Craft your identity: The ultimate branding workshop template

If you’re preparing to launch a new brand, dive deeper into the essence of your existing brand, or create new brand assets, a branding workshop template is a valuable resource. 

With a “brand workshop”, or brand discovery session, you unify your team and any branding experts with a series of exercises and activities that help you achieve a specific goal. 

A branding workshop template can help you get to the heart of your mission statement and core values, assist you in identifying your brand personality and tone of voice, and even help with visual identity development. 

Stakeholders, teams, and contractors work together to comprehensively envision and shape your brand’s identity, giving you all the tools you need to boost your chances of success in a competitive landscape. 

Here’s your guide to building the perfect brand workshop. 

What is a branding workshop template?

A branding workshop template is a visual resource that helps you to map out the journey you’ll take in your “branding workshop”. Branding workshops give your company an opportunity to bring together design teams and brand leaders in the pursuit of branding goals. 

Business owners might use a branding workshop to work alongside a brand strategist on the development of brand purpose, or to develop a starting point for building a brand positioning strategy.

Many branding experts, including Fabrik, leverage workshops to launch brand strategies, using a customizable template to define brand pillars, like your target market, visual identity, and brand voice. 

While traditional in-person brand workshops often involved the use of sticky notes, whiteboards, and similar additional resources, modern workshops usually leverage digital templates. 

Tools like Figma and Milanote give companies access to a range of templates for event storming, elevator pitch creation, and more. 

Branding workshop templates can also focus on:

Visual identity creation

When creating a new brand identity, you might use a template to identify the core components of your visual identity, from your logo, to your color palette, and the kind of assets you’ll use in marketing strategies.

Brand positioning

Templates for brand positioning help you to identify your opportunity in the market, explore competitors, examine unique value propositions, and find your target audience, or niche. They can also include SWOT and customer persona templates. 

Brand personality templates

Brand personality templates help you to see your brand as if it was a character or human being. They look at your tone of voice, your attitude, and how you want to be viewed by your target audience. 

Creating a brand workshop template: How to run a brand workshop

You can find free brand workshop templates on community platforms like Figma. These often focus on things like identifying your brand voice, vision, and visual identity. 

Here’s an example of a brand workshop template you can use.

Alternatively, you can create your own brand workshop template, aligned with your specific branding project or goals. 

Here’s how to create a template and run a brand workshop of your own:

Step 1: Define your branding goals

A brand workshop can focus on multiple aspects of building a brand, from defining your brand values and brand vision, to creating mood boards for your logo and visual identity. Alternatively, you can focus on a specific aspect of your branding strategy. 

For instance, as a small business owner, you may want to take a phased approach to developing your brand, focusing first on your target audience, brand positioning, and opportunity in the market. This could mean creating a template that examines your competitors, and your unique selling points.

Once you’ve determined your brand positioning, you can then move on to identifying your brand’s personality, and messaging strategy. This could involve using printable brand archetype cards, establishing a tone of voice, and choosing marketing channels.

Finally, you may move on to the design phase of building your brand, using what you’ve learned so far to develop a logo, color palette, photography strategy and more.

Step 2: Determine who to include in the workshop

A successful branding project often includes multiple stakeholders, from the owner of the business, to branding strategists and contractors, a design team, and even product developers. 

Accessing input from multiple different people with unique perspectives can be valuable in a brand workshop. It gives you a chance to look at the personality and positioning of your brand from various angles. However, it’s important not to include too many people, as this can lead to confusion.

Identify the people you want to include in your brand strategy workshop, based on the goals you want to achieve. For instance, designers might be necessary for the visual identity creation phase, but not for the initial market research phase.

Define who will be responsible for certain tasks in your workshop, such as keeping the team focused, or following up with external employees about tasks like logo creation.

Step 3: Select your brand workshop resources

Next, it’s time to start building your own branding workshop template. There are various tools that can help you to create visual templates to share with your team. Figma and Figjam are common options, because they enable collaboration, and include plenty of pre-built community workshops.

