How To Create A Brand Identity Design

Your logo – how do you create a brand identity design?

We already went over what branding is and the importance of it last week,, but what about your logo? People often use the word “brand” when talking about logos, however a logo is just one part of a brand. It’s a symbol that represents your brand identity and a deeper emotional tie.

What Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity is the face of a brand. It’s the visual component of your brand that represents those larger ideas. Logos are included in this, along with typography, colors, packaging, and messaging. These together all complement and reinforce the existing reputation of a brand, while attracting both new and existing customers. Since this is representing and reinforcing the emotions of a brand, it’s essential that the brand identity stays consistent and the message portrayed is clear.

What Is Brand Identity Design?

So with that being said, brand identity design is simply the actual process of creating the logo, color palette, typography, etc. To keep your brand identity strong, consistent, and attractive, be sure to keep the below design elements in mind when creating your logo.  

We help a lot of our clients with logo design as this is not always an easy task. Check out some of the before and after logos we have helped our clients with (the top image is the before, the bottom is the after)

How To Create A Brand Identity Design

1. Purpose & Positioning: The first part of establishing a brand identity is determining what your purpose and positioning is. The brand purpose is the reason for your existence and how you want to leave an impact, as brand positioning is the naming of who your product is for and why your product is a better option than your competitors. Basically, brand positioning is the process of making the purpose actionable. Defining these will inform your strategy as you create a logo.

2. Market Research: A brand’s purpose and positioning can be informed by thorough market research. Research is crucial to understand the culture of your target market so you can make that emotional appeal to consumers. This can be done by doing research online, interviews, surveys, etc. – whatever will help you gather a lot of information. Defining the traits of your customer persona will help you know what kind of a personality your brand should have in the end.

3. Brand Personality: Ergo, a brand personality is an important thing to consider. It will come through in every part of your brand identity, having a huge impact on the voice and tone used in your marketing materials and other communications. If a personality isn’t established, customers will get mixed messages and have trouble connecting with your brand. Picture the kind of person your brand would be, and figure out traits from there.

4. Memorable Logo: Your logo is the center of your brand identity design. It’s the piece of your brand identity that people will be exposed to the most, so it needs to line up with all the other elements of your brand identity, as well as the broader emotional appeal of your brand. To increase your chances of having a memorable logo that encourages a strong emotional response, go for a simple and instantly recognizable look. Think Disney, Apple, Google, or Coca-Cola. When a logo is simple, it becomes an open canvas customers can fill with positive experiences they have with the brand. Additionally, you want to think about all the places your logo could be displayed when thinking of design. A logo needs to be flexible enough to look great on a website or as a tiny social media icon, which is also why simplicity is great.

5. Attractive Color Palette: Having a memorable logo also goes along with having a simple color palette. Aim to have 1 to 3 primary colors, based on the emotions conveyed by those colors and how they reflect your brand. A lot of color psychology goes into this – blue expresses calm and trust, red promotes hunger and love, yellow stands for passion and energy. You also have to consider the different tints of shades of the colors to show feelings. Still, you can select secondary colors to be used alongside your primary colors in some of your materials, to help your brand stay exciting and stand out – while still staying on brand.

6. Professional Typography & Graphics: Next comes your typography, or font, which you want to work in harmony with your logo and colors. Fonts are super powerful and help your brand identity become more recognizable, but again you want to try to keep it simple – don’t use super fancy or default fonts, don’t mix more than two fonts, and don’t use all-caps. You should however choose the right font size and line length for legibility, align your text to the left, and mix contrasting fonts. Keep in mind though that these rules can be broken depending on your brand identity and what works. Graphic-wise, just be careful in your icon-design that the font works. Brand identity is an extended visual language when supporting graphics, design assets, icons, and photographs are added. Pay close attention to flat geometric shapes, shadows, front-facing, background colors, and pixel grids.

If you need some help creating your logo, you can also try the Wix logo maker! It’s not free (it is free to have them created but you’ll need to pay in order to download), but you can get some good ideas before you pay for anything. Be sure to give it a try!

So do you have an awesome logo? If so please share it with us below!

And of course if you need additional help, let us guide you with our services and courses. Just contact us below!

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