Building a brand identity is just like striving to build a strong and unique personal identity.
But with so many businesses looking the same online, working on a unique brand identity design that’ll stand out from the crowd is tough.
It’s an arduous and exhausting process.
We’ve been helping brands create and shape their brand identity from scratch for years, and we know all the ins and outs of what it requires.
So, join us on this journey to discover what brand identity design really is and what it takes to build one for your business that’s both strong and remarkable.
Note: We’ve built brand identity designs for world-class companies in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Our portfolio includes Zain, Span, ITLES, and a ton of other companies. Let’s build an amazing brand identity together.
What is Brand Identity Design?
Before we go deeper, note that there’s a big difference between branding and brand. Branding is the marketing strategy your company executes to become known in the market; a brand is the perception of your company in your customers’ eyes.
Brand identity, on the other hand, is all the elements you use – your logo, typography, voice and tone, and colors – to communicate with the world.
Need an example? When you think of someone, be it a friend or a colleague, what’s the first thing that springs to mind?
You’ll imagine how they look, how they dress, their way of speaking and communicating, how they write. Right?
That’s their personal identity. And it’s the same for a brand identity.
According to Marty Marion, a former principal of two of the world’s largest advertising and marketing agencies, and one of the leading brand positioning experts in the world, “Brand identity refers to how a brand wants to be perceived by its target market.
It encompasses the full spectrum of ‘branding’ elements: colors, logos, taglines, images, words, etc. Your brand identity is how you WANT your brand to be perceived by your targets; your brand image is how it’s ACTUALLY perceived, regardless of your best efforts and intentions. The objective is to align the two.”
A brand identity design is made up of these essential elements (we’ll talk later about how to build it):
- Logo
- Typography
- Color
- Form
- Website
- Packaging
- Business cards
- Emails
- Iconography
These elements fit together to help you communicate with your audience, either offline or online.
Let’s move on and see how to build one.
4 Steps to Build a Brand Identity design That Stands Out
Before we dive into this, understand that you will have to pour a ton of time into building your brand identity. If you don’t, you’ll look and sound like everyone else.
Some important principles to check before starting:
- Make it memorable so that your audience (and your own team) can easily remember it.
- Make it open to change so that you can easily tweak and improve as your brand grows.
- Make sure that every element of your brand identity is complementary.
Got all that? Then let’s get to the nitty-gritty of brand identity building.
Step 1: Know Your Brand
It’s time to invite all your team members to one place and figure out who you are.
Start by answering the following questions:
- What’s your why?
- What’s your differentiating factor?
- What are your beliefs?
- What’s your brand personality?
- What’s your voice and tone?
These questions are the foundation of your brand strategy. And no one can answer them better than you and your team. Remember, the goal of this is to decide who you are, so you can clearly communicate that to your audience.
Step 2: Know Your Exact Target Audience
Your brand interacts with your audience every day through your messaging, your voice, your design.
So it’s very important to know your audience better than anyone else, especially your competitors. One of the best ways to do that is through user research.
Look at your Google Analytics statistics; what do they tell you about your audience demographics, their needs, and wants?
Sit with your customer support team and sort out the most-used expressions that your audience communicates with you.
To be a memorable brand you have to talk just like your audience so that they resonate with you.
Step 3: Know Your Competitors Like The Back Of Your Hand
You can’t build a unique brand identity if you don’t know your competitors well. You have to spy on them and compare their brand identity with yours.
How do they present their visuals? How are they different from yours?
Make sure that your communications don’t look the same as your competitors’ – that’s the shortest route to never standing out.
Sit down and brainstorm to come up with new, original, and, above all, unique ideas.
Step 4: Work On Your Visuals
We assume now that you’ve collected a lot of information. You know who you are and why you started this brand, who your exact target audience is, and how you will communicate with them.
You also know your competitors well and have a clear understanding of your differentiating factor.
The work now focuses on translating all this info into visuals:
- Your logo
- Your typography
- Your colors
- Your design system
- Your iconography
- Your packaging
This step is a lot more creative and complex than it sounds but, once you’re done, that’s it.
Now you know everything you need to build your brand identity.
Does all this sound like a TON of work? We do it day in, day out. We’ve helped giant companies like Zain, Span, and ITLES build strong brand identity designs. We can help you, too.
Conclusion
Brand identity design is more than your logo. It’s how you communicate, and will determine how the market and your target audience perceive you. To stand out, you’ve to go back to the drawing board and dig up all the essential information about you, then turn it into visuals.
In a nutshell:
- Your brand identity is how you communicate with the world. Every element you use must accurately reflect you.
- Put in the work to figure out who you really are.
- Make sure you know your audience like the back of your hand.
- Have a firm understanding of your competitors.
- Only then you can work on your visuals.
Don’t have time for all this hard work? We’ll do it for you.
