At our first design festival, The Grill in Belgrade, creative director and corporate social responsibility consultant Natasha Kolesnikova, who specializes in human-centered, eco-conscious branding and has 13 years of design experience, introduced her method “Incorporate Identity.” It’s an alternative approach to building a brand identity that focuses on people, ethics, and the environment. We’ve highlighted the key takeaways from her presentation.

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What Is Incorporate Identity?

Incorporate Identity is an alternative approach to branding. At its core, it emphasizes:

• Collaboration with the client instead of endless approvals
• Ethics and emotions as tools for audience research
• Accessibility for everyone, not just the “average user”
• Environmental responsibility at every stage of design

The idea is simple: branding can be both human-centered and eco-conscious. But to achieve this, designers must step out of the role of mere “brief-following hands” and become true partners to their clients.

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Collaboration vs. the Classic Model

The traditional branding workflow often looks like: brief → four weeks of silence → 150-page presentation → feedback → revisions. Incorporate Identity proposes a different pipeline:

• Workshop with the client
• Quick sketches → discussion
• More sketches → more discussion

With this approach, the final result arrives faster and with fewer errors.

Bonus: the process is also more enjoyable for both the design team and the client.

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Emotions, Ethics, and Utopias

Natasha conducts workshops with clients to analyze audience personas through three lenses:

• Emotional: What do people love or hate about the product? What emotions does it evoke?
• Ethical: What barriers or challenges might arise for different audience groups (considering intersectionality)?
• Utopian: How could the product radically improve the lives of individuals and society if anything were possible?

This approach helps answer key questions about clients: what makes them happy, what frustrates them, and how the product can improve their lives.

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Accessibility and the Sensory Map

Fifteen percent of the world’s population has special needs. That means digital accessibility isn’t just a social mission; it’s also a market issue and a factor in brand reputation. Natasha recommends following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), but she also developed her own tool — the sensory map.

She breaks the brand down through four senses: vision, hearing, touch, and smell. For example, a brand could be represented by the combination of “morning sunlight + aroma of coffee + gentle music.” This tool helps create a holistic experience for all audiences and addresses many business needs — from scent marketing to motion design.

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Environmental Responsibility: The 3Rs

About 80% of a product’s carbon footprint is determined at the design stage. Therefore, Natasha stresses that designers can and should reduce this footprint. The approach follows three principles: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

• Reduce (Digital): “Green coding,” image optimization, and eliminating unnecessary graphics.
• Reuse (Fashion): Reusable branded vacuum bags — convenient for both transport and storage.
• Recycle (Packaging): Using recycled materials in bottle production, with a focus on eco-friendliness in communication.

The main takeaway: even small steps alleviate anxiety and give businesses a bonus of audience loyalty.

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Looking Ahead

Incorporate Identity envisions a kind of branding where the designer becomes a friend to the client and design becomes a tool for change. Natasha is currently working on a book that develops this method further and invites designers to test it and share their results. As she says:

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“Share the results if you try Incorporate Identity. I’m still writing the book, and your case studies could become part of it.”

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Instagram: @ave_kolesnikova

Linkedin BB: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beaversbrothers