The Gap Between Strategy and Design
You've just finished the brand workshop. The client said they want to feel "modern," "trustworthy," and "disruptive." Everyone nodded. But when you sit down to sketch the first concept, you realize those words could mean a thousand different things. That's the pre-concept phase—the critical work between strategy and visual direction that prevents wasted design cycles.
This phase is about turning abstract adjectives into a shared understanding of what the brand should communicate. It involves researching the brand context, uncovering hidden assumptions, and building a visual foundation before any logo or color palette is touched.
As Marty Neumeier said, "A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company." Your job is to align that gut feeling across stakeholders before you start designing.
Stage 1: Research the Brand Context
Start with perception questions that go beyond standard discovery:
- What should people believe after seeing the brand for the first time?
- What would make the brand feel credible in this category?
- If the brand were a person, how would they speak?
- What do customers currently misunderstand?
- Where does the brand need to fit or break from category norms?
These questions reveal assumptions behind opinions. For example, a health tech client wanted to be "disruptive," but their audience was conservative government institutions. Disruption had to mean clarity and efficiency, not rebellion.
Exercise 1: Competitor Perception Mapping
Before the workshop, collect competitor screenshots. Ask stakeholders to place them on a 2-axis map (e.g., traditional-to-progressive, corporate-to-human). The disagreements this creates are gold—they expose how different people define trust, innovation, and credibility.
Exercise 2: Visual Brand Driver
Ask stakeholders to choose images for unrelated categories (transport, furniture, mood) that represent the company, not personal taste. Then, have them explain their choices with adjectives. This surfaces patterns and contradictions in brand perception.
// Example: Simple perception map data structure
const perceptionMap = {
competitors: [
{ name: 'Competitor A', x: 2, y: 3, note: 'Feels corporate but progressive' },
{ name: 'Competitor B', x: 4, y: 1, note: 'Too conservative for our audience' }
],
axes: { x: 'Traditional to Progressive', y: 'Corporate to Human' }
};
Stage 2: Turn Shared Direction Into a Visual Foundation
Once you've uncovered assumptions, structure a meeting around three layers:
- Look and Feel: Perception boards, not moodboards. Collect references based on the workshop insights.
- Design Code: Translate brand ideas into visual principles. For a parenting app, "personalized support" might become organic shapes and handwritten lines.
- Brand Assets: Discuss typography, color, logo style, photography, and illustration direction.
Pre-Concept Checklist
Before starting the first concept, ensure your team has:
- A clear understanding of what the brand needs to communicate
- A defined brand character
- Visual references tied to perception, not taste
- Key brand ideas translated into visual principles
- Documented areas of agreement and disagreement
This checklist prevents the first concept from being a guess. It gives you boundaries and makes the conversation about "Does this express the brand we agreed on?" instead of "I like it."
Conclusion: The First Concept Should Be a Next Step, Not a Surprise
The pre-concept phase doesn't remove creativity—it gives it a sharper problem to solve. By investing time in research, stakeholder exercises, and visual principles, you'll create concepts that feel inevitable, not random.
For a deeper dive into brand workshops, check out our Brand Workshop Toolkit. And if you're interested in how design systems scale, don't miss our analysis of StyleX: Meta's Answer to CSS at Scale.