In today’s marketing world, visuals are key, which is why it’s essential for your brand to tell engaging stories through images and design. However, this process is about more than just creating art. It requires blending creativity with purpose to ensure your business can accurately communicate its core message in a way that captivates potential clients/buyers and leaves a lasting impression — all with just a single glance.
Understanding Brand Identity
Like any element of your company’s digital presence, brand identity is something that needs conscious construction and clear guidelines. This starts with understanding what your brand identity embodies and the role it plays in your business’ visual presence (both digital and otherwise).
What Is Brand Identity?
The term brand identity refers to the visual elements that combine to represent a brand externally and, therefore, the elements that customers automatically associate with that brand. This includes a brand’s colors, logo, and other design elements. The language and tone they use in written elements also help to create a brand’s identity, especially if these elements are consciously paired with visual assets to create a clear and cohesive image.
The Role of Graphic Design in Brand Identity
In the field of graphic design, brand identity is crucial because it helps designers orient the assets they create, from logos to infographics to labels and packaging, toward the universal messaging and image the company wants to convey. Therefore, to enhance a brand’s identity, graphic designers will use more than just the same color pallet for your brand but also incorporate consistent typography and visual imagery that helps to reinforce that clear brand image.
The Power of Visual Storytelling
Visual storytelling is a graphic design technique that brands use to send powerful, emotionally driven messages through producing highly visual content. Although text may be a part of visual storytelling, it’s not the main attraction. Think of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaigns, which combine three simple words with powerful imagery and a recognizable logo to create a motivational message for the audience.
Like with Nike, brands that effectively use visual storytelling are able to emotionally connect with their audiences and communicate narratives (stories themselves) or big ideas about their brands in a captivating way that words alone could never accomplish.
Visual Storytelling Tools
In the modern era, visual storytelling tools are easy to find, and many are accessible and easy to use. Tools such as Canva and Adobe Creative suite, for example, enable creators to dream up visual images that capture their brand’s identity. From there, visually oriented platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest make it easy to get those messages out.
Building Your Visual Brand Identity from Scratch
Constructing a brand identity needs to be purposeful and structured. Just choosing colors and paying someone to design a logo is not enough. Rather, it is important to approach the development of a brand’s visual identity as a step-by-step process rooted in both your values as a business as well as the values of the customers you hope to attract.
Define Your Brand’s Core Values
Your brand’s visual identity needs to be rooted in strong values that go beyond colors and fonts. Rather, it is important to start by figuring out what your company stands for and why that matters in your business to craft the types of visuals — starting with a logo — that speak to those values and present you in an authentic light.
For example, consider Apple. This is a brand with a clear, consistent, and authentic visual identity that is rooted in its core values. As a tech company, Apple prizes innovative thinking, quality products, and simplicity of use. Its products and branding exude these values through simple, sleek, uncluttered design, often accompanied by a minimized color palette that further enhances its sleek, modern ideals.
Conduct Market Research
Once a brand knows what it stands for, it’s time to pair that knowledge to the audience who will appreciate such a message. Similar to defining a brand’s own values, conducting market research is essential for the authenticity of a brand’s visual message. It’s important to understand who your brand serves and to match the values of those consumers with your own. Otherwise, the emotional element of your message might not hit, canceling out the benefit of such a careful plan.
Develop a Visual Style Guide
With values and audience aligned, it’s time to start developing the type of visual style that will speak to them both in a consistent manner. Developing a visual style guide is one way to do this, as it will help establish that consistency and cohesion as well as serve as a record of your brand’s visual identity-related decisions, including logo usage, color palette, typography, and imagery guidelines. The guide should also provide specific examples of how and where to use each element.
Create Consistent Visual Content
With the style guide as a reference, it’s time to start creating visual content. As you do, take care to consult the style guide frequently to ensure that your visual content is consistent, cohesive, and recognizable across all platforms. This attention to detail in your visual identity is how you can build trust as a brand and help users to easily and readily recognize your content. One good way to do this is by using templates for recurring content, such as social media posts or emails, that are already loaded with the right colors, fonts, and logo treatments.
Get Started on Building Your Brand with the Elevation Ten Thousand Team
Whether you are building your brand’s visual identity from scratch or just trying to streamline the assets you already have, partnering with an experienced team of pros can make all the difference in terms of cohesion, consistency, and ultimate success. At Elevation Ten Thousand, our team of graphic artists, marketing strategists, and experienced brand identity managers can help you with every step of development. Contact us today to learn more about our visual brand identity design and management services.
