Brand Identity

Brand Identity is an emotional and psychological concept.  It is what people recognize you by, and connect with your company through or the “face” of your business. It is therefore a vital part of your business that most people forget to put more effort in.

When first creating a brand for a new business, my recommendation is to create a generic brand that can be applied to any industry and any product. This is because most startups will change their directions and products. Even if you are rebranding an existing product, I think it is still a better choice to get a generic name.

It is then, no wonder that the biggest names these days take after brands that can be any product like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Alibaba (阿里巴巴)，Taobao（淘宝）or Yamaha.

It takes a lot of marketing money to build up a brand. Hence, it is extremely important to create an excellent brand. Always use the best resources you can to get a good brand.

To create a brand identity involves the following steps:

1. Establish a purpose and positioning
2. Conduct Market Research
3. Get a Personality
4. Create a Logo
5. Create a Color Palette
6. Select Typography
7. Select Supporting Graphics

Establishing a purpose and positioning

Besides just for making money, what is the purpose of your brand, ask yourself:

1. What do you sell?
2. Why do you sell it?
3. How do you sell it?

This is different from the mission and vision of a company. It is about the rationale for the existence of the brand.

Brand Positioning

These are the steps involved brand positioning, but ultimately, you want to create a statement that says:

“For [target market], [your brand] is the [point of difference] among [market segment] because [reason].

In positioning your brand, you would want to define:

• your target market
• point of difference
• market segment
• reason your brand stands out and why your customers should choose you

For more knowledge about brand positioning, read my article about brand identity design.

Conduct Brand Market Research

There are a few things that need to be done when conducting market research.

1. Find out what the closest competitors are doing
2. Look for the coolest brand identity on Google and on Pinterest of similar products
3. Look for the coolest brand identity on Pinterest and Google of different products that you can use in your environment.

Give your Brand Identity a Personality

How do your customers think about your product? What personality does your brand have?
Examples of personalities would include:

1. Excitement: carefree, spirited, and youthful
2. Sincerity: kindness, thoughtfulness, and an orientation toward family values
3. Ruggedness: rough, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
4. Competence: successful, accomplished and influential, highlighted by leadership
5. Sophistication: elegant, prestigious, and sometimes even pretentious

What does your brand convey?

Create a Logo for the Brand Identity

Your logo is your company’s face!

Therefore, you should never use a free logo generator from the internet if you want to brand your company. If you want to grow into a multi-million dollar company, you should not use inexperienced freelancer’s on many freelancer’s sites as well. Always make sure the logo designer knows your brand identity before designing your logo. 

The logo is a graphical way of identifying something, and specifically your brand identity. These days, there are many ways to look at logos. 

Choose the Brand Identity Aesthetics

Brand Identity using Typography

The type face contributes a lot to the logo, website design and in general the visual aesthetics of a brand. The rule is stick to not more than two different type faces.

The general rules are:

1. Keep to safe, simple and easy-to-read fonts.
2. There are three basic different kinds of font faces: serifs (more fancy), sans serifs (easier to read) and funny fonts (breaks rules).
3. Use consistent fonts to tie the logo, website and your packaging together. Google fonts are easy to synchronize across medium.

Brand Identity using Colours

Colors can convey emotion, mood, personality and psychology of the brand identity.

On top of that, different shades of the same color can appeal to different ages, demographics and even stage in life.

Graphics in the Brand Identity

Good graphics must communicate the brand personality and must be memorable.