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We tell you all you need to know about brand identity and how to craft one for your business.
You are a startup founder, a solopreneur or a small business owner.
You want to give your business a chance to stand out among the crowd. You have recognized the need for a strong brand in today’s competitive market.
You know that you want a great logo for your business, you have a rough idea of what your marketing material will look like, you have even come up with a catchphrase for your business, but where do you begin? How do all of these elements come together? How do you go about creating a strong, cohesive, memorable and appealing brand identity?
In this article, we will tell you all you need to know about brand identity and how to craft one for your business.
Let's break it down!
What is Brand Identity?
Think of brand identity as the personality of your business.
Just like people have unique traits, your brand identity is what makes your business stand out and become recognizable. It also builds trust and credibility with your clients who may develop an emotional connection with it over time. This will create value for them and for you as the brand owner.
A brand identity can be thought of as a combination of visual and non-visual elements that convey your business’ values, mission, and promise to your customers. Ideally, they should all work together and support each other. Contradictions between them can easily become obvious to your clients and should be avoided.
A high-value brand identity should focus on the following elements:
Logo design
This is one of the most important aspects of your brand identity, as it often offers the first and immediate association with your brand.
A well-designed logo is simple, memorable, and versatile. It should be printable in any size and work on both light and dark backgrounds. Ultimately, a successful logo results from a well-thought-out concept and knowledgeable technical creation.
Color Scheme
Colors evoke emotions and can influence how people perceive your brand. You should choose a color palette that reflects your brand's personality and is consistent across all your marketing materials. A successful palette includes primary and secondary contrasting colors and shades to ensure flexibility and accessibility in various use case scenarios.
Typography
Fonts play a crucial role in conveying your brand's tone – many logos actually only consist of custom typography without other graphic elements (hence, typographic logos).
Whether you go for a serif, sans serif, classic, modern, playful, or professional look, ensure your fonts are legible and align with your brand's character.
Imagery
The images and graphics you use should be cohesive and support your brand's story. This includes photographs, illustrations, and icons.
Going for custom vectors rather than stock ones will elevate your presence. When it comes to stock photography, we usually advise our clients to avoid using images that look too staged, that are artificially lit and generally lack authenticity.
Voice and Tone
Your brand's voice is how you communicate with your audience. Are you formal or casual? Friendly or authoritative?
Consistency in your tone helps build trust and recognition.
Tagline
A catchy and meaningful tagline can leave a lasting impression. It should encapsulate what your brand stands for in a few words.
How to Create a Strong Brand Identity
Now that you know what a brand identity is and why it's important, let's talk about how to create one.
Define Your Brand's Mission and Values
Start by clearly defining what your brand stands for.
Think of an appropriate mission for your brand.
What is your mission?
Your mission is the reason for the existence of your business, what you want to achieve in the world.
Think of the reasons why you started in the first place. What made you do it? Perhaps the idea for your business has deep ties to your personal experience. If so, it can be a good idea to share it with your customers. You don’t need to overthink this. Don’t overpromise. In fact, it’s best to create realistic expectations about what you can deliver.
Not every business can be the best in the world in every category and in every aspect, but you can strive to be the best in a certain area. For example, instead of redefining culinary tastes, you can strive to make the best burgers in town. It is likely that your customers will appreciate how grounded your brand’s mission is. This will also allow you to exceed their expectations.
Next, define your core values.
What are your core values?
In addition to stating the mission for your brand, you would ideally like it to be associated with a list of positive traits. For example, you would like your brand to be associated with tradition, familiarity, warmth, and trust. These values can and should be effectively communicated through the various elements of your brand identity, such as the color scheme, imagery, typography, graphics, illustrations, etc.
Here are some examples of values you can associate your brand with:
- Innovation - Commitment to cutting-edge technology and forward-thinking solutions.
- Creativity - Emphasizing artistic expression and out-of-the-box thinking.
- Empathy - Understanding and addressing customer needs and emotions.
- Integrity - Emphasis on honesty, transparency, and ethical practices.
- Customer-Centricity - Prioritizing customer satisfaction and personalized service.
- Quality - Dedication to high standards and superior products or services.
- Community - Focus on fostering a sense of belonging and supporting local initiatives.
- Reliability - Dependability and consistent performance.
- Efficiency - Commitment to optimizing processes and delivering timely results.
- Sustainability - Focus on environmental responsibility and eco-friendly practices.
When choosing among these, make sure that your brand stays consistent. Avoid contradictions. For example, it would be strange to try to position your brand as innovative and traditional at the same time. It could make the customer doubt if you know what you’re doing.
Similar to your mission, it is also important to not overpromise. It’s best to choose a few main values and do your best to adhere to them. Related to this, research your audience and competitors as thoroughly as possible.
Research Your Audience and Competitors
When crafting your brand identity, it is crucial to understand who your target audience is and what they care about. Without this, your message will fall on deaf ears.
This also goes for your competitors. Analyze what they are doing to identify gaps and opportunities for differentiation.
Create Your Visual Elements
Having completed this preliminary research, you can move on to creating the visual elements of your brand: your logo, your color scheme, typography, and imagery.
