What Is Brand Identity? And How To Develop A Great One

Every human tends to have some unique traits which contribute to offering them their own identity. These characteristics again play a key role in distinguishing a particular person from others. The same theory applies to brands as well. If you are owning a brand or are on a mission to build one, then brand identity is an aspect that you should necessarily focus on.

It is something that will offer uniqueness to your brand. Also, by focusing on this, you would be able to set your brand apart from the others who are already operating in the same space.

The brand identity is again something that has the potential to shape your business. If you are just starting your brand and lack a clear idea on this, then we must say that you have surely come to the right place!

Here, in this comprehensive blog post, we will focus on clearing all your confusion related to brand identity. Along with that, we will also let you know about some of the best tips by following which you would be able to develop a great one. Now, without wasting any more time, let’s begin with the discussion to get a good understanding of this:

What Is Referred To As Brand Identity?

The brand identity of any business is considered to be the means through which it focuses on establishing a personality in the customers’ minds. And, as a part of it, you should have a memorable logo, icons, color palette along with other visual elements.

All of these things help in offering a unique identity to your brand. Due to this reason, you should essentially have all of these elements, if you are focusing to establish your brand identity. These specific elements again play a key role in reflecting the values, mission, and purpose of your business.

Well-defined and memorable brand identity cards contribute to having all the elements like colors, logos, and fonts. One of the important things to note in this aspect is that brand identity is different from branding and brand image. So, you should not be confused between these terms.

As already mentioned above, your brand identity makes your brand memorable and allows people to immediately recognize your business. If you have used all the right elements in establishing your brand identity, then whenever your audience sees your brand logo or name, they are most likely to associate it with your service or product.

And this identity helps in building the connection, especially between you and your customers. Not only that but it is known to be an effective way to build customer loyalty. It also helps in determining the way in which your customers will develop a perception of your brand.

If you are looking forward to developing a solid brand identity, then the following section is going to be incredibly helpful for you. So, consider reading this detailed blog post from the start to the end to achieve your desired objective:

Key Tips That You Should Follow For Developing A Robust Brand Identity

• Always Be Clear On Who You Are

The first and most important thing that you need to consider while establishing brand identity is to gain better clarity on who you are as a brand. As a part of it, you should know about certain key elements which include the following:

• Your values or what are those specific values that drive your business
• Your mission or why you are currently operating as this business
• Your brand voice
• Your unique positioning or what are those specific factors that differentiate you from your competitors
• Your brand personality

All of these elements tend to play a key role in defining your brand. So, before you begin building your brand identity, you should first focus on gaining a clear understanding of each of these aspects.

Now, if you are having a tough time figuring these out, then there are certain questions that you should ask yourself. Answering these questions will help you to understand your business well. These include the following:

• Why have you started this business?
• What makes you distinct from others?
• What are your core values and beliefs?
• Which three words you would like to use when someone asks you to describe your brand in three words?

Once you get a definite answer to all these questions, you would be able to get a proper understanding of your brand. It will again help you a lot in building the identity of your brand.

• Make Genuine Attempts To Know Your Customer

Your customers are the ones who decide the future of your business. So, no doubt, they are your biggest asset. Due to this reason, you should focus on investing your time in knowing your customers.

Now, that you know your brand well, it is time to gain a deeper understanding of your target customers. Knowing your customers will help you a lot in building your brand identity. And to do that, all that you need is to carry out exhaustive market research.

A lot of businesses these days find it to be helpful to create distinct customer personas that they can utilize at the time of discovering what their buyers want. If you are having a tough time building this, then you can use any customer persona templates that you want, readily available online.

• Invest Your Time In Knowing Your Competitors

The next thing that you should do for achieving success involves knowing your competitors well. Yes, it is incredibly important to do detailed research on your competitors. It is an important step that you need to follow as it will help you a lot in building your brand identity. As a part of this, you should get an answer to certain questions which include the following:

• What are the other brands operating in your space doing?
• What similarities do you share with them?
• In what ways are you distinct from them?
• How can you set your business apart from the others, both in terms of your brand identity and your offerings and products?
• Focus On Developing Your Voice

It is the next important step that you are required to follow before you decide on the fonts, logos, and colors that you are going to use for establishing your brand identity. As a part of this, you should focus on getting a good understanding of what you are trying to convey.

And what are the best means to convey this information? You should gain better clarity on whether your brand voice is playful, authoritative, or friendly.

