will help achieve.

When it comes to branding, I value feedback, however I value courage more and you should too.

You must accept the fact that not every step in building a brand has a perfect, right answer and that the best move is putting something out there with the confidence of a 4-year-old in a Batman T-Shirt.

Double barrel salute to the trolls and haters because you’ve got more important things to do than placate the whims of every. single. person’s. unwarranted, uninformed opinion.

Embrace your inner artist.

What did you think?

—Corey

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