Many brands have been built on innovation – on technological or scientific advances that have created a product so compelling that it has found its audience, and ultimately mass appeal.

But for an innovation-driven company starting out today, it’s crucial to realise that such success isn’t only down to the science or tech at the heart of it.

True innovators need to understand that without design, their services or products are unlikely to get anywhere near mass appeal.

They may recognise the need for a logo, name and visual assets, but fail to understand the true role that strategy and design can play when carving a place for a brand with today’s consumer. Design is crucial if they want to amplify their innovation in the right way.

More than a mere buzzword

In fact, innovation has become a bit of a buzzword. It is often used more in a business sense or purely for marketing purposes rather than denoting a radical reimagining in the true sense of the word. In addition, the sheer proliferation of brands claiming to offer innovation is staggering, and the platforms through which they vie for people’s attention are numerous.

Being able to convey in an accessible way what you’re all about has therefore never been more important. If someone sees a brand they’ve never heard of, which looks quite alien and doesn’t communicate its function, they won’t take that millisecond to investigate it further.

With such immediacy, what design can do is bring clarity in the sea of buzzwords and overpromising. It can help with cognition and translating complexity to make something inherently understandable.

If the design cues are clear, draw people in and help them understand, then those people are more likely to click, to convert and eventually become a user of the brand. Look at the success of apparel brand Pangaia.

It literally wears its USP on its sleeve (well, almost, it’s printed in tiny print onto the breast of its t-shirts) – a simple, super effective example of design helping a brand convey the innovation at its core.

Keeping it simple

Naming is another case in point. Often, in a bid to convey accurately the innovation and science at the heart of a product or service, a brand’s name can get lost in its attempt to do too much.

Yet, if you look at what some of the leading innovation companies do, you realise they often name their tech and products in very basic terms. Dyson products feature ‘Ball’, ‘Fluffy’ and ‘Air Multiplier’ technology that beautifully boils down their USP into a word or phrase.

We took this approach for period care brand Fluus. Its most exciting innovation is the science that allows people to flush their period pads down the toilet. This uniquely ownable benefit is instantly understandable through the brand name Fluus (a portmanteau of ‘Flush Us’) as well as the naming of the proprietary tech, Flushtec. It elevates the brand from all the other natural, environmentally friendly, cruelty-free entrants to the market, making it distinctive and different.

Celebrating the strategy

Design strategy allows this approach through all elements of a brand. It encourages you to have conviction and go all in on that singular point of difference in a distinct way – whether that’s serious, bold, funny or charming.

It is an in-depth process to work out why people need or want anything a brand might have to offer – and who those people are. Strategy identifies these nuanced insights around people and the unique need that might drive a brand.

That is then coupled with design execution that delivers the clarity of thought in a way that will resonate with those people. Design can create and amplify trust and effectiveness – crucial for all brands but especially for those claiming to do something quite radical.

Through all design elements – the colour, the typeface, the way brand assets move – brands can underline effectiveness in powerful ways. As well as through its name, Fluus’ flushability was also conveyed through its wordmark, its colour palette and animated graphics.

Tone of voice is also crucial here. Once you’ve got the clarity and focus, laying the right personality over the over the top is so important when looking to reach your key audience.

Creating a personality

Meatable, for example, is a Dutch biotechnology company developing cultured meat. It is high-tech, futuristic and forward-thinking, but its brand evokes traditional cues of wholesome outdoor life and traditional, hearty food – all serif typeface and retro imagery cueing taste and wellbeing.

Hyper-local skincare brand Haekels (‘Made in Margate’), meanwhile, uses locally harvested seaweed in its products. What could veer into the clinical and purely biological is actually a brand imbued with storytelling, softness and warmth to underline its character and the good it does for the planet.

Without a coherent strategy and design approach, such brands would most likely have been either all science cues and lab coats, or tired semiotics of sustainability and worthiness.

Design allows these innovators to emancipate the brand, separating it from the scientific mindset that created it – or the founder it is inherently tied to – to connect with people on a more human and immediate level.

It gives an innovation the boost it needs to really beat the tide of pretenders. Innovation-driven start-ups that are able to rise up above the fray are almost always those which have strategy and design woven into the fabric of their DNA.

Jo Tulej is creative director at Mother Design.