• Pick Your Colours, Select Your Fonts And Create And Logo

Once, you are done with the research aspect, it is time for implementation. The findings of your study will help you a lot in coming up with top-notch outcomes. In this step, you are required to focus on developing the visual elements using which, you would be able to build your brand identity.

It involves choosing the colors and fonts for your brand and finally creating an outstanding logo that effectively communicates your brand message. Many of the brands even focus on developing a set of illustrations or icons which helps them offer a distinct identity.

You should be extremely careful while selecting fonts. By choosing the brand fonts and logo fonts wisely, you would be able to offer a distinct advantage to your brand.

There are typically four important types of typography that you should first know about before you move ahead in the same direction. It includes the following:

• Sans serif fonts which include Franklin Gothic or Helvetica. By using these fonts, you would be able to offer a contemporary and sleek look to your brand.
• Serif fonts include Garamond or Times New Roman. In case, you want your brand to look traditional and trustworthy, then this could be the perfect option for you to choose.
• Display fonts are another type that tends to have a specialized element. It could be a hand-drawn or artistic edge, shadowing, unusual shapes, etc. By using this font type, you would be able to create a unique and memorable brand identity along with a bold statement.
• Script typography especially involves cursive handwriting. Some examples of this type of font are Pacifico, Allura, etc. By utilizing these fonts, you would be able to add a feminine or luxurious feel to your brand.

Similar to typography, you should also be extremely careful while choosing colors. The colors that you use tend to have a considerable impact on how your brand is seen by your audience.

Some of the best colors that you can use for your brand include red, yellow, orange, blue, green, black, etc. depending on the message, you wish to convey. For example, you can choose red, if you want your brand identity to be reflected as exciting, and loud.

Similarly, the orange color is something that you should use if you want your brand to appear playful and friendly. Yellow is again a color that shows happiness. So, it is a good choice for those who want their brand to appear as affordable and accessible.

Another sophisticated and modern color that you can choose to use for your brand is black. By using this color, you would be able to offer a classic look to your brand.

Considering all of these points, you would be able to come up with an amazing business card design for your brand.

• Focus On Creating A Brand Style Guide

You should also invest some of your time to create an effective brand style guide. It is something that you must have if you are focusing to preserve your brand identity. After you have created all the brand identity design elements, this should be the next step that you need to follow.

By concentrating on these aspects, you would be able to ensure that these are utilized in the right manner.

This document effectively outlines your design assets. Also, it incorporates certain other things such as how and when to use these assets any design do’s and don’ts, etc. Thus, will help in ensuring that the design you create synchronizes with your brand identity.

While establishing brand identity, you should also focus on being consistent. Consistency is something that will help you in building a robust brand identity. So, to come up with best-in-class outcomes, you need to have a consistent approach.

Like, you should keep the brand elements consistent for every platform. It means that you should use the same element in your website and your social media platforms. If you use distinct ones, then you would result in confusing your customers which again negatively impacts your brand. People will see your brand as less professional and trustworthy due to this.

Thus, you need to make sure that you stick to a brand guide every time. Also, your brand guide should effectively cover all the distinct elements of your brand identity. By focusing on all of these aspects, you would be able to successfully build your brand loyalty and brand recognition in the long term.

• Consider Explaining Your Brand Identity

One of the important things that you should do while establishing brand identity involves creating rules or guidelines around how the elements are to be utilized. As a part of it, you can consider creating a simple one-page explainer or a multi-page brand identity presentation. Once you are done creating these, your main objective is to compile everything together in a single package.

• Assess And Modify If Anything Needed

After you are done establishing your brand identity by creating an amazing logo and selecting the fonts and colors, it is time to assess everything. Evaluating each of these aspects will help you to know whether any modifications are required or not. Along with that, you should also consistently monitor the effectiveness of your guidelines and what outcomes, they can deliver.

In A Nutshell

Now that, you are done reading this comprehensive blog post on brand identity, it is the time when you should focus on implementing all of these tips and start effectively developing your brand identity.

Hopefully, you have found this detailed guide to be interesting. If you need any sort of assistance, in this aspect, then you need to approach a professional web to print service provider like WTPBiz. We, at WTPBiz, are dedicated to helping you manage all aspects of printing. We can assist you in implemeting a web to print solution and creating your own unique print identity.

For more information, call us today.