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Designing the Brand Identity | A Beginner's Guide

Navdeep Singh Gill | 30 December 2022

Designing the Brand Identity

Introduction to Brand Identity

It is the overarching presence of a company, product, or service in customers' minds. It's the visual DNA of your brand and how it communicates with your audience. That's why establishing a solid  with a clear visual foundation is so important. As a company grows and matures, its brand identity should expand and evolve with them. However, many companies need help to build a compelling it due to the complexity of the process. Many elements go into building a solid brand identity, but some universal principles can be applied to any design project. The foundation of any excellent brand identity starts with understanding who you are as a company and what you stand for as an organization. Once you understand those pillars, you can move on to designing visual assets and choosing appropriate fonts, colors, images, and more. If you're ready to dive into creating your own from scratch or want to strengthen the foundation of your current one, keep reading for this handy guide.

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What is Brand Identity?

It represents the overall image or personality of a company or product. It's the combination of visual, verbal, and auditory cues that people associate with a particular brand. For example, Apple's brand identity includes sleek and modern aesthetics with a heavy focus on minimalist design. They typically use large fonts in neutral colors paired with white or black backgrounds. This visual identity has become so iconic that people associate it with Apple, even though they didn't create it. The best brand identities are simple and memorable but flexible enough to expand and evolve with the company. They should be able to communicate the company's message or product while being unique and standing out in a sea of competitors. A strong brand identity creates instant recognition and a positive association with your company or product in customers' minds. If done right, your brand will become synonymous with the product rather than simply an add-on feature.

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Why it is important?

When a new business starts, the immediate priorities are getting the product or service and gaining as much visibility as possible. However, too many companies need to pay more attention to the visual foundation of their identity. For most businesses, it and branding are interchangeable terms. This is not a mistake. Instead, it's an opportunity for companies to consider their identity and how it communicates with potential customers. For example, let's say two companies both sell yoga mats. The first company has a logo with a bright purple design that uses bold fonts in all capital letters. The second company's logo is a simple black-and-white design with a cursive font. While both logos effectively communicate what the companies offer, the first logo is highly memorable and may be difficult to remove from your mind. The second logo, however, is bland and blends into the background—almost like it doesn't even exist. The first company's branding is incredibly effective. Their logo is memorable, bright, bold, and memorable. Their marketing materials, packaging, and website are consistent with that branding. Customers are likely to remember the company and their product. The second company's branding is not memorable. Their logo is bland, their marketing materials are inconsistent, and their website is difficult to navigate. Customers are not likely to remember the company or their product.

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Defining company's voice and tone

The next step in creating the foundation of your brand identity is defining your company's voice and tone. Depending on your industry, your company's voice and tone may not be a visual element of your branding, but it is still an essential part of the identity process. The voice and tone of a company are the personalities behind its communication. It combines warmth, friendliness, authority, humor, and various other traits unique to every company. For example, Apple has a very authoritative voice and tone. While their branding is warm and friendly, their voice and tone are strictly business. A strong voice and tone will tell customers what to expect from your company. It can be challenging to create a voice and tone from scratch, but there are some things you can do to get started. First, think about how you want to communicate with customers. What words do you want to use? What type of language do you want to employ? What kind of personality do you want to put out there? Next, take a look at how you do business. Is your website organized and friendly? Do you use social media to interact with customers? Do you act in a way that communicates a distinct voice and tone?

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Defining the visual DNA of the Brand

Once you have identified the voice and tone of your company and the message you want to convey to customers, you can start to define the visual DNA of your brand. For the sake of this guide, let's pretend you are opening a bakery, and you have decided your branding includes warm and welcoming tones. You've also decided you want your logo to be bright and colorful. Now, you must decide what your bakery's logo will look like. You'll need to consider various factors, including the overall color scheme and the general aesthetic of the logo. You'll want to think about things like font, size, and placement of your logo. You'll also want to consider how your logo will appear across different mediums, like your business cards and packaging.

Establishing a Solid Baseline

Once you've identified your brand identity, you can move on to creating a baseline of brand standards. These standards will be a helpful guide for your team members as they create new content and launch new campaigns. They will ensure that all visuals, like packaging and marketing materials, stay consistent with your established visual identity. Creating these standards will be incredibly helpful as your company grows and thrives. It will allow employees to reference your identity easily and have a general guide for what to create.

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Conclusion

It is the visual and verbal DNA of your business. How customers understand and engage with your product or service is critical. While branding is often associated with logos and visual elements, it extends further than that. From the tone of your communication to the way you interact with your customers, branding is an essential and powerful tool that can be leveraged to help your business grow. But branding only happens after some time. Creating a solid brand takes time and is best done at the beginning of a company's life cycle when there's the most momentum. These steps can help create a strong brand identity and ensure your business stands out. Ready, set, brand!