#Column Five » How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity (A Step-by-Step Guide) Comments Feed alternate alternate Column Five Logo * Culture * Process * Work * Clients * Blog * Contact Search for: ____________________ (BUTTON) Search (button) < Back Categories * Annual Reports * Brand strategy * Branding * Column Five * Column Five Work * Content Distribution * Content Marketing * Content Strategy * Data Visualization * E-Books * Infographics * Interactive Infographics * Interviews * Microcontent * Motion Graphics * Presentation Design * Reports & Report Design * Video Direction & Production * Visual Language * Web Design & Development Resources * Brand Heart Workbook – Identify Your Brand’s Core Beliefs * Newsletter Sign Up * The Content Marketer’s Guide to Data Storytelling How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity (A Step-by-Step Guide) by Nate Butler Total Shares Share Tweet Share 58 [How-to-Create-a-Brand-Identity-A-Step-by-Step-Guide.png] What is a brand identity? Is it your logo? Your color palette? Your infographic style? It’s all that—and more. Branding pro Marty Neumeier defines a brand identity as “the outward expression of a brand, including its trademark, name, communications, and visual appearance.” To us, a brand identity is the sum total of how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to people. (Sometimes that even includes how it sounds, tastes, feels, and even smells.) Ultimately, a brand identity is a way to communicate with the world, differentiate yourself from your competition, and create a brand experience that encourages people to engage with you. Some brands have elevated brand identity to an art (think Apple, LEGO, or Levi’s), while others have made it their entry into the playing field (think Warby Parker or Casper). These brand stars succeed because they know who they are and why they exist—and they use every aspect of their branding to make sure we know it, too. (Brands with weak identities often struggle because they either don’t know who they are or struggle to communicate it well. Not sure if yours is working? Here are 9 signs it’s not.) If you want your brand to succeed and thrive in the future, you need to build a brand identity that accurately conveys your essence and is flexible enough to evolve with you. But that doesn’t happen overnight. It requires deep thinking, a team with strong communication and design skills, and an intimate understanding of your brand. But it can be done well, with excellent results—as long as you have the right guidance. Luckily, you don’t have to go it alone. How to Build a Brand Identity To demystify the process for you, we’ve crafted this step-by-step guide to building a brand identity, focusing specifically on the visual elements of a brand identity. The process can seem intimidating, but we’ve been through it many times with our creative partners (and through our own rebranding), so we know firsthand what mistakes to avoid, and how to make it easier on everyone. If your brand is in its early stages or preparing to rebrand and not sure where to start, follow these tips to move through the process seamlessly and build a stronger brand identity that sets you up for success. Ready? Step 1: Complete Your Brand Strategy Your brand identity is a tool to help you execute your brand strategy. Your strategy is a detailed plan that outlines exactly what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it. Your brand identity, along with your content strategy, helps you communicate in ways that will let you achieve those goals. As such, before you dive into your brand identity, it’s important to have a fully fleshed out strategy. As we walk through our creative process, we’ll cover some brand strategy elements, but in this post we’ll be mostly focusing on the process of designing your brand identity. To set yourself up for success, it’s important to complete your strategy and understand your brand’s core values, brand voice, and brand messaging architecture (aka your positioning, value prop, tagline, and brand stories), as your visual design will work in tandem with those elements. If you don’t have your brand strategy documented (or have never gone through the exercise), follow our stress-free guide to creating a brand strategy. Once you’ve documented your brand strategy—and gotten sign-off from leadership—you can focus on brand identity. Step 2: Understand What a Brand Identity Is and What Makes It Great A logo and a color palette alone do not make a brand identity. When designing your identity, you need to create a comprehensive visual language that can be applied to everything from your website to your packaging. Depending on your brand, your needs may be more expansive, but a basic brand identity includes: * Logo * Colors * Typography * Design System * Photography * Illustration * Iconography * Data visualization * Interactive elements * Video and motion * Web design That said, just because you design these elements doesn’t mean they’re effective. A strong brand identity needs to work for everyone, both your internal team (e.g., brand ambassadors, content creators) and the people who will interact with it (e.g., customers). As you embark on the design process, make sure your brand identity is: * Distinct: It stands out among competitors and catches your people’s attention. * Memorable: It makes a visual impact. (Consider Apple: The logo is so memorable they only include the logo—not their name—on their products.) * Scalable and flexible: It can grow and evolve