Brand identity creation can be daunting work. Yet its importance cannot be overstated. Doing it right requires diligent work from you and the Brand itself, yet creating one may feel intimidating or confusing at first sight - what elements should it contain, how should one begin, etc?
Don't fret. We have you covered. Our step-by-step manual and toolkit offer everything needed for creating an appealing brand identity, helping you stand out from competitors, reach target audiences effectively and convey your story with every piece of content produced.
Perceptions of companies, organizations and products among customers can dramatically impact buying habits and customer loyalty. A solid brand identity design developed through consistent messaging campaigns can drive new sales to your company if done effectively. Discovering how to establish one will allow your organization to choose its ideal approach; in this article, we discuss its significance while outlining methods to help create it further.
What Is A Brand Identity?
Your logo? Your color palette? Your infographic style? And more besides. The brand identity encompasses all stylistic characteristics of a company, such as its color scheme, font choice, logo design and personality that help it stand out in consumer minds. Appealing to various senses simultaneously with strong visual, audio, oral or tactile associations creates brand recognition instantly among potential consumers - hence keeping brand relevance strong within consumers' memories and minds.
Brand identity can be defined as the outward expression of any company, including its name, trademark, communication style and visual presentation. We consider brand identity the way your customers perceive your organization based on how it looks, sounds and feels to customers - this could include how it tastes, smells, sounds or feels.
People typically refer to "brand identity" in terms of its visual appearance; therefore, this post will center around it. An identifiable and consistent brand image will help your company stand out among competitors while building customer loyalty.
Our team has assisted hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and advertising agencies in creating a visual identity. Additionally, they have served as keynote speakers at multiple brand identity conferences, webinars and industry events, in addition to sharing insights through blogs or by way of seminars.
What To Consider When Choosing A Brand Identity
Not only can packaging design enhance brand story communication, but its power can change how people engage with your company altogether:
- Differentiation: What strategies do you employ to stand out in a crowded marketplace? Brand identity plays an integral part; to make your products truly distinctive and differentiate them, brand development plays a vital part in maximum effectiveness in product promotion.
- Connectivity: People will engage more easily with you if you can effectively share information about yourself and are more likely to join your fan community.
- Experience: All aspects of your Brand reflect on it. To build an identifiable, uniform brand experience across platforms such as websites, social media pages or sales brochures. A strong brand identity will enhance customer experiences across each.
Brand identity can be an artful creation for some companies and an essential aspect of entering new markets. In contrast, others struggle to establish themselves due to an unclear understanding of who or what they stand for and how best to communicate this effectively. No matter where a brand falls along this spectrum, its foundation must remain strong to succeed and compete in any environment.
What Does A Brand Identity Include?
By creating a brand, you create an effective visual toolbox to communicate more efficiently. A brand can either be simple or complex depending on its needs; each should include these three core identity components as part of its identity:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Typography
Your Brand can also take shape through various media by employing additional elements that represent it effectively:
- Photographs
- Image
- Iconography
- Data visualization
Do not attempt to tackle everything all at once; start small. Create the basics - logo, colors and typography. As necessary, add on more elements.
How To Build A Brand Identity?
We've broken this process into ten steps for an easy journey from A-Z. These steps have been organized, so they'll guide your brand identity development process from A-Z; various aspects of brand identities build off each other as you go along. Use this order of operations when developing or revamping brand identities for businesses of all kinds - be they starting fresh or revamps.
Step 1: Know Your Foundation
Be mindful that visual aspects of brand identity should come last when creating your Brand, just as building an actual house requires strong foundational support.
Your visual identity should reflect who you are as an individual; your passions, actions and daily pursuits. Without understanding yourself and knowing the brand story, creating visual storytelling for it cannot succeed without an anchor point to draw from.
How To Do It?
Be sure to know:
- Brand heart: Your brand heart statement articulates the core principles that define your Brand (for instance, vision, purpose, mission and values). See our guide if this information has yet to be written down and documented.
- Brand name: Find the ideal name for your Brand if it has not already been done so, keeping in mind that without an identifiable name, a logo cannot exist.
- Brand essence: Your brand essence represents the voice, tone and personality of your company. For more insight into this aspect of its essence, refer to one of our guides.
- Communication: Be certain you understand your message, tagline and value proposition.
Rebranding should serve a purpose; otherwise, it might fail. Rebranding gives your entire team a chance to explore issues with existing identities as well as set goals for something different - here are three good reasons for reconsidering changing them: As long as your vision for this brand change remains the same and everyone agrees on its execution, progress should proceed smoothly.
Step 2: You Can Now Assess Your Current Identity
Communication is key when it comes to successful branding. Understanding your Brand thoroughly will enable you to ensure its visuals reflect its values and personality and provide insight into its story arc. Start by conducting an audit on it so that you know exactly what goals it seeks to meet:
- What your Brand looks like
- Think back on how the current state of your Brand could evolve or adapt for the goals that lie ahead for it to achieve long-term success.
Gain the insight you require by carefully considering your Brand and creating an identity that accurately represents it.
