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How to Create a Successful and Impactful Brand Identity in 2021
Posted by Naina Trivedi on October 27, 2021
No matter what your business offers, chances are other companies offer it too. So how can you differentiate yourself from your competitors? By creating a unique brand identity. In today’s day and age, where consumers are tired of seeing the same strategies and content over and over again, used by different businesses, every business must understand their niche and create a brand that resonates with their core values.
So Where To Begin?
First things first—Wikipedia, defines brand identity as a collection of individual components, such as a name, a design, a set of images, a slogan, a vision, writing style, a particular font or a symbol, etc., which sets the brand aside from others.
Regardless of its field, every business must understand that a strong brand identity doesn’t happen overnight. The process of coming up with the right mission and vision statements, logo, and brand identity can be both challenging and confusing. You can’t just pick a few colours and haphazardly slap together a logo. You need to approach your design strategy to build an identity that truly reflects your brand—and can support your business as you grow. This requires deep thinking, a team with strong communication and design skills, and an intimate understanding of who you are, what you do, and how you want to present your brand to the world.
But with the right guidance or the right marketing strategy, your business can move through the process effectively and come up with a brand identity that reflects and represents your brand.
We’ve broken down the process of creating a compelling and memorable brand identity, including our best practices, to help your business along the way. Follow this guide, and you’ll end up with a beautiful, functional brand identity that will help you outshine your competition, connect with the right people, and tell your brand story through every piece of content.
What Makes A Strong Brand Identity?
Here is the thing, even if you have a very compelling brand identity on paper, that doesn’t mean it is a strong and effective one. A memorable and effective brand identity should be working for everyone, be it your internal teams or people who would interact with your brand.
To truly have a successful brand identity, it should be:
unique and should stand out from your competitors.
memorable.
flexible, and it must suit all platforms be it digital, print, OOH, or television.
cohesive. Each component of the brand should co-relate to each other and must complement all the elements.
easy to apply. It must be something that all designers can work well with for any given campaign.
If you design an identity that doesn’t reflect your business core values or resonate with your audiences, you are wasting a lot of time, money, and effort.
How To Build A Brand Identity?
Step 1: Finalize the Foundation
Before directly jumping into designing the logo and brand guide, it’s important to understand that any brand identity is similar to constructing a house. It is vital to have a stable and robust foundation to build a long-lasting beautiful home. The same goes for a business—first, you need to know who you are; what’s your personality? What do you care about? What do you do? How do you talk about what you do? These are the core elements of your brand that your visual identity will communicate. If you don’t have this foundation to build upon, you can’t design a visual identity that properly tells your brand story.
Before you proceed, make sure you know your:
brand’s core values. First, pin down the brand’s core principles such as your purpose, missions, vision, and values.
brand name. If you haven’t already, decide on a name that would be unique to your brand and do some competitor research to make sure that your name isn’t registered by any existing business.
Brand essence. This is your voice, tone, and personality.
Messaging. Know your tagline, value proposition, and messaging pillars to ensure your visual identity communicates the right story.
Step 2: Competitor Analysis
Building a memorable and successful brand identity is all about differentiation and uniqueness from your correct competitors. While doing a competitor audit, try to compare yourself with all the leaders in your industry and how your brand compares in terms of your visual presentation.
How We Do It
As we move through the process, we always pay special attention to how the competitors present themselves in terms of common visual elements, trends, industry-specific visual themes, brand personalities, etc. Read more about our Muse 2 case study to see how we utilized consumer insights while devising our strategy.
Step 3: Design a Look and Feel for Your Brand
All elements of the design should complement each other and should be easy to understand in order to establish a memorable brand:
Design your Logo
Select the colour palate
Determine your brand’s typographic styles and usage
Identify additional design elements, such as, photography, illustrations, iconography, data visualization
Step 4: Create a Brand Guide
Even if you create a very beautiful brand identity, but are not able to communicate via a brand guide then you are likely wasting your time and effort. Make sure to include clear, and easy-to-understand/follow guidelines for every segment of your brand identity. Include examples and illustrations for all formats; print, web, video, and interactive elements, if it applies to your brand.
How We Do It
Check out our award-winning branding projects for a few of our clients such as Living Art Centre, Moyo and Indus.
How To Use The Brand Identity?
It’s also important to understand that you can’t just make your brand identity available to the public and expect your audiences to know how to use it. Consistency is key when it comes to building a strong brand, so enforcing proper usage will be imperitive.
Designate a point person to answer any and all questions related to the brand application, and implement a system of quality control to preserve your brand integrity. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t have the resources to take on the project yourself, consider bringing in some experts like our Connectors. Book a call today with our expert Connectors to create a memorable and effective brand identity for your business.
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