with the brand. * Cohesive: Each piece complements the brand identity. * Easy to apply: It’s intuitive and clear for designers to use. If any of these elements are missing, it will be challenging for your brand team to do their job well. Step 3: Do Your Research When you begin a branding project, you want to approach each phase from a philosophical and highly critical standpoint—inspect, poke, and prod until you get to the core of your brand. Only once you have that intimate knowledge can you translate it into a visual language. That means doing a fair amount of research before diving into design. Yes, this is hands-down the most laborious stage. But it is crucial to build the foundation upon which your visual language will stand. Here, your goal is to gather as much information as you can about who you’re trying to communicate with, who your competition is, and where your brand currently stands. First, Create Personas Your brand identity is the “face” that interacts with the entire world. Whatever you create should accurately communicate who you are. However, one common misconception is that a brand identity is exclusively informed by what your brand wants to present. This isn’t entirely true. It’s also informed by what your brand’s customers want to engage with, or are accustomed to interacting with. If your identity doesn’t resonate with them, it won’t be effective. This doesn’t necessarily mean your brand’s customers will choose your logo color; it means that you will make more effective design choices once you understand their needs, wants, and values. To understand who you’re trying to reach, try this easy exercise to create personas that represent your different target segments. These personas identify both demographic and psychographic information that gives you insight into who these people are and what drives them. Beyond your primary audience (customers), you also want to consider how secondary or tertiary groups might perceive your brand (e.g., other brands or potential employees). This information can also influence your design decisions. Then, Identify Your Competition Building a brand identity is all about differentiation: making your brand visible, relevant, and unique. However, without a firm understanding of your competitive landscape, it’s easy to blend in. Thus, it’s crucial to understand not just who your competition is but how your brand compares, in perception and presentation. To get a snapshot of the competition, do a thorough competitive analysis. If you haven’t done one before, here’s a guide to do it. You can also make a copy of this template to help you document everything. As you move through the process, pay special attention to how your competitors present themselves in terms of common visual elements, trends, industry-specific visual themes, brand personalities, etc. For example, we once did competitive research for a brand and found that all of their competitors used the exact same four colors. This isn’t uncommon, as many industries tend to gravitate toward the same visual elements (think Netflix and YouTube’s red color), but it revealed a great opportunity to differentiate. One notable example of this: In 2011, video platform Twitch made a splash with their all-purple branding at a time when their competitors used bold greens and reds. The color instantly became a hallmark of their brand. (BTW, the company was so successful it sold to Amazon for a cool $1 billion in 2014.) Finally, Take a Look at Your Existing Brand Whether you’re building your brand identity entirely from scratch or updating a stale identity, you still need a full assessment of: * The current state of your brand’s identity * How that brand identity might be crafted or tweaked to align with your goals going forward The goal is to understand how your brand is perceived, both internally and externally. Getting an honest and accurate reflection is the only way to understand how and where you’re succeeding or how you need to course correct. This stage requires a fair amount of research, including conversations and surveys with: * Employees * Higher-ups * Customers For your internal team, you should distribute a brand audit survey. (Here’s how to do one, along with the questions to include.) This survey is a deep dive into every aspect of your brand, from your values and personality to logo and positioning. Again, this is why having a fleshed out brand strategy is so important. Example: These brand audit survey responses provided valuable insight for our designers. how to create a brand identity 8 This research helps us view the brand from every angle, including our own outsider perceptions. Once you’ve completed your brand audit survey, you can use that info to inform your creative brief. Things to include in your brief: * Title * Overview * Objective/focus * Why are you rebranding? * Budget * Deadline * Audience + Who they are, how this may have changed over the years + Current customers, ideal new customers * Brand perception * Brand goal * Primary message * Value proposition * Tone/voice/personality * Success metrics * Competitors * Important insights from past experiences * Relevant references or inspiration Once you have a comprehensive and intimate understanding of your brand, it’s time to move into design. Step 4: Build Your Identity By this time, you have a ton of information to help inform ideation, between your competitive analysis, customer feedback, brand audit survey, and brief. At this stage, you want to take that text-based information and translate it into