Step 3: Audit Your Competition
Differentiation is at the core of creating an impactful brand identity: ensuring it remains relevant, visible and unique among competitors. Knowing both who your rivals are as well as comparing how your Brand compares visually can give an invaluable glimpse of who else may be out there; competitor audits offer this service and allow you to do this directly against each competitor as well as all together; this approach could reveal unexpected insights.
In our competitive analysis for one company, we discovered that many of their competitors used identical colors - it's common among industries to adopt one signature hue, but this presented an opportunity for differentiation; auditing competitors can help identify these opportunities and highlight any hidden ones.
How To Do It?
As part of your review process, please pay special attention to what visuals your competitors use; these may include trends and visual themes specific to their industry and brand personalities that might help differentiate themselves.
Step 4: Focus On The Visual Direction
Once you've taken an objective view of yourself and your competition and established what direction your desired direction should take for the team, aligning all team members in that direction is the next step. Designs may differ greatly between people; what one sees as powerful may not resonate the same with another.
Your words for describing your company's Brand may be perceived differently by different team members, making it impossible to start designing at this stage. Instead, engaging in key discussions and performing exercises should help create an accurate vision of its image:
- What key attributes of your Brand do you hope to convey through visuals, and which visuals best illustrate them to the public?
- Additionally, how would people react when seeing or experiencing your Brand?
To make sure all stakeholders are on board with what's happening with the Brand, it is ideal to bring all stakeholders together to discuss its future, and the insights gained will serve to inform a creative brief that designers will then use when producing visuals for it.
How to Do It?
Exercises can serve as creative therapy sessions to facilitate these discussions. One such exercise in the Brand Attributes Exercise will assist your team and help you identify key Brand attributes your identity should convey. Note, though, that insight won't come all at once; several meetings may need to be held until all opinions have been considered and agreed on a consensus has been reached.
Step 5: Write Your Brand Brief
After you have completed all the prior steps, it is now time to design. Before diving right in, though, ensure your creative team has an overview brief that includes all relevant information that ensures everyone onboard and understands where everyone stands.
How To Do It?
Please don't give too much or too little information; rather, it is better to educate rather than overwhelm.
Step 6: Design Your Logo
Brand identity is an intricate design system. At its heart lies your logo - representing all its constituent elements and helping make an impactful statement about who and what your company stands for in the marketplace.
How To Do It?
Use a pencil and free sketch black-and-white. Your core image needs to convey your message without color - begin with loose shapes that match complementary hues to form your logo design.
Step 7: Choose Your Color Palette
Once your logo has been completed, the next step should be exploring color options. Choose them carefully since colors can be powerful ways to differentiate yourself from competitors.
How To Do It?
Color palettes should be simple, flexible and not overwhelming for designers to express themselves creatively without becoming overloaded by the options available to them. Examples may include:
- One main color
- Two primary colors
- Three complementary colors
- Two accent colors
Check out our article about choosing colors to strengthen the identity of your Brand for additional insights.
Step 8: Select Your Typography
Every element of your Brand should work in concert. Typography should consider your logo shape; for instance, when designing typographic elements.
Read More: What Is Audio Branding And How To Leverage It For Your Brand
How To Do It?
Typography can present unique design challenges at every step, particularly for brands following trends that only last temporarily before looking outdated and unoriginal. When choosing typography for branding purposes, keep your selection to two or three typefaces, including primary and secondary fonts for body text typefaces and user interface types (UI types). See our guide on choosing font licenses to learn more.
Step 9: Create Additional Elements
Your Brand may not need an extensive identity to thrive; take note of its future needs before creating one. Include elements from its identity if experimenting with different content types in future.
Photographs
Photography is essential in building brand recognition and should follow clear guidelines regarding which images (and visual treatments) can best portray it.
Image
It would help if you employed consistent and cohesive language when drawing illustrations, avoiding over-illustration or clashing styles while considering its role within other elements of your piece.
Iconography
Applications of iconography are as important as its visual language, determined based on your service or product, medium, industry (i.e. printed brochures vs website), desired result(s), etc. Your goal should be for it to be as precise and unmistakable as possible.
Data Visualization
Data should not only be visually appealing but also easily understood; therefore, data visualizations must follow industry best practices.
Step 10: Create Your Brand Guidelines
An inadequate brand design is painful, but an exquisite identity created solely for the show can also leave us heartbroken. A brand style guide may provide the solution.
How To Do It?
Include clear guidelines and examples for every part of your brand identity, from print materials and web video elements (if relevant) through interactive media and anything else needed ( if relevant ). Please provide as much detail as possible so your designers can replicate your Brand successfully; follow our style guide for additional help in crafting something people will use; once complete, ensure they are shared among team members in an easily accessible place and updated regularly.
Pain Points When Creating Brand Identities
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and other stakeholders who are creating the brand identity of their business face several unique obstacles in creating its image. Addressing them properly is necessary to craft an identity that effectively conveys your values while connecting well with its target market - here are some of these common hurdles and how you can overcome them.
Knowing Where To Begin
Brand development can be daunting for entrepreneurs. Start by conducting market research to gain an understanding of your audience. Once complete, establish vision, mission and values.
