How to Create Brand Identity: A Walkthrough for Business People

Do you want to create a distinctive and memorable brand identity?

You’ll discover all the information you require in this guide for enhancing your visual identity and brand image.

Here is what we will be discussing:

• The significance of branding and the requirement for a strong, carefully thought-out company identity.
• To leave a strong brand image on your customer, creating a visual brand identity design involves choosing the appropriate design elements, color palette, and other factors.
• Examples of memorable brand identities and how they have wowed their audience.

What is Brand Identity?

How people perceive you depends on your brand identity.

Consider it this way: You’re likely to form an opinion on someone you just met. Then, as you continue to contact that person, your opinion of them grows.

You get a sense of who they are as a person. Undoubtedly, your image of them and your appraisal of their personality will influence your dealings with them in the future.

Your brand identity is similar in many ways. Your brand’s personality is reflected in how your company is positioned, its visual identity, and its interaction with its audience.

But it takes time for a company to establish a strong brand identity. So instead, it is meticulously developed and promoted using a brand strategy technique. A brand strategy allows you to stand out from the competition and have a deeper understanding of your target audience and brand purpose.

The actions you need to follow to create your brand strategy and, ultimately, your brand identity are listed below. But let’s first answer crucial questions. Check out some finest branding strategies.

Why is Brand Identity Important?

Three primary factors make having a strong brand identity so crucial.

• Develop familiarity and trust with your target audience.
• In a sea of rivals, you stand out.
• Develop a customer loyalty base.

Develop Familiarity and Trust with Your Target Audience

59% of consumers, to be exact, prefer to purchase new products from recognizable companies.

Since you can buy from someone you know, why would you buy from someone you don’t know?

Strong brand positioning and messaging are essential from a business standpoint.

By grabbing your audience’s attention on numerous marketing channels, such as social media channels, a distinctive voice increases brand voice. In this approach, having a unique brand identity makes you more likely to draw in new customers.

You can connect and engage with your target audience by having a thorough awareness of who they are, what they need, and what they want. As a result, you’ll be able to identify your unique selling point, often known as the feature that gives you an advantage over rivals.

In a Sea of Rivals, You Stand Out

Many online shops sell gadgets, but who are you most likely to buy from? The one with a strong brand identity is the most likely response.

Your brand identity is frequently shown in how you interact with potential customers, the color scheme and other visual elements, the principles you uphold, and the whole kit and kaboodle of brand identity.

You’ll probably make a lasting impression on your target audience if you have a unique brand identity. You succeed in outperforming your rivals by doing this.

Develop a Customer Loyalty Base

By upholding a consistent brand voice, you may win the favor of your clients.

Giving your customers a unique brand experience can be made possible by such values, a consistent visual identity, and other factors.

In addition, people will kill for a positive encounter, in case you didn’t know. They wouldn’t entirely kill for a better customer experience, but they would spend 16% more.

These satisfied clients quickly recommend you to others, which helps you attract new customers. See what’s going on right here? With a powerful brand identity, you are successfully developing your brand.

What Does a Brand Identity Include?

To effectively communicate, you assemble a toolkit of visual components when you create a brand identity. Depending on your brand’s requirements, this could be simple or involved.

Brand identity includes:

• Logo
• Typography
• Color palette

If you produce more diverse material (or intend to), you could build extra components to represent your brand across mediums, such as:

• Photography
• Iconography
• Visualization of data
• Illustration

You don’t have to design everything at once, which is lovely. Start with the fundamental logo, color, and typography if you don’t have a lot of resources or are unsure of your future needs. You can add more components as you continue your brand identity building.

All Time Design is a preferred plug to create or rebrand your brand personality.

What Makes a Strong Brand Identity?

The problem is this. Just because you have a written brand identity doesn’t mean it’s good or valuable. Even if you create every component required, it might not be enough to help you reach your long-term objectives.

Everyone needs to be able to relate to your brand, both your internal staff and the people who will interact with it (such as brand ambassadors and content providers) (e.g., customers).

Building a strong brand identity is essential for real success.

Distinctive

It attracts attention and stands out from rivals.

Memorable

It leaves a lasting impression on the eye. (For example, Apple’s emblem is so recognizable that their products bear the logo, not their name.)

Scalable

It may expand and change alongside the brand.

Flexible

It can be applied to various situations (web, print, etc.).

Cohesive

Each component works together harmoniously.

Simple to use

It is simple for designers to utilize.

A lot of time and effort will be lost if you create an identity that doesn’t appeal to your target market or accurately reflects your business.