visual concepts. Luckily, the information you have is often steeped in emotional language about your brand’s personality, goals, and values. Now the challenge is to figure out how to communicate and enhance those sentiments through visuals. You can tackle this by assembling your team to brainstorm word clouds. The focus is not to free associate words into other words. The goal is to bring those words to life. The associations may be abstract, but it is important to get everything out. For example: [DEL: FAST > SWIFT :DEL] FAST > CHEETAH > LIGHTNING BOLT > ZEUS You’ll then select specific elements that elicit the strongest emotional response, trigger additional imagery, and help you build a visual playground to go nuts in. Example: Our team at work for the ESPEN (Expanded Special Project For Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases) brand identity, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project. . how-to-build-a-brand-identity-1 Logo A brand identity is an intricate design system. Each element influences the other, but it starts with your logo. You can go old-school here and bust out the pencils to free-sketch. As you go through iterations, flesh out logo mark, core shapes, and complementary imagery—all in black and white. As you receive feedback and iterate, you want to make sure that the core imagery is powerful enough to deliver the message on its own, without the enhancement of color. For more tips on logo design, check out our guide to designing a logo you love. Example: Here you can see many iterations of our logo for UCI Applied Innovation, from the most basic black-and-white sketch to fully rendered images. how-to-create-a-brand-identity-2 And the final result: how-to-create-a-brand-identity-cove Colors Once you have solid visual imagery, you can explore color. Certainly, emotion plays a huge role in color choice. This is also, as previously mentioned, a good chance to differentiate. A good color palette is clean and flexible, supplying designers enough choices to be creative but not enough to overwhelm. This includes: * 1 main color * 2 primary colors * 3-5 complementary colors * 2 accent colors For more on building a powerful visual identity (including what research says about color use), see our best science-based tips to build an unforgettable brand identity. Example: Color palettes from the Visage brand identity. How to create a brand identity color Typography Every stage has its own unique challenges, but typography can be tricky in a visual language. Brands often follow trends (serif vs. non-serif) that are hot for a second but can quickly become dated or appear unoriginal. Remember, that your brand identity is a cohesive language. Therefore, typography should be informed by the shapes of your logo. You’d think it’s a simple choice, but typography is just as emotional as anything else. It needs to communicate the brand persona effectively. Limit the number of font families to 2-3. This generally includes a primary brand typeface, then secondary typeface(s) for specific purposes based on where it will be used, such as a body copy typeface, UI typeface, etc. For a deeper dive into choosing typography (including whether or not to license fonts), see our guide to choosing the best typography for your brand. Example: Typography guidelines from the Visage brand identity. how to create a brand identity typography Design System This is often a weak point in visual languages. Brands think that because they have their logo, color, and fonts they can slap them together any which way. Since brand identity is all about introducing yourself to people, it’s important to make it an enjoyable experience. In information design, that means providing a truly consistent and cohesive presentation. The goal is to design an intuitive hierarchy and layout that makes it easy to navigate visual communication. Consider the proper order of content, including headers, subheaders, body copy, images, blurbs, etc. Example: Hierarchy guidelines from the Avalere Health brand identity. how-to-create-a-brand-identity-13 Photography Consider the type of imagery you’ll use, as well as the visual treatments. Include guidance on filters, treatments, sizing, etc. Example: Photo guidelines from the Visage brand identity. how to create a brand identity photos Illustration When it comes to illustration, you need a cohesive and uniform language. Don’t over-illustrate or use clashing styles. Instead, think of how your illustration will be used in conjunction with other visual elements. Example: Illustrations from the Civ.works brand identity. How to create a brand identity Iconography Good iconography is influenced not just by the creative visual language but by the applications for the work. It depends on what your product or service is, the industry, and the medium (e.g., web-only vs. UI vs. sales brochures). Example: Iconography guidelines from the Avalere Health brand identity. how-to-create-brand-identity-20_general-keys-iconography Data Visualization Data should be designed for clarity and comprehension, in addition to aesthetic appeal. Thus, it’s important to design visualizations that adhere to data visualization best practices. If you aren’t familiar with this area, check out this comprehensive guide to designing the most common charts and graphs. how-to-create-a-brand-identity_bar-charts-labeling Additional Elements Again, your brand may have unique communication needs, depending on your industry, content, etc. Make sure that your design: * Interactive elements * Motion