Defining an approachable luxury brand through strategy workshops

Sector: Interior Design

Challenge: Long-time friends and interior designers Alicia Morris and Jillian Lare joined efforts in 2021 to establish Morris Lare Interior Design in DesMoines, Iowa. The team hired me to develop their new logo and brand guidelines for Morris Lare. As an interior design enthusiast myself, I was delighted to work with Alicia and Jillian. Our challenge was to define their brand attributes, customer personas & business goals to create a brand that blended the styles of both designers and stood out from their competitors.

My Role: brand strategy & design, workshop facilitation

WORKSHOP

Brand strategy

Brand Attributes & Mission Statement

I facilitated a one-hour workshop with Alicia and Jillian to brainstorm Morris Lare’s brand attributes. We organized these into the following categories to help establish their mission statement.

  • Culture: Defining the brand.

  • Customer: Defining the user.

  • Voice: The brand’s tone when communicating with the user.

  • Feeling: How a user feels after having interacted with the brand.

  • Impact: The effect the brand or service has on the users’ lives.

  • X-Factor: What makes the brand unique

Brand Attribute keywords.

Final Brand Attributes

Culture: Approachable, luxurious, timeless, natural, grateful, and collaborative.

Feeling: Positive, calm, supported, and belonging.

X-Factor: Coastal style, kindness, 20 years of combined experience

Customer: Kind, busy, trusting

Voice: Thoughtful, poised, accessible, human, honest

Impact: Comfort, beauty, time

Target Personas

Together we built client personas based on their experiences and assumptions. These help us better understand and empathize with their customers and are especially helpful for writing content and marketing their service benefits to future clients.

Client persona example. 

stylescapes

Visual design direction

After the workshop, I took the brand attributes, persona information, and design inspiration to craft three different design directions. These were presented to Jillian & Alicia in stylescape format for feedback and refinement.

Concept A: Timeless Warmth

Concept B: Clean Coastal

Concepts C: Organic Sophistication

Jillian and Alicia each took to different elements from each of these concepts. I was able to combine the color palette from Clean Coastal with the logo style from Organic Sophistication to create the Morris Lare brand.

Final Stylescapes

Brand Guidelines

conclusion

Outcomes & Learnings

It’s not often that you get another designer as a client. This project was so enjoyable to work on because Jillian and Alicia had a clear vision were able to provide specific direction and actionable feedback on the work. Because they believe so strongly in the client experience it inspired me to go above and beyond with our strategy sessions and design concepts. Overall, the Morris Lare project was one of my favorites. The brand feels timeless, yet modern, the clients were exceptional and I learned a lot about the interior design industry.