Are you prepared to start creating a memorable brand identity?

How to Create a Brand Identity

The procedures listed below will walk you through every step of the branding process, whether rebranding an existing company or creating a brand identity from scratch.

Understanding your core beliefs, target market, and rivals is essential to developing a great brand identity. Additionally, it entails developing a visual identity and a style guide for uniformity.

The step-by-step strategies for creating a strong brand identity include the following:

Step 1: Recognize the Motivation Behind Your Brand

Why? Because understanding your fundamental values, mission statement, and value proposition helps you comprehend your purpose.

If you aren’t clear on all these things, you won’t be able to explain what makes you special or why others should buy from you.

Therefore, getting your planner and responding to the following questions is a smart place to start:

• Why is your company in operation?
• What distinguishes you?
• Why should your target audience be interested in you?

Plan your tagline, brand voice, brand essence, brand message, and more using the answers provided.

For instance, POP Fit’s emphasis on diversity contributes to its distinctive value position. See this advertisement from their website.

Their brand identity is impeccable to the point where you can know it is an inclusive brand just by looking at it.

Don’t only tell yourself what’s unique about your business in your head; that’s one crucial thing to remember. Put it in writing. To establish a unified brand voice, you must communicate this knowledge to your team and include it in your brand style guide.

Step 2: Research Your Rivals and Target Market

You must don your researcher’s hat and do two different sorts of study in step two:

Audience research

You must learn as much as possible about your target audience to develop a brand identity that people will remember. In this manner, you can develop a brand that appeals to them.

For instance, if you’re marketing to business owners, you’ll need to know your target audience. For example, is it solopreneurs who manage a variety of duties throughout the day or seasoned business owners who oversee teams?

You may develop a brand voice that speaks to your audience based explicitly on who they are.

The following inquiries should be used for determining your audience:

• What do your ideal customers buy? Who are they?
• What are their objectives, problems, interests, and drives?
• Where are the likely hangout spots for your target audience?
• When and why do they make purchases?
• What is the spending plan?

Talking to your audience is beneficial even if you are not new to the area. Ask your community what they appreciate about you and what they like about your competition by conducting surveys and polls, listening to their social media discussions, and speaking with them directly.

Here are a few queries to ponder with your audience:

• How likely are you to tell others about our company?
• What do you think makes our business stand out from the competitors, in your opinion?
• Before deciding on us, who else did you consider?
• How would you rate your interaction with us?
• What one thing about us would you alter if you could?

Competitor Research

Here, your task is to research your rivals. Find out what it is that distinguishes them. Why do consumers purchase from them?

Visit their website, but do more. Continue by examining their social media presence, email marketing efforts, events, webinars, and other platforms.

Research the following information about your rivals:

• Their brand objective, value proposition, and tagline.

• The methods of marketing they employ.
• What clients have to say about them.
• Their communicational tone and voice.
• The images they employ and the consistency of their visual identity

Not imitating them is the aim. The purpose of competitor analysis is to learn how to position your brand differently.

Step 3: Audit Your Brand Identity Design

After researching your brand values, mission, potential customers, and competitors evaluate your current brand identity.

If you’re just getting started and developing a new brand identity, feel free to skip this stage. This phase is a bare minimum requirement for those preparing to rebrand.

Think and ask yourself:

• Is your brand consistent both online and off?
• Does your audience connect with your brand?
• Is the visual representation of your company the same across all marketing channels?
• Is the voice, actions, and messaging of your entire brand consistent?

To understand your internal and external elements clearly, you may also perform a SWOT analysis for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Step 4: Develop Your Brand Voice and Messaging

It’s time to start developing now that you’ve done your market research and have all the knowledge.

Start developing your brand’s unique voice. Is it both amusing and appropriate? Is it warm and knowledgeable? Or are you being sarcastic like Gucci?

You will communicate with your target audience and clients in this unique voice. Therefore, you must maintain a consistent brand voice whether you’re writing an email to prospective clients, a social media caption, or a website copy.

Your audience will remember you because of this vocal constancy.

Innocent Drinks is a prime example of a distinctive brand voice. All of their marketing materials, including their website copy, social media platform, YouTube videos, and product copy, have a casual, approachable tone that is constant throughout.

Your brand messaging needs to be considered as well. It demonstrates your values.

Say you only buy environmentally friendly stuff. This should therefore be emphasized in every message you send. You don’t want to confuse your consumers by, for example, promoting a brand that disregards environmental issues.

