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What is a brand? Does your company even have one? That’s not a joke question. Although just about every company in operation has some of the elements of a brand – a logo, at the bare minimum – but many lack a true brand identity. And because they lack a strong, defined brand identity, they fail to stand out from their competitors.
Brand identity is the sum total of the visual assets your company uses to represent itself.
You can’t build a real brand identity that gets noticed and remembered by your audience without design.
Every brand is different. But there are some things that all brands should have in common. Here are three things to think about when you start the process of designing your brand identity.
Remember when we said every brand is different? You should, it was only one paragraph ago. Your brand identity should be yours, something that can’t be confused with anyone else’s, especially anyone else in your industry. It needs to stand out and be recognizable.
If your brand identity isn’t consistent, you may as well not have one at all. That doesn’t mean that you don’t use different versions of your logo for different applications, but every customer touchpoint needs to clearly be part of the same visual family.
Your brand identity will show up in a lot of different places, from social media to letterhead to polo shirts. Your brand needs to be able to adapt to look good in all of the places and way it’s used. Modular design approaches, scalable graphics, and responsive logos help make this happen.
Every advertisement and piece of collateral contributes to your brand’s visual identity. The key elements include:
Let’s look at each one.
Your logo is the face your brand presents to the world, and some of the most famous logos are instantly recognized worldwide: the Nike swoosh, McDonald’s golden arches, Starbuck’s mermaid. As we can see from these examples, a good logo doesn’t necessarily need to have any literal connection to your company’s name or what it does, but it embodies the personality of the brand it represents.
Research has shown that people strongly associate colors with certain qualities and emotions. The colors you pick for your brand matter, and the most successful brands become associated with their iconic colors as much as with their logos. Think Home Depot’s orange or Subway’s green and yellow.
The typography you use for your brand’s name and slogans matter almost as much as the words themselves. The fonts you use and the style, weight and spacing of your typography should reflect the spirit of your brand, whether that’s sophistication, playfulness, modernity or nostalgia. For example, the elegant typeface used by Vogue reflects the luxury and timelessness of the brand. Adidas, on the other hand, uses a clean sans-serif font that matches its sporty image.
The images and graphic elements you use help flesh out the concepts that you want your audience to associate with your brand. They’re visual storytelling. Airbnb, for example, uses warm, lifestyle-oriented images to reflect its community-centric values. Dropbox on the other hand, uses abstract illustrations to make their tech offerings feel more approachable. These elements, when used consistently, create a recognizable and engaging visual narrative.
Good design increases brand recognition, conveys what your brand is about, and builds connection and loyalty with your customers.
At Gragg Advertising, our team understands the importance of developing a strong brand identity, whether you’re launching a startup or rebranding an established company to try to break through in a competitive marketplace.
Let’s start a conversation about what we can do for you.
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