Brand identity | Learn from Valentine
Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14 and it is a day to express feelings of love and affection towards our loved ones. It is usually marked by exchanging gifts, cards, flowers, chocolates, and dinner or lunch dates with someone special.
We live in a world of symbols, where colours and fonts are associated with events or services. We see McDonald’s far away due to its colour scheme and logo – it is hard not to notice that yellow “M” symbol when walking down the street! Psychological research has shown we tend to choose familiar things over unknown ones. That is why strong brand associations facilitate sales and, therefore, every successful company has its unique attributes.
If you are planning to build your brand and want to keep it fresh for years on end, think of the upcoming Valentine’s Day! It occupies a reasonably narrow niche (the couple’s day) but remains sustainable (it repeats every year on the same day). This is what we need to achieve when developing a brand, that produces a strong, lasting impression.
So what is the brand identity?
Let’s start with a definition. What does the term brand identity imply? Brand identity is the combination of all elements that a company uses to project the right image to its customers. Brand identity consists of the tangible things that shape the company’s image. Just as Valentine’s chocolate boxes and red-coloured cards symbolize romantic love – so does your business need a tie through which people can emotionally connect with what you offer them.
How to develop a brand identity?
Before you can figure out what tangible components make up your brand identity, you must first determine who you are as a business. What you are as a brand is largely determined by your answers to the following questions:
- What are your objectives?
- What ideas guide your company?
- What would be the character and the voice tone of your brand if it were a person?
- How does it stand out from the crowd?
These are the building blocks of your brand, and it’s critical to have a good grasp on them before you start developing your brand identity.
Once you’ve determined who you are as a business, it’s time to develop the personality that will bring your brand to life and reveal who you are to the people who matter most: your consumers.
The first step is to create a design.
Your design is the foundation of your business’s brand identity, just like Valentine’s Day has absorbed all the attributes of love and passion – Cupid, heart shapes, rose petals, – to support its overall look and message.
The tangible elements of your corporate design are the elements that will influence how others perceive your brand. Your logo, packaging, web design, social media graphics, business cards, and employee uniforms are a few examples.
Design building blocks
Before you start generating your design assets, you must first establish the fundamentals of your design structure: the components of your brand identity. They include the typeface and colour palette of your brand, as well as forms and shapes.
Types
There are three major types of typefaces: serifs, san serifs, and scripts.
Serif Type Styles is the most ancient type category, which dates back to around the mid-sixteenth century. The use of serif fonts for logos is a fantastic method to exude history and authority. The Guardian newspaper is an excellent illustration of a business with a serif font logo. The typeface is more high-end and sophisticated. To distinguish themselves as premium brands, Prada and Rolex prefer serif fonts. If you run a business that offers higher-priced or classic items, serif type is an excellent option.
Sans-serif types were created in the mid-nineteenth century. Modernism with its ideals of efficiency, organization, and simplicity was popular at that time. Despite its relative lack of variation, sans-serif is still one of the most widely used types in digital media today. As an example, Google and Walmart changed their logo typography to sans-serifs to make it simpler to read and seem more practical.
Script-type styles are based on 17th-century formal writing techniques. Many characters have strokes that connect them to other letters. Script-style typefaces are prevalent in the realm of heritage brands, including Disney, Davidoff, Buick, Budweiser, Hallmark, and Harrods, as well as Coca-Cola. Now, contemporary companies are starting to accept the informal tone and additional personality that a script font may provide. Instagram and Pinterest are two good examples of such 21st-century brands.
Choose your fonts carefully since the type you choose will have a significant impact on the personality of your brand.
Colours
The second step is colour, which has a psychological impact on people. Using branding colours and logo colours effectively may have a significant influence on how your brand is pictured by customers.
Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colours, which are also known as the “original” colours. They may be combined to create secondary and tertiary hues as well as every shade in between. Let’s look at the meaning they convey.
Red is well-known for its strong and vibrant personality, which evokes powerful emotional responses in people. It can stimulate hunger, enthusiasm, and worry. Restaurants frequently include red in their logos to take advantage of the increased appetite. Red is also used as a colour to give off an exciting and adventurous vibe.
In history and literature, red has been connected with love, desire, and passion for a long time. Women of ancient Egypt used to paint their lips red to appear more attractive. The crimson hue is associated with notorious red-light districts. This colour has a lot to do with Valentine’s Day, doesn’t it?
The purest form of yellow evokes warmth, happiness, and calm in our opinion. Yellow’s highly visible hue is also a colour that catches people’s attention right away, frequently used to convey caution, road signs, and security vests. Yellow is a popular colour choice for retail enterprises since it is more visible, making it appealing to consumers.
Blue is associated with positive sentiments in general, and it is a favorite colour of many brands. It has a soothing quality and is used to symbolize peace, trustworthiness, and loyalty.
Brand elements
After you’ve discovered the foundation elements of your design, it’s time to collaborate with a designer to bring your brand identity to life and turn who you are as a business into realizable design assets that you can use in marketing.
The relative importance of one asset or another varies depending on your company’s line of business. A coffee shop, for example, should devote significant effort to its menu and physical environment. An eCommerce shop, on the other hand, must concentrate more on its website and social media profiles.
Logo
The logo is the brand’s entire personality reduced to an easy-to-spot image. It’s usually the first encounter you have with a company. The goal of a logo is to produce an impression that stays with you and evokes memories about the business when you see it again.
Tagline
“Eat fresh.” “Just Do It.” Do you recognize the companies that keep behind these well-known taglines? Right, they’re Subway and Nike’s famous slogans. They are the brand’s messaging centerpiece.
The tagline is a little more descriptive than the logo and provides additional information and context for it. It doesn’t just inform people about what you do, but also about what to anticipate.
Website
Your website is one of the most identifiable elements of your company’s identity. It’s your virtual business card, so it should be spotless! Your potential clients will certainly look over your website before deciding to deal with you, especially if you’re running an online company or a digital product.
The following are the 8 essential aspects of a well-optimized website:
- It is mobile-friendly.
- It has no code errors.
- It gives visitors a pleasant experience as it loads quickly and interacts without delays.
- It is informative and best serves a searcher’s intent.
- It is regularly updated and refreshed.
- It has a sitemap and drawn schema markup.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our SEO specialists if you need assistance optimizing your website for Google. We have almost ten years of expertise in digital marketing in London and are delighted to help businesses with their SEO.
Imagery
The tangible or intangible elements that consumers connect with a brand are referred to as brand imagery. It might be a box, package, experience, toy, or sensation. It can originate from any of the five senses, and each consumer may react to it differently.
The scent may be an effective form of brand imagery. Many Starbucks consumers appreciate the unique aroma of a Starbucks shop. The heart shape, roses, and chocolates are all part of Valentine’s identity.
Developing a positive emotional connection to your brand is just as crucial as developing a strong visual identity. Consider how you may use visuals to create branded experiences for your customers.
Make a fantastic brand from the bottom up
As you can see, creating a brand does not simply entail creating a logo! Your brand’s visual appearance and feel are created from a three-dimensional body of design options, assets, and distinctive branding elements that all operate together to provide your company’s distinct look and feel.
Kamil
Kamil Krystman is an SEO expert with 13 years of experience. In 2013, he founded Alfamedio LTD based in London.
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