Step 5: Create Your Visual Identity

You may start working on every visual aspect of your brand. These comprise key elements like your company logo, color palette, typography, and more.

Let’s talk about each of the visual elements that will make up your brand’s exterior:

Design Your Logo

Your brand personality is defined by your logo design.

Think of the bird-themed Twitter logo. It amply demonstrates the independence and lightning-fast messaging the social media platform stands for. This is what the network enables you to do, right?

Additionally, logos convey your brand story. Did you know that the arrow in the Amazon logo from A to Z denotes that everything is available from A to Z?

Choose Your Brand’s Color Palette

Choosing brand colors is crucial for sustaining a consistent visual identity. These brand colors will be used for your packaging, website, social media visuals, and everything else. Choose accordingly.

It’s ideal for delving into color psychology before developing your color scheme. Every color has a different effect on your audience. For example, do you know why blue are the brand colors of Facebook and Twitter’s logos? Because the color evokes loyalty and trust.

Make sure to choose a primary color and complementary secondary colors. Additionally, maintain the Pantone and Hexadecimal codes close to hand to ensure consistency when using those colors for digital and print media, respectively.

Finalize your brand visual elements

Will your design feature squares or circles? Or would you rather have images like those used by Mailchimp as part of their visual brand?

Every location you use an image, from your website header to social media pages, should be distinctly you. So that your brand is immediately recognizable and provides a consistent look, all your social media pages include the same logo as the profile photo.

Work on your typography

Your choice of brand fonts also has a personality. They convey a feeling and have an impression that lasts.

In other words, fonts communicate visual language. It’s the reason why bleeding typography is frequently seen in horror films. A cursive font style is also feminine.

Select the typeface (the formatting, such as bold, italic, regular, etc.) and one to three fonts. Here is a helpful infographic that includes the information you need to know before starting work and the anatomy of typography.

But while choosing, make sure the brand fonts are readable. After all, you don’t want potential buyers to strain their eyes to read your phrase.

Step 6: Be Consistent with Your Brand Identity

It is your responsibility to sell your brand identity. How? Publish your logo. Create all marketing materials with your company’s fonts, colors, and brand elements. The infographics you create ought to be consistent with your brand.

At the same time, adhere to your brand guidelines and messaging and communicate with your audience in line with your distinctive brand voice.

Making a brand style guide to share with your team is an excellent method to keep branding consistent and on the same page. Additionally, you can design branded templates that tell your staff about your target clientele, voice, principles, and value proposition.

Do you need yet another piece of advice to stay on brand 24/7? Establish a brand kit to manage your brand assets.

You can construct a brand kit using All Time Design as your design option, which will store your visual brand information, such as fonts, logos, color palette, and more.

Step 7: Monitor Your Brand Identity

Recall how we mentioned that a brand identity is carefully developed. This phase now discusses that. However, it would be best if you did more than develop a brand identity and evaluate your efforts.

Instead, creating a compelling and strong brand identity that attracts customers is a continuous process that calls for paying attention to what your audience thinks of your identity.

You may discover how well your brand personality appeals to your target audience and what you can change to strengthen your overall brand identity in this way.

Customer feedback, social media conversations, brand mentions, and remarks about what others are saying behind your back are some performance measures to monitor. Consider working on it if you discover something many people are always discussing.

Strong Brand Identity Examples

We’ll go through some additional instances of companies with a strong brand image now that you know the framework for doing so:

Coca-Cola

Did the iconic red ribbon-and-logo design of Coca-Cola suddenly come to mind?

It’s because Coca-Cola’s brand identity is strong. Additionally, the brand conjures up thoughts of enjoyment, festivities, family, and friends.

Why? Because Coca-Cola promotes this brand strategy across all of its marketing channels, including billboards, social media commercials, and the awesome “Share a Coke” campaign.

Frank Body

Frank Body has established a successful brand image in a short time, despite being a relatively new brand compared to the two giants we fangirled over.

They all emphasize using natural skincare products, having a lively and witty brand voice, and caring for yourself. The proof is in their website copy.

Apple

It’s impossible to discuss a strong brand identity without mentioning Apple, given its enduring focus on minimalism.

Apple is all about prestige, lifestyle, and privacy. That they conceal information about their newest items is understandable. Here is a screenshot of their website.

Asana

“To help humanity thrive by enabling teams worldwide to work together seamlessly” is Asana’s stated objective. When the founders started at Facebook, it was obvious that they required a project management and collaboration tool to allow the teams to work more efficiently together.