Brand Identity Is Lacking
Brand identity can be enhanced through strategic planning. Create your story about the Brand by considering visual elements, messages and channels of communication.
Using Online Logo Generators
Generic logo generators may produce less distinctive brand identities and raise intellectual property issues for businesses. New business owners mistakenly believe that creating an impressive logo costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars; that simply isn't true.
Custom logos help your organization stand out from the competition while protecting yourself against legal complications. Spotify stands out with its distinctive custom logo that sets them apart from other music streaming services.
Lack Of Expertise And Limited Budget
Budget constraints often present small and startup businesses with difficulty developing their brand identities, particularly without design experience. By working with designers and sourcing affordable materials, professional brands can be created without spending an arm and leg on them.
Distinguishing Yourself From The Competition
Soaring above competition in an already oversaturated market can be challenging. Yet, you can use branding to distinguish yourself by clearly communicating your USP through its identity.
Brand Consistency Is Important
Maintaining brand continuity across various touchpoints and channels can be challenging. A detailed style guide for your Brand may prove valuable in creating a consistent experience across its touchpoints and channels.
Market Evolution
As tastes and fashions shift, your brand identity should also adjust accordingly. That doesn't have to mean changing visuals or logos all of the time; many companies like Target have maintained their branding over many years despite these shifts. Target's evolution doesn't stop at simple visual updates (their logo has also undergone modifications over time). Rather they also update brand elements, store layout, and uniforms for staff.
Brand recognition should be a constant reminder of who and what your business represents, connecting customers to it through interactions on social media and conversations with clients. Be open and responsive when engaging customers for feedback via discussions and social media posts about your Brand - its identity should evolve with time as your customer base does.
Navigating Cultural Differences
Branding must consider cultural differences when approaching foreign markets to maximize success there. Cyber Infrastructure Inc. serves clients from different nations worldwide and regularly engages them across time zones, cultures and business practices to help ensure successful results in each one of those markets.
Customer Perception Management
Attuning your Brand to customer expectations is paramount to building trust and loyalty among your customer base. By seeking customer feedback regularly and responding accordingly, perception management becomes much simpler.
Protect Your Brand Reputation
Negative publicity and crises can undermine a brand's image, so having a proactive crisis plan in place is critical in protecting your reputation and keeping customers loyal to your product or service.
Brand Performance Measurement
At times it can be challenging to identify the appropriate metrics to measure the success of your Brand. Monitoring brand awareness, equity, and satisfaction may provide invaluable information.
Balance Creativity With Practicality
Striking an ideal balance between creativity and practicality is challenging but achievable through working with marketers and designers who understand your target market and industry. Now, tasks that were once expensive and complex can be accomplished efficiently at a reasonable price. A product retouching service may be ideal if your photos of products do not live up to standards; their services provide color adjustments, replacement/removal of backgrounds/backdrops as needed, new objects placement and removal or more if your photo doesn't look quite right.
A brand identity that's both captivating and user-friendly can help businesses achieve long-term success, like Tesla's design that blends practical features with eco-conscious consumer appeal. Small businesses and startups can achieve long-term success by addressing common brand pain points within their market.
The Right Way To Rebrand
Rebranding can give your company an instant facelift by infusing modern aesthetics into its current identity. An aesthetic overhaul may even increase brand loyalty among both existing customers and prospective ones. Still, when executed poorly, changes could alienate potential customer groups altogether. If you are contemplating changes to your Brand's identity, ensure their benefits outweigh their risks. Rebranding may prove disastrous even for the most influential brands.
Brand Identity: Tips To Help You Build Your Brand
Here are some tips to help you develop the identity of your Brand:
Monitor Your Brand Continuously
Track all relevant branding data. Monitoring its performance allows you to gauge its effect on factors like public perception and customer loyalty - helping determine how best to optimize certain aspects of branding.
Tell Your Story To Customers
Share stories of your Brand to make customers care. Perhaps share its background story or how its mission came to fruition; through such sharing, you'll increase customer empathy towards its mission while simultaneously building customer loyalty for its sake.
Find Out What Your Competitors Are Doing
By conducting thorough research into your main competitors and understanding how their brands differ from your Brand. Please take note of their mission statements, values and advertising campaigns as well as any unique products they provide; doing this can give you greater insight into the personality, products and service offerings of your Brand.
Let The Business Evolve
Ensure your branding strategies allow enough flexibility for them to adapt over time, such as having the freedom to change with market conditions or customer opinion shifts. While brands must possess unique and memorable identities, growth should be nurtured to adapt seamlessly as market circumstances or customer attitudes change.
Make Yourself Available To Your Audience
Discovering your Brand should be as effortless and effortless for target audiences, whether creating a presence on social media, creating an online shop or developing websites compatible with different operating systems. Ease of access allows brands to increase public awareness more rapidly.
Conclusion
Any business must have a strong sense of Brand identity. By understanding your audience and outlining core values for the Brand, along with creating an unforgettable identity - which supports marketing campaigns while connecting with customers - establishing your identity will create unforgettable brand experiences that resonate. Consider teaming up with an expert design platform to get the desired outcomes.