As with most things in life, there are different possible approaches to this, each with its own pros and cons. One approach would be to try to create the visual elements yourself or use readily available templates. This might work for lower priority projects. For best results, however, we recommend working with a professional designer, studio or agency.
As an example of the complexity involved in creative visual elements, you can find out more about the process of creating a logo in this article.
Build Your Brand Guidelines
Once the visual elements of your new brand are created, it’s important to document them along with guidelines on how they are to be used. This can be achieved by creating a so-called brand style guide or brand book. It serves as a reference tool to ensure consistency in how your brand is represented across all your marketing and communication materials. It is meant to be shared with your employees and external partners.
Here’s a brief overview of what a typical brand book includes:
- Brand Overview: Mission Statement, Core Values, Brand Story
- Visual Identity: Logo, Color Palette, Typography, Imagery, Graphic Elements
- Verbal Identity: Voice and Tone, Tagline and Messaging: The brand’s key messages, slogans, and taglines, and how to use them effectively.
- Applications: Marketing Materials, Digital Presence, Packaging and Product Design
- Usage Guidelines: Do’s and Don’ts, Templates
A comprehensive brand book is an essential tool for any business seeking to establish and maintain a strong, consistent, and recognizable brand identity. That is why we recommend hiring a professional designer to create the brand style guide for you, in order to ensure that it’s sufficiently detailed, accurate, and usable to members of your organization and external partners who need to interact with your brand.
When working with our own clients, creating a brand book is the vital final step of our brand design process. Every little detail comes together to deliver an essential document to be used for years to come.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
When crafting your brand identity, it's important to avoid some common pitfalls:
Inconsistency
Using different logos, colors, or fonts across various platforms can confuse your audience. This might sound like a no brainer, but it is easier said than done. One reason for this is that you might want to change your brand over time. You might want to start experimenting with different elements and deviating from the original rules of the brand book. Certain parts of your business might grow in importance and you might want to differentiate them somehow.
When that happens, it might be a good idea to create a sub-brand or an entirely different brand for them instead of adapting the existing one.
In short, it is important to stay consistent with your brand across all of your marketing platforms.
Ignoring Your Audience
As we said earlier, your brand identity should resonate with your audience. If it doesn’t, all of your subsequent actions will have a muted or even no effect. That’s why it’s important to choose the right tone of voice your customers expect.
Rely on hard evidence when determining this. Do not give in to the temptation of presuming what your customers want or injecting your own opinions into it. There is always the risk of sounding out of touch and your customers might punish you for it.
Overcomplicating the Design
Another key mistake we see in our regular design work is an overcomplicated design.
Simplicity is often more effective. In most cases, the rule that less is more applies with full force. A cluttered or overly complex design can be hard to recognize and remember. It can also create the impression that you don’t know what you’re doing, so you’re doing something to hide it.
That is not to say that a complicated design doesn’t have its place, but it needs to be done right. It needs to be clear that that is what you were going for. In most cases, however, it is best to keep things simple.
Copying Competitors
Finally, one of the deadly sins of brand identity is attempting to copy your competitors. In addition to any potential legal issues, copying someone else’s brand identity won’t help you develop your own or stand out in any way. It will be clear to your customer that you’re imitating someone else and trying to be like them.
Instead, be original and authentic to your brand. This way, your customers will likely appreciate your more.
Hiring a Professional Designer vs. Using Automated Tools
As with most things, there are multiple ways to approach crafting a brand identity. As we said earlier, you can use templates for visual elements or online tools that automatically create them for a fraction of the cost.
Alternatively, you can hire a professional designer or agency to create the brand with you. This approach, if done correctly, can provide you with a number of benefits.
You will be able to rely on the designer’s training and practical experience, which will help you avoid the pitfalls described above. When you hire a quality designer or agency, you can expect them to work closely with you to understand your business, audience, and vision. They should be able to customize every element of your brand identity to ensure the best possible fit with your requirements. They should also be able to ensure that your brand identity elements work well together across various mediums and sizes, from business cards to billboards, maintaining its integrity and impact.
Moreover, at the end of the process, you should expect to receive a detailed brand book and guidelines to help you maintain consistency in your branding efforts, including colors, fonts, and usage instructions.
Finally, based on their prior experience, you can expect designers to follow a streamlined process that includes research, brainstorming, drafts, and revisions. This should ensure a well-thought-out design in a reasonable timeframe. Meanwhile, you will be able to focus on other critical aspects of your business, knowing that your branding is in capable hands.
In summary, while automated tools may offer quick and cheap solutions, an investment in a professional designer can result in significantly better design quality and usability. This will help ensure that your brand identity is not only visually compelling but also effectively communicates your core values and stands the test of time.
Conclusion
As we have shown, creating a memorable brand identity is a journey that requires thoughtful planning and creativity. By understanding what a brand identity is, why it's important, and how to create one, you're well on your way to building a brand that stands out and resonates with your audience.
Feel free to reach out to our agency if you need any help along the way.
We’re here to support you in creating a brand identity that truly shines. Get in touch today!
