When we took our brand storytelling mini workshop on the road and delivered it to UX design students, this illuminated some crucial points about the relationship between branding and design.
19 November 2025
We took a group of Rob’s students through our workshop on brand storytelling basics. The workshop is originally designed for a business audience, but we adapted it for the students, asking them to participate as if they were either running their own design business or working for an employer as a designer.
Design and branding have developed specialised languages to communicate with their target audiences. These languages are far from mutually exclusive. In fact, they are more like different dialects of the same language.
Our experience at SODA confirmed these similarities while prompting some valuable reflections on how the disciplines of design and branding intersect.
Brand storytelling principles are based on general storytelling principles — a compelling narrative makes the reader, or audience, want to discover more and they’re more likely to find it compelling if they find it relatable in some way.
In fiction, relatability is quite a broad quality — the characters in a story don’t have to be markedly similar to the audience, but they do tend to display some universally recognisable human traits.
In business, however, relatability must be more specific. The narrative must appeal to the prospect or customer, so that they feel they are at the heart of the story. Effectively, the customer is the story’s hero.
In this way, storytelling, as a brand strategy, supports the customer and the brand by underpinning the brand’s communications and interactions.
So, how does this fit in with UX design principles?
Principles of UX design
UX, or user experience, design put the user first, naturally. In this sense, it is an inherently empathic discipline and approach to problem-solving.
UX design is user-centric, giving the user control over the process. Consequently, it has accessibility and usability as fundamental principles. There are also structural elements that the UX designer must consider: the consistency of the design and the hierarchy of interactions the user will have within the experience.
Finally, there is the context of the design — what it is for and what it helps the user to achieve.
Immediately, we can see overlaps with brand storytelling principles:
Both UX design and brand storytelling focus on the user/customer, creating frameworks or patterns that direct or prompt them to achieve desired goals or conclusions
Both favour clarity and simplicity as the most effective means of communicating ideas to a target audience
Both have trust as a prerequisite for creating a successful user/customer experience.