A brand identity is a way to communicate with your target audience, differentiate yourself from your competition, and create an experience that encourages people to engage with you and buy into your business. To set yourself up for branding success, it’s critical to understand your brand voice, positioning, value proposition and core values as your design(s) will ultimately depend on these elements. So, if you are looking to design a brand for your business or updating your existing one, we have created this short, but insight article to get you started on your branding journey. If you need further help with designing your brand, then we recommend contacting a graphic design agency who will be able to assist you.
What is Brand Identity?
Brand identity is a collection of all the different elements that a company designs to promote the right image to a target audience.
How to Develop Your Brand Design
Before you know what elements will make up your brand design, you must first know exactly who you are as a brand. Who you are consists of a few different elements, but all are equally as important as each other:
– Your brand’s mission (why you exist)
– Your core values (what beliefs drive your business)
– Your brand’s personality (if your business was a person, what type of person would they be?
– Your positioning in the market (how are you different to your competitors?)
– Your voice (if your business was a person, how would they communicate?)
These different elements are the core fundamentals of brand identity and what defines you as a business.
Do Your Research
When you start your branding project, you want to approach each step from a highly critical viewpoint. Only once you have that intimate knowledge can you translate it into your branding and eventually your end product.
The Logo
A brand identity is a complex design system. Each element of the design element impacts the other. But, it all starts with one thing. And, that’s the logo. To get started, you can go completely old school and use a pen and paper to sketch out your ideas. As you iterate your sketches and designs, you want to make sure that the visuals are powerful enough to deliver the message on their own, without using colour enhancements.
The Typography
Every step in the design process comes with its own challenges, but typographic is the trickiest one in the visual language that you are going to encounter. Businesses all over the world often follow typography trends that are popular for a second but can become out of date quite quickly. Remember that your identity and brand is a language and that it needs to be unique. It needs to communicate your brand persona and core values effectively.
The Iconography
Engaging iconography is influenced by the creative visual language and logo and the way in which you plan to use the visual language. It depends on what type of business you are, what your products or services are, the industry, and where the branding is going to be shown.
Make Sure Your Brand is Honest
Although your brand identity is a tool that delivers a message about who you are, it’s no less important to help your target audience make their buying decisions. There are many businesses out there that are unable to communicate the value of their products or services. However, the ability to communicate with a distinctive image and deliver a message is vital in the modern-day as consumers are being bombarded with more and more sales messages.
Creating Your Brand Guidelines
The only thing more disappointing than poor branding is it never being used or being used incorrectly. However, you can avoid incorrect use if you craft a well thought out brand guideline.
Include clear, simple to use guidelines for every element of your brand identity and include examples of how the branding can be used correctly. Also include accurate details and examples, providing as much information as possible to help your designer(s) work with the brand identity and without errors. Once finished, make sure the guidelines are given to your team, and regularly updated. You could also hold regular training sessions to ensure your team are as clued up as possible when using the brand.