When building the template for your workshop, it’s a good idea to set up some introductory slides and an agenda for the start of the workshop, so everyone is aligned on the goals you want to achieve.

Also, make sure all of your team members are familiar with how the workshop platform works, and how they can contribute their own thoughts, ideas, and content to the process. 

You could also consider creating a list of assets to include in your brand workshop template. For instance, for the phase when you’re building ideas for your company’s visual identity, you could create a moodboard of colors, and images you want to be associated with.

Brand workshop exercises to explore

Once you have the foundations of your branding workshop template, the next stage is to determine which brand workshop activities or exercises you’re going to embark on. These are exercises that not only drive you towards the right results from your strategy, but align your teams.

Common brand workshop activities include:

1. Introductions and warmups

Before you dive into exploring inspirational designs for your visual identity, or brainstorming a new brand tagline, it’s important to ensure everyone is on the same page. Introductions help to identify who is responsible for what in your creative process. 

Warm-ups, on the other hand, are a stepping stone towards creativity. For instance, if you’re running a brand workshop to define what your logo and visual identity might look like, you might ask everyone on your team to share three things they like and dislike about famous logos. 

2. Identifying core brand components

Many of the most valuable brand workshop activities involve identifying specific components of your brand. You can use the “golden circle” method, to uncover the “what, why, and how” of your brand. 

Ask everyone to share their insights into what your brand does, how the company operates, and why the organization exists. 

Other options include:

• Listing adjectives to describe the brand and its core identity.
• Designing a brand persona, describing your company as though it was a person.
• Defining specific brand attributes and values, such as sustainability.
• Comparing your brand to other competing companies (looking at strengths and weaknesses).
• Describing the ideal customers your company wants to reach.
• Running a “brand discovery survey” to determine how your brand might be viewed by others.
• Creating a shareable moodboard of visual components that reflect your brand.

3. Fun and creative brand workshop activities

While a brand workshop might have a serious goal, such as creating a crystal clear picture of the customer you want to reach, or defining the personality of your brand, it can still be fun. 

Taking an out-of-the-box approach to your brand workshop activities can help you to explore opportunities from multiple different directions. 

For instance, you can:

Ask silly questions

Encourage everyone in your team to ask the silliest questions they can think of about branding. This is the perfect way to eliminate any confusion in a strong brand strategy. 

For instance, you might assume everyone knows why your brand’s logo is going to be purple, but not everyone will have the same insight into color psychology.

Pressure cooker

Ask breakout groups to decide on a specific brand component within a specific time frame. For example, ask everyone to define who your target customer will be within an hour. This is a good way to stop people from overthinking the branding process.

Creating opposites

Ask people to decide what the opposite of your brand logo would look like, or who the worst customer for your company will be. This is a good way for business leaders and teams to identify the things that should be avoided in a brand strategy. 

Brand obituary

Ask participants how they would eulogize your brand in an obituary. How did it die, what will customers remember it for, and what goals were achieved or left unaccomplished? Who would miss your brand and why?

This or that

Use your branding workshop template to present two options side-by-side, and ask people to vote on them. You might offer two options for color schemes, taglines, or marketing strategies, and ask people to explain why they chose their favorite.

Creating the ultimate branding workshop template

A branding workshop template, or brand strategy template is one of the most valuable brand strategy tools you have. Whether you host in-person workshops, or use digital templating tools, the right strategy can simplify the daunting task of building an effective brand. 

With an effective template, you can ensure you’re prepared to answer all of the questions you need to consider about your brand and its identity. You can identify your brand’s values, carefully consider how you’ll take your product or service to market, and examine your ideal customer. 

At Fabrik, we regularly run client workshops for brand audits, brand development, and even rebranding strategies. With comprehensive brand strategy workshops, we find it’s easier to ensure a company can make a lasting impression on their target audience, with a clear identity. 

If you need help building your own branding workshop template, working with a company that has years of experience building brands. 

Reach out to Fabrik to learn more about our branding strategies today. 

Fabrik: A branding agency for our times.