Having an excellent product or service isn’t enough in a competitive market. It is essential for any organisation to cultivate a strong brand identity, crafting a unique brand story and aesthetic that will resonate with your target consumers. Household names such as Nike, Apple, or McDonald’s each had humble beginnings, only skyrocketing to great heights when they created a strong brand identity. The goal and signs that you have created a strong brand identity are customer loyalty and maintaining a consistent presence in the market. This, of course, will not happen overnight. But it is the crucial first step into gaining clients and market share. In this blog, we will go over the top five essential elements of creating a strong brand identity.
Brand Story
Mentally bring yourself back to the birth of your organisation. Identify its history, mission, and values. This will make up your organisation’s brand story. A compelling brand story will not only add value to your product or service but also be a guiding force for any future decisions. Your brand story dictates how you market, advertise, and interact with consumers. It is also the foundation upon which you build the next four elements of your brand identity.
Most importantly, your brand story dictates your brand voice and messaging. What do you want consumers to know about your brand? How do you want to communicate that information to them? Cultivating a unique brand story that will resonate with your target audience requires you to dig deep. It helps to externalise the brand attached to your organisation as if it were its own, individual entity. Ultimately, that’s how consumers interact with famous brands. Their favourite brand isn’t just a for-profit company. Their favourite brand is an entity with relatability, a voice, and a vision.
Identifying and cementing your brand story should be the element that you spend the most time on. Sit down, get a piece of paper or open a document on your computer and really take the time to identify your brand’s history, mission, and values. Don’t just write down what you think consumers in your market want to hear, write down what is authentic to you and your brand. In this day and age, authenticity is currency.
Colour Palette
When choosing a colour palette for your organisation’s brand identity it can be easy to be sucked into the pitfalls of simply choosing your favourite colours or colours that arguably look good together. However, this is a mistake you want to avoid because your brand’s colour palette is not about you, it is about creating an emotional connection with consumers. Colours evoke emotions. That’s why everyone seems to have a favourite one. To create a colour palette for a strong brand identity you need to shift your focus and get into the mind of your brand and the consumers that your brand hopes to connect with.
Make use of colour psychology resources online and carefully choose three to five colours that resonate with your brand identity, while also connecting with your target market. Neutral colours such as black, white, and grey don’t have to be included in your brand’s colour palette but can still be used for backgrounds and text in communication materials. A challenge you might run into when creating a good colour palette is finding a relevant set of colours that work together as a whole. The following is an example of how you could choose and organise your colour palette in a harmonious way: Choose one primary colour, two to three secondary colours, and one to two accent colours. Feel free to experiment and create various colour palettes for your team or professional peers to review and implement the feedback into your brand’s final colour palette.
Logo
A good logo serves as a symbol of your brand’s identity, encompassing your organisation’s mission and values. It may seem daunting to attempt to encapsulate all those aspects into a singular design, but it is not as complicated as it may seem.
Your organisation’s logo is very important because it’s the first thing consumers associate with your brand. To create a unique and memorable logo that reflects your brand, it can be helpful to research logo colour psychology, typography, and the logos of top organisations in your niche. You may start to notice some patterns. For example, technology logos tend to be blue because in colour psychology, the colour blue symbolises trust, dependability, and strength. These characteristics are exactly what their target market desires when choosing to invest in technology since it has become such a big part of our lives, consumers need to feel secure when using technology products or services.
Colour isn’t all you have to consider. The logos of some of the biggest companies in the world across all sectors have something in common: simplicity. A simple logo with a clear design is a surefire way to ensure that your brand is memorable. If your logo is too complex it may be hard for consumers to read and not scale well in advertising. Don’t be afraid to brainstorm and come up with different logo designs until it makes sense to your brand, team, and target market.
Typography
Like colour, typography can evoke an array of emotions. There is an endless number of typefaces to choose from, but you can make it easy by choosing a word or two to describe your brand’s identity. Categorical words like modern, fun, dynamic, or professional can make selecting the typography that’s right for your brand much easier. After that you can simply browse the web for fonts that relate to your brand’s identity.
If you plan on incorporating text into your logo, keep in mind that the font you choose works harmoniously with all the other elements of your brand identity and make sure that it is used consistently across all branding and communication materials. Ideally, narrow your font selection down to three typefaces. Choose a font for heading, sub-heading, and body text. The fonts you decide to use for your brand should be unique enough to stand out while remaining legible so try to avoid overly intricate or narrow typefaces so that your typography stands out but isn’t hard for consumers to read. It’s important that you choose fonts that work well together as you will be using them across all media channels and communication materials.
You could also consider consulting with a graphic designer to design a custom font for your brand. This is especially helpful if you find yourself interested in many fonts but not feeling as though any of them perfectly fit your brand. Many successful brands have their own custom fonts designed by making slight adjustments to pre-existing typefaces.
Design
Establishing consistent visual and design elements for your brand is important to help your company and your target market understand your brand’s vision. It’s also a surefire way to make your product or service appear professional, desirable, and trustworthy. Ensure that all images and graphics you choose to use align with your brand’s overall style and complement its messaging. Creating a brand kit is essential for you and your team across all departments to keep your branding and communication materials consistent across all channels. A brand kit should include your brand’s colour palette, typography, icons, illustrations, and any other visual elements tied to your brand story. A brand kit is an organised collection of visual and design guidelines that you and your team can use as a reference when creating any promotional or communication materials. It also defines your aesthetic on all social platforms. Make sure that all the design elements you choose from icons to graphics suit the overall tone of your brand and that you don’t infringe on any copyrights. You can utilise services like Canva if you are a novice designer or commission a graphic designer to create more original designs for your brand. Alternatively, if you prefer to keep everything in-house, you could hire a graphic designer or take some courses and learn how to use Photoshop. This could prove to be very useful if your brand is within a creative niche. That way you can keep creating and evolving the visual illustration of your brand and keep your target market interested.
In conclusion, your brand story leads the way to creating your brand identity. Your logo, colour palette, typography, and design decisions must be based on your brand’s history, mission and values. Taking your time with this process will turn your brand into a multidimensional, dynamic identity that is able to keep up with competitors and keep consumers coming back for more. Creating something that is personal and unique to your vision may seem risky, it can be tempting to follow the mould within your niche, but all your competitors already have a loyal customer base. So don’t be afraid to take that risk because any successful brand dared to be different.