graphics * Video * Web design For more, check out our checklist of everything to include in your visual identity, featuring additional tips for designing each element. Step 5: Build Your Brand Style Guide The only thing more heartbreaking than a poorly designed brand identity is a beautifully designed identity that is never used or used incorrectly. A brand style guide is the savior here—if it’s crafted the right way. Include clear, easy-to-follow guidelines for every part of the brand identity, including examples and use-cases. Also include practical detail, denoting as much information as needed to help your designer replicate the brand identity successfully. For more direction, follow our guide to creating a brand style guide people will actually use. Once completed, make sure guidelines are distributed to the team, stored in an easy-to-access place, and regularly updated. Example: The Avalere Health style guide. how-to-create-a-brand-identity-guide Keep Your Brand Identity Strong Designing a successful brand identity takes a lot of work and collaboration. To keep your team on the same page and empower them to do the best job possible, make sure they are: * Educated: Find out what brand identity mistakes to avoid at every stage. * Inspired: Check out these 15 examples of brands with an awesome visual identity. * Equipped: Bookmark these 75 tips, tools, and resources to help your team create a great brand identity. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t have the resources to take on the project yourself, we’d love to chat about how to help you through the struggle. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get the best content marketing tips, tools, and resources. * Email* ____________________ * Name ____________________ This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Hell yeah. IFRAME: gform_ajax_frame_16 This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms. Comments (BUTTON) Add Comment Tell Us What You Think Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Comment _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Name * ______________________________ Email * ______________________________ Post Comment Comments (55) 1. Stephany ben says: November 20, 2019 at 1:20 am Great post! Developing a strong brand strategy enables you to identify and refine your core client profiles, then target marketing to the appropriate niche markets. Knowing your target markets also allows you to hone key messaging that strikes a cord with their specific needs. When we talk about ‘brand’ we aren’t just talking about your logo. Your brand is the sum of all your business represents. It’s your logo, tagline, photography, font, colours, language, and your business’s general vibe. It’s how your business as a whole is presented to your target market. At Chilli, we are incredibly invested in building our client’s brands, as this is the ONLY single asset that will carry it’s worth across platforms and tactics. Reply 1. Katy French says: November 25, 2019 at 11:36 am Well said, Stephany. Reply 2. Donny says: October 19, 2019 at 8:35 pm What a quality article! Thanks for sharing. Reply 1. Katy French says: October 21, 2019 at 10:09 am Thanks, Donny. Hope it helps! Reply 3. Herries says: August 20, 2019 at 9:13 pm Great and complete discussion. It guides a good design direction for many new brands. Reply 1. Katy French says: August 21, 2019 at 6:29 pm Thanks, Herries! Reply 4. Marlene says: August 16, 2019 at 11:49 am A very informative read. Thanks a lot Nate Reply 1. Katy French says: August 19, 2019 at 9:23 am Thanks, Marlene. Hope it helps. Reply 5. MARY MAGDALENE says: August 16, 2019 at 11:46 am Katy French!!! This is so perfect. Thanks a lot. Reply 1. Katy French says: August 19, 2019 at 9:24 am So happy to hear that! Reply 6. Sarah says: July 6, 2019 at 9:11 am Thank you for this! Such a great place for me to start with my small business. Reply 1. Katy French says: July 8, 2019 at 3:00 pm So happy to hear that, Sarah! Best of luck. Reply 7. Creative logo says: June 14, 2019 at 8:17 am I truly love this article for the direct yet supportive guide on visual character! Very straightforward however brimming with astonishing and valuable data. Much obliged! Feel free to visit here: Creative Logo Design Reply 1. Katy French says: June 17, 2019 at 10:33 pm Happy to help! Reply 8. Simisola Omotoso says: June 11, 2019 at 2:50 pm This was very detailed and informational. Now, I couldn’t wait to get started on this. Reply 1. Katy French says: June 17, 2019 at 10:34 pm Good luck on it! Reply 9. joshua ibemgbo says: June 10, 2019 at 7:00 pm What an intriguing read. Amazing content for a Graphic designer looking to initiate a brand identity. Thank you Reply 1. Katy French says: June 17, 2019 at 10:34 pm Thanks so much, Joshua. We do our best 🙂 Reply 10. Deepa Joshi says: May 5, 2019 at 8:12 pm Thank you so much for this, simple and concise. Deepa Joshi Reply 1. Katy French says: May 6, 2019 at 7:08 pm Thanks, Deepa! Glad it brings some clarity. Reply 11. william says: April 16, 2019 at 11:38 pm Well done. What a great read – thanks for making it clear and simple and powerful. I’ve had to try and explain this so many times and this article has been a huge relief and will also serve as a great tool for other. Thanks! Reply 1. Katy French says: April 18, 2019 at 11:36 am Thanks, William! The same goes for us. (Hence, we decided to get it out there once and for all.) Reply 12. bRUNA says: January 6, 2019 at 5:10 am I really appreciate every article on this web