Ten tips for integrating brand into products

Good UX is invisible; your brand is what people will remember

Illustration by Ellen Porteus

People may not notice good UX because it doesn’t get in their way, but when brand isn’t built into a product, people feel its absence. Brand is the emotional core of your product. It gives memory to a moment, personality to a flow, and meaning to a feature. But when brand is treated as decoration, something that’s “layered on” after the product is built, product and brand become disconnected and you end up with something that works but doesn’t resonate.

I’m a designer with over a decade of experience blending brand and product across Adobe—from branding Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express to shaping core features in our Creative Cloud pro products—and one of the most common and costly mistakes I see is saving brand for “later.” Brand isn’t the extra layer, it is the product. It’s what separates “this works” from “this feels right.” And in a world where products are competing for people's attention, that difference matters more than ever.

Here are ten ways to build brand into your product from the start, so it feels "made for" someone, instead of simply "usable" by anyone.

Ten tips for ensuring brand is more than product polish

Brand is more than a mood board. It’s the cumulative feeling people get when they interact with your product. It’s the tone of a tooltip, the delight of an animation, and the choices made in copy, color, and flow—and how all these things work together to build the voice of a product. It’s what you say, and just as critically, what you don’t. Think of it like a person, not just how they dress, but how they carry themselves, what they stand for, and the consistency between their words and actions.

The strongest product experiences are designed by teams that inject brand from the beginning. They ask why. They ask who. They treat every screen, state, and string as a chance to say something that matters. You don’t necessarily need a style guide to do this. Just a point of view, a bit of taste, and the willingness to care about the experience someone walks away with. Here are ten simple ways to ensure you’re thinking about it at the start of the product development process.

1. Know what you stand for

Before you design a single screen, ask: What do we believe in? Not the company mission slide, but the real, human stuff. Are you about speed? Calm? Empowerment? Write it down. Plain language. No fluff. This will be your compass.

2. Know your personality

Every product has a voice. If your product were a character, what kind of dialogue would it have? Every product tells a story. The only question is whether you’re telling it with purpose. Is your product playful or serious? Minimal or expressive? Confident or quirky? That tone should show up everywhere—from your login screen to your “Sorry, something went wrong” error page. Consistency is how people form an emotional map of your product. That’s what makes it sticky, and that’s what makes them tell someone else about it.

3. Design with emotion, not just function

A product flow can be perfectly usable and still feel cold. A password reset screen might have a clear error message, easy-to-fill fields, and a fast confirmation email, but the process leaves no lasting impression. A good brand-led experience considers emotional states, not just success states. A warmer tone, a friendly message, “Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us,” and a small animation that reassures instead of just informing, can transform a task into an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Always ask yourself what someone might be feeling (relief, excitement, confidence, calm), then design with feeling.

4. Zoom out: What comes before and after this screen?

No screen lives in isolation. Take a cancellation flow. The steps might be clear: a reason, a confirmation, and you’re out. But what came before? Probably some frustration. What comes after? Maybe a second chance. Now imagine the same flow, but warmer: “We’re sorry to see you go.” A quick message like, “Here are a few things you might not have tried,” or a short survey to learn more. It’s no longer just a transaction, but a thoughtful moment that keeps the door open. Think about the emotional state of the user before they land there. What will be the next moment they care about? Design with that arc in mind. Good UX connects dots, and a branded experience makes the journey feel intentional.

5. Use the edges

Most teams obsess over the happy path. But brand lives in the gaps—the “no data” screens, the “oops” moments, the loading spinners. These aren’t fillers; they’re free real estate. Don’t waste them. Use them as opportunities to be human, warm, and distinct—to show people you care. Done wrong, they become missed opportunities (blank empty state screens without guidance). Done right, they become helpful moments (“You haven’t created any files yet, here’s how to get started”).

6. Don’t fake it, live it

If your brand says it’s “calm” but the language in your interface is pushy, you’re breaking trust. Think of a wellness app that markets itself as supportive, but when someone misses a few check-ins, it sends pushy notifications like “You’re falling behind.” That’s pressure, not encouragement, and that tone breaks the promise. Brand isn’t what you say, it’s how you show up. Make sure your product walks the talk—in tone, interaction, and values.

7. Think small to ship smart

You don’t need to brand the whole app at once. Start with a single screen or an isolated interaction. What’s the smallest thing you can ship that will bring clarity, emotion, or delight? For example, instead of overhauling your whole onboarding flow, start with a welcome message. Make it warm, human, and on-brand. See how people respond. If it hits the right tone, expand from there. Trust is earned in increments.

8. Know what it brings to the business

Injecting brand isn’t just for aesthetics—it drives trust, loyalty, and retention. A product with a soul keeps people coming back. Duolingo turned a basic language learning app into something people love, talk about, and even meme. The brand voice is playful, the owl is everywhere, and the tone makes learning feel less like work. Deep brand-led experiences make a case for your product and make users stick around.

9. Make weird decisions on purpose

Not everything has to be safe. In fact, some of the most memorable product moments come from deliberate weirdness—a playful tooltip, a surprising animation, a bold headline. Slack’s loading messages often show quirky one-liners like “Cleaning up the cobwebs” or “Reticulating splines.” They make people smile and give the product personality. These decisions can become signature moves. Use them wisely. Own them proudly.

10. Respect the craft

Alignment. Spacing. Copy. Transitions. These details are the brand. Sloppy UI kills trust faster than any bug. You don’t need to make it perfect before you ship—but you do need to hold a high bar and clean up as you go.

We’ve entered an era of feature parity. Most products, especially in mature or fast-moving spaces, work just fine. The bar for functionality has been met. Expectations around UX, polish, and consistency are no longer differentiators; they’re the cost of entry. That means the tiebreaker is emotional. In a world of “good enough” products, your brand is what people will remember because brand is not just what your product does, but how it makes people feel while they’re using it. When product and brand are aligned, users get something more: a product that feels like someone who cared made it expressly for them.