The tech industry is many things. Descriptors that immediately spring to mind include exciting, pioneering, intelligent — and if you’ve ever started your own tech company, then ‘cutthroat’ is probably up there too. Each year, some 1.35 million tech-related startups come to the market, yet, unfortunately, a high proportion of them fail.
With so much saturation in the tech scene, plenty of million-pound ideas struggle to find their feet or hold on to that initial investor interest. This means they’re unable to progress with the groundbreaking research and development that the market needs.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. With killer branding, the chances of your brand attracting and retaining tech company funding will almost certainly skyrocket. So, against some stiff competition — including many of the most profitable companies in the world — what exactly do you need to do to execute the best tech branding?
Through our years of working with exciting, successful tech businesses as a leading tech branding agency, we’ve put together some ideas of our own. Here’s a breakdown of how to get your tech branding right.
What is tech branding?
First off, we need to understand what tech branding actually is and how it’s distinguished from your run-of-the-mill business branding efforts.
In short, tech branding is the process of building a brand identity for a technology-related enterprise.
Here, tech branding agencies will work to develop a distinct, appealing identity for a company, one that encompasses its values and mission. Particularly in the startup space, tech businesses tend to take on ambitious plans and leverage pioneering technologies to solve problems — and the best tech branding aims to encapsulate this.
Various elements will be considered, such as logos, messaging, and market positioning, and effective tech branding will overall help to differentiate a business from its competitors, build trust, and attract investor interest.
The challenge of tech branding
And then we come to the problem that tech businesses face when attempting to communicate who they are in a concise way. All too often, we see examples of tech brands that have a disconnect between the products and services they’re marketing and the benefits they could offer to real people.
This is because many of the complex, increasingly idiosyncratic technologies being developed are difficult to promote to a broad audience. When the layperson can’t easily understand what your company actually does, you end up with faceless, cold, and technical branding that fails to build any emotional connection with the end consumer.
But how do you create a tech brand that avoids this problem? How do you ‘humanise the algorithm’, so to speak?
How to create a tech brand
To create a good tech brand, you need to put the people using your products first. This is what will help to build trust and relatability with your business in a busy, consumer-driven market.
Here are some of the core elements to consider.
1. Put human messaging first
Simplifying your message and circulating it for a human audience is the cornerstone of good tech branding. The team at Shoreditch Design works to create clean, intuitive assets for digital products and branding collateral so that a wide audience can understand and relate to the messages they see from tech companies.
Storytelling is important. We often create assets to highlight human stories, or popular use cases for our clients’ products. By creating narratives that resonate with users’ real-life experiences, tech branding is more relatable and engaging for the viewer. This can be done through colour, taglines, and other human elements such as lifestyle photography and testimonials.
2. Let your personality shine through
Good tech branding shows off your brand’s unique personality, creating a distinct public identity that audiences can recognise. Many brands choose to inject personality into their branding with playful humour, heartfelt stories, or establishing themselves as an authoritative voice within their particular niche. Whatever route you choose, a little personality will help build emotional connections with your audience and make your brand stand out in a crowded arena.Highlighting your values is equally as important. Whether it’s a commitment to social responsibility, inclusivity, protecting the environment or otherwise, it’s wise to show what your brand stands for to help your customers identify with you. Our designers reinforce client values by developing a consistent visual presence across all touchpoints — whether it’s through social media branding or a great tech website.
3. Show off your market position in style
To get your products and services in front of the right people, you need to showcase your market position. When you’re designing tech branding, the natural inclination is to employ a sleek, modern tech aesthetic complete with the classic blues, whites, and blacks. But beyond just the ‘tech colour scheme’, you need to create assets with thoughtful consideration of your brand’s values.For example, select readable fonts that can be used consistently across different platforms. To make a good tech logo, choose a colour palette that reflects who your brand is, and the kinds of images you want to conjure in the mind of your customer. While the goal is to be sleek, modern, and stylish, it’s important not to alienate your audience by prioritising over-abstraction or relying too much on ‘futuristic’ elements in your tech branding.
Partner with Shoreditch Design as your tech branding agency
Creating memorable tech branding is a bigger challenge than ever before thanks to the dominance of both tech titans and burgeoning startups. But if you get the right designers on the job, there will always be space for one more envelope-pushing tech brand. And that brand could be yours.
Our techy and talented designers at Shoreditch Design are keen to get the ball rolling on some new projects, whether you’re coming at us with an existing branding strategy or just a bright-spark business idea that needs the right visuals to take it to the top.
Have a browse through some more examples of our branding work or get in touch for a chat with the design team.