page. It helps a lot and it’s written in the language that anyone can understand. Thanks for your effort and time. Reply 13. John says: December 18, 2018 at 2:05 am Great post – very useful!! It rare to find useful articles of such worth. P.S I have noticed a spelling error within the first paragraph of the Typography section. Should it be ‘your brand identity…’ instead of ‘you brand identity…’? Sorry. It’s the designer in me. Reply 1. Katy French says: December 18, 2018 at 12:40 pm Thanks, John! (Typo fixed — we appreciate it.) Reply 14. M says: November 7, 2018 at 9:29 am I genuinely love this article for the straightforward but helpful guide on visual identity! Quite simple but full of amazing and useful information. Thanks! Reply 1. Katy French says: November 14, 2018 at 8:08 pm That’s great to hear. Best of luck on your visual identity. Reply 15. benjamín conde says: August 10, 2018 at 8:04 pm Amazing article! (also the blog aesthetics are perfect) Reply 1. Katy French says: August 20, 2018 at 8:10 am Thanks so much, Benjamin! Reply 16. Kay says: May 14, 2018 at 11:35 pm Hello Nate & Column5 folks, I represent a tiny (but impactful !!!) Aussie NFP and we are working with some special young people to create a social food enterprise. We are starting with purpose and brand development (as you do). This content is so amazing, I was hoping to gain permission to use it (with due accreditation of course), for educational purposes only. You can check us out @BigFeedAU on Twitter & Insty to see how we roll. Our mothership charity is http://www.childrensfoodeducation.org.au, looking forward to your thoughts. Reply 1. Katy French says: May 16, 2018 at 4:31 pm Hi Kay, Thanks for reaching out. We’ll be in touch. Reply 17. Simeon Taiwo says: April 29, 2018 at 4:40 pm This is a great content. I’ve learned so much. Thanks a great deal for sharing. Reply 1. Katy French says: May 2, 2018 at 11:15 am Thanks, Simeon. Hope it helps! Reply 18. anNa says: February 23, 2018 at 7:47 pm What an ass! To use someone else’s blog to sell your company services. Great job on your article, by the way. I always knew there was a lot to branding (much more than I’d care to do), but you guys mad so many of the parts easy to comprehend. Thank you for the step-by-step. And, I’ve bookmarked you guys. I can’t wait to work with you. Reply 1. Katy French says: February 26, 2018 at 5:49 pm Thanks, Anna. We’d love to chat! Reply 19. chris daniells says: August 29, 2017 at 4:36 am Great blog. However, I’d like to mention that once your brand identity has been created, you should always analyze and refine the brand identity accordingly. Track, target and test new strategies and tactics to know what works best. At Om Infosolutions, we have a number of clients that have approached us for revamping their brand identity, which has proven to work really well then. Reply 1. Katy French says: September 1, 2017 at 12:44 pm Absolutely! Thanks for the reminder. Reply 20. Tasha says: July 8, 2017 at 4:56 am This is a great, very comprehensive and perfect in volume piece of content. Not to mention it’s providing so much value with only the lightest of implications of selling the service. Loved it! Reply 1. Katy French says: July 9, 2017 at 12:51 pm Thanks, Tasha. We’re just trying help people build better brands and great content. 🙂 Reply 21. Wes williams says: July 6, 2017 at 6:12 pm Very thorough and clear summation. All I would add is to consider size and simplicity in logo design. A company logo may be used in ways you can foresee — signs in offices and on letterhead are a given, but they may also be printed on small give-away items at conventions or as a tiny icon next to a browser’s URL. The larger or more complicated a logo, the worse it can look in those situations. Reply 1. Katy French says: July 7, 2017 at 12:53 pm Yes, Wes! Such a great thing to keep in mind. Reply 22. effangwa says: June 29, 2017 at 7:27 am very resourceful Reply 1. Katy French says: June 7, 2017 at 12:58 pm Glad to help! Reply 23. helen Arias says: June 8, 2017 at 7:17 am Comprehensive and easy to follow. Reply 24. Aayam Agency says: April 22, 2017 at 4:27 am Very useful guide to create a power brand identity. Fantastic and informative article. I appreciate it. Reply 25. Chris says: February 1, 2017 at 4:53 pm is there a way to choose a good color palette? i always find myself stuck when picking color combinations Reply 1. Nate Butler says: February 1, 2017 at 5:01 pm It’s always good to consider what message you are trying to convey visually, but if you ever want to chat, we’re here to help. Reply 26. Kelly says: February 1, 2017 at 4:52 pm the images for each step are super helpful. i work visually so they’re always appreciated Reply 1. Nate Butler says: February 1, 2017 at 5:00 pm Glad to hear you found them helpful! Reply 27. Joe says: February 1, 2017 at 4:49 pm there’s so many things to consider that I’ve never even thought about. there’s a lot I guess I still need to learn Reply 1. Nate Butler says: February 1, 2017 at 4:59 pm If you need help, we’re always here to chat. Reply 28. Tina says: February 1, 2017 at 4:47 pm thank you for always putting together fantastic guides. they’re invaluable to me Reply 1. Nate Butler says: February 1, 2017 at 4:58 pm Happy to hear that they are useful to you! Reply 29. Jeff says: February 1, 2017 at 4:47 pm this is a great article. i’ll be using this in the future as a quick guide Reply 1. Nate Butler says: February 1, 2017 at 4:57 pm Thanks, Jeff! 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