When creating a website or digital platform, designing with brand authenticity in mind is crucial for building trust with consumers. Authentic digital design that aligns with the brand’s ethos promotes consistency, reliability, and familiarity, enhancing brand perception and loyalty.
An authentic UX/UI strategy helps brands make positive first impressions, boost engagement and emotional connection, encourage repeat visits, and reduce friction—all of which provide a competitive advantage. This article explores how authenticity can be expressed in design and how the UX/UI process can convey authenticity through a brand’s digital presence. We will highlight four methods brands can use to achieve this.
What does brand authenticity mean in UX/UI?
For a brand to be authentic, it must be reliable and consistent. Consumers need to trust the brand, which should stay true to its core values rather than chasing short-term trends for financial gain. Authentic brands honour their heritage and maintain long-term consistency, evolving carefully to remain aligned with their core principles.
A website or digital platform serves as the brand’s imprint in the digital world, so it’s crucial that all interactions across digital touchpoints reflect the brand’s ethos. Authenticity, when translated through a thoughtful, consistent, and intuitive UX/UI, ensures that digital interactions, content, and experiences are genuine, transparent, and true to the brand’s values.
Authenticity differentiates brands, offering numerous benefits such as positive first impressions, enhanced engagement, and emotional connections. It encourages repeat visits, facilitates feedback and improvements, and builds trust and brand loyalty. Authentic brands also gain from word-of-mouth promotion, reduced friction, and a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Authenticity through brand articulation
Brand articulation on digital platforms involves a multitude of design decisions, from the organization and labelling of content to the nature of the content itself and the features and functionalities provided. These elements together create a consistent design language that builds brand tonality across all platforms, fostering a sense of emotional comfort and trust.
However, effective brand articulation requires a deep understanding of who will be receiving the information. When designing a digital platform, it is essential to consider the end users. Every design decision must be informed by the needs and behaviours of the target audience while remaining aligned with the brand’s values.
Target audiences can vary significantly, not only from platform to platform but also within the same platform, with different user groups having distinct objectives and informational needs. Understanding the customer thought process as they navigate and complete tasks is crucial. A customer-centric strategy enables designers to tailor the experience to the diverse users of a site or platform, ensuring that the design resonates with and effectively serves its intended audience. This approach seamlessly combines customer centricity with brand articulation, creating a unified, authentic digital experience.
Here are 4 ways that brands can create a customer-centric digital platform that articulates brand identity authentically:
1. Bringing brand design language to life digitally
Designers use the language of design to shape the consumer experience, animating the brand’s personality online. Brands can connect with their audiences through the visual and verbal cues presented on their digital platforms.
The right design can make the site feel familiar and resonate with the target consumer. For instance, if the brand is dynamic and expressive, how is this reflected on the page? Key elements of design language include:
- Imagery: Using authentic and original imagery instead of stock photos ensures that the content feels genuine and unique, avoiding a stale or generic appearance.
- Colours: Colours play a crucial role in highlighting key information, creating consistency, and conveying the brand’s identity and mood.
- Typography: Thoughtfully chosen typography can communicate important information clearly while maintaining the brand’s personality. Varying font sizes, weights, and white space can create focus and emphasis on key messages.
- Layout and White Space: A well-considered layout, combined with strategic use of white space, helps create focus on key messaging and enhances clarity in communication. White space, or breathing space, prevents clutter and makes the site feel open and inviting, allowing critical content to stand out.
Designers must pay attention to these and other seemingly small details which, when combined, create a significant impact on the user experience. Each image, colour choice, typographic element, and layout decision works together to build a cohesive, intuitive design that reflects the authentic identity of the brand.
2. Simplification: Creating structure and order
Companies with complex products, especially in tech, face the challenge of making intricate solutions understandable. Digital design can simplify the consumer’s interaction with the brand, delivering a seamless experience by breaking down barriers of complexity. A well-designed user journey helps consumers understand, appreciate, and feel a connection to the brand.
To achieve a clear structure throughout the site, UX/UI designers use site-mapping and wireframing methods. Site mapping involves gathering and analysing information about the website’s goals, target audience, and content requirements. Through research, stakeholder interviews, and user research, designers compile a comprehensive inventory of the site’s content, categorizing and prioritizing each element to create a structure and labels that users will understand, aiding them in navigating and achieving their goals.
Wireframing focuses on the functionality and layout of individual pages. Designers aim to create pages that are easy to use, navigate, and understand. They also consider the brand personality to determine the most appropriate approach to information design, features, and functionality. Visual design elements like typography, colour, and imagery are then layered in to provide emphasis, clarity, and personality across the site.
These processes help create consistency across multiple markets. For example, for our client Zyxel, a Taiwan-based network hardware and cloud solutions provider, we rolled out websites across 29 countries in multiple languages. After a thorough redesign process, we integrated a new customer-centric experience with existing systems, creating a unified online presence for Zyxel. The simplified site allows users to navigate the platform easily, categorizing and streamlining products and services into digestible groups while accommodating individual market requirements. This process presented Zyxel’s products in an easily comprehensible way, promoting an authentic interpretation of their brand.
3. Expressing personality through motion
In 2024, new and revamped brand sites are rarely static. Motion can elevate the customer experience by reflecting the brand’s personality through the movement of the digital platform’s interface, reinforcing the brand’s authentic identity. For instance, a luxury brand might be expressed through subtle, graceful movements, with content or page elements gliding smoothly on and off the screen to evoke calmness and sophistication. In contrast, a sports brand could use lively, energetic, and surprising animations to appeal to a younger, more dynamic audience.
Considering the movement of the page is essential to connecting the dots for the consumer and emphasizing a brand’s personality. Motion can also enhance the feeling of discovery, guiding users through the content with seamless movements and transitions. For example, when working with Banyan Group on their latest property development, we aimed to create a website that mimics the sensation of exploration, making users feel as though they are exploring the residences and their exciting location first-hand, rather than merely navigating pages on a site. Movement and transitions were crucial in conveying this, with additional viewpoints through image zooms and key information appearing as the user scrolls through the content. These layers of movement and interaction add to the feeling of exploration, awe and wonder, which authentically reflects the brand’s luxury identity.
4. Being the experience
Digital experiences are no longer confined to desktops and mobile phones; they are becoming an integral part of the in-store shopping experience. When bringing an authentic brand experience to life through digital means, brands should consider how these different spaces can further enhance various facets of brand identity.
The digital experience can showcase how progressive and modern a brand is. For example, we worked with Calvin Klein to create a contemporary shopping experience that incorporated technology, interactive screens, and mobile commerce features into their brick-and-mortar stores. Customers could make online purchases, browse look books, and engage with the staff and brand through digital touch screens. These elements not only aimed to increase overall sales and footfall in their physical stores but also reinforced Calvin Klein’s position as a modern and progressive fashion brand.
To learn more about Tag’s digital services, contact us here.