The term “Asana” in Sanskrit alludes to a particular sitting position used by yogis, and the firm name pays homage to the Buddhist concepts of focus and flow. This is also strongly shown in their visual brand, along with their principles of “creating big things, fast” and teamwork:

• Asana extensively uses white space for concentration and colorful splashes to “inject vitality” into the workstation.
• The three dots in the logo are grouped to represent cooperation and balance.

Hustle & Hope Greeting Cards

Hustle & Hope sells its goods as more than just greeting cards. Their stationery and greeting cards address more challenging subjects like job searching and personal growth. The cards are intended to “level up” the recipient in some way by combining straightforward inspirational language with a code on the back of the card that connects to digital information and tips.

Ashley Sutton, the company’s founder, had always intended to launch a stationery business. Still, after working for some of the top Fortune 500 organizations, she developed a love for enabling individuals to be their best professional selves. She then had an insight that would eventually serve as the cornerstone of what distinguishes her business: “Why not sell cool greeting cards AND aid others!” The execution of this brand’s identity is as follows:

• The paper goods include contemporary, vibrant graphics that leap off the page and catchy slogans that go beyond wishful thinking.
• In terms of the product itself and its goal to reinforce an idea, the novelty of scanning the code leaves an impression.

Burt’s Bees

Burt’s Bees expanded from its modest beginnings in beekeeping and honey sales to suit the need for organic and environmentally friendly personal care products. To conserve biodiversity and our place in the world, the company aims to “make informed choices to minimize our impact on nature and work to safeguard it.”

Their original design, which features the inventor with a beard, emphasizes simplicity and modesty. The aesthetics embodied by other cosmetics and personal care items sharply contrast this. Here are some additional ways the company avoids flashiness while maintaining its obsession with nature:

• Burt’s Bees uses recyclable packaging and gets its ingredients ethically for its products.
• They contribute to environmental charities and other green causes.

Marcella NYC

Initiated in founder Siyana Huszar’s apartment, Marcella NYC has become a well-known brand by fusing timeless shapes with a carefree appearance. In addition, she aimed to provide high-end, stylish clothing that was both accessible and more environmentally friendly.

In an interview with Forbes, Siyana remarked, “I wanted to outfit a woman like me: someone who wanted to feel bold and strong and subtle but not scared to stand out in a crowd.” “Even though my designs are straightforward and minimalist, they usually have a cool touch.

The brand identity of Marcella NYC became firmly anchored on the empowerment of women and girls.

• The apparel assumes a monochromatic, homogeneous camel, white, gray, and black appearance. Ideal for creating a capsule wardrobe with a unified style.
• Each piece of apparel a consumer purchases helps fund a whole week of school for girls in need, including books, materials, uniforms, and hygiene products, staying loyal to their women’s empowerment credo.
• To uphold its dedication to sustainability, the company employs biodegradable packaging, recyclable materials, and organic and sustainable fabrics whenever possible.

Each of these elements contributes to the development of a consistent brand identity. Any piece of apparel is instantly recognizable as Marcella NYC.

In the illustrations above, the brand is significantly more important than the company’s logo or other graphics. More on this will be covered in the sections below.

5 Tips for Presenting Your Brand Identity Designs

To create a successful brand identity, you need loads of strategy, money, time, and resources. Make the most of it by integrating a distribution strategy and displaying the newest brand to the whole company. Then, encourage other teams and departments to use the brand identity in documents that are both internal and external after that. Your brand will stick the more you use it.

• To present and communicate your cohesive brand identity, use branded templates.
• Include detailed instructions for using the pieces and templates.
• Advise on increasing social media post reach and engagement, such as suggested publishing times, best practices, or guidelines for collaborating with the paid marketing team.
• Display the brand development process and brand strategy.
• Share your brand guidelines with all internal teams and stakeholders openly and honestly. This ensures the brand guidelines remain consistent with keeping your brand’s identity at the top.

Create a Brand Identity That Resonates With Customers

We are confident your overwhelm has subsided now that the stages for creating a unique brand identity have been set out. Want to make branding even more enjoyable?

Join All Time Design today to begin developing your complete brand development and building a brand kit to stay on brand.

With a wealth of experience from an assigned graphic designer, your small business can start marking its presence on social media and competing with rivals.

For every company they have worked with, ATD excels in using a visual language with graphics and shapes to transmit a unique appearance across various materials (brochures, business cards, etc.) and media (websites, social media, etc.).

Start branding your business tools and marketing materials with All Time Design today! For as low as $499 monthly, your true branding experience can begin!

Request a demo now!