Creating a Brand Identity

1. Branding is More Than Just a Logo: It's a Promise

Products are created in a factory. Brands are created in the mind.

Beyond the visual. Branding is not merely about creating a visually appealing logo or a catchy name. It's a comprehensive process of imbuing a product, service, or even an individual with a unique set of values, personality, and promise. This promise acts as an unwritten contract with consumers, assuring them of consistent quality, satisfaction, and a specific experience each time they interact with the brand.

Building trust. Trust is a cornerstone of successful branding. Brands strive to build awareness and foster customer loyalty by consistently delivering on their promises. This goes beyond simply providing a functional product or service; it involves creating an emotional connection with consumers, making them feel understood, valued, and connected to something larger than themselves.

Image vs. reality. In the 21st century, the manipulation and control of a brand's image have become paramount. The design of the product often serves as a vehicle for the brand's values, with products developed to extend and reinforce brand success. This shift highlights the importance of designers, ad agencies, and brand managers as key players in shaping our modern consumer culture.

2. Consumer Culture Shapes Brand Identity

What we buy is determined not just by our basic needs, but also by what our chosen brands say about us.

Beyond basic needs. Consumerism is more than just acquiring goods and services to satisfy basic needs. It's a complex interplay of aspirations, desires, and social pressures that influence our buying decisions. The need to fit in, appear successful, or express our personal identity often drives our choices.

Consumption and identity. Consumer culture theory suggests that people buy brands that reflect their personal identity or the identity they aspire to create. This is evident in the perceived status associated with owning luxury goods, where people are willing to pay a premium for a product made by a particular brand.

Understanding triggers. Understanding why people buy and what triggers their choice of one item over another is key to designing appropriately and successfully for today’s brand-savvy consumer. This involves considering factors such as culture, society, social group, and class, as well as the emotional and aspirational needs of the target audience.

3. Brand Anatomy: Logos, Taglines, and Sensory Appeal

Branding is principally the process of attaching a name and reputation to something or someone.

Key components. A successful brand identity comprises interlinked elements that communicate the brand's values. These include the logo, tagline, and sensory experiences. The logo, a deceptively simple device, symbolizes the brand's values, quality, and promise. The tagline reinforces the brand's unique qualities.

Appealing to the senses. Branding is not solely a visual form of communication. Appealing to all the senses creates a more powerful and memorable message. From the feel of a product to its distinctive smell, designers can create a holistic brand experience.

Creating meaning. The strength of a brand identity lies in how successfully it embodies the desired meaning of a brand and the speed of recognition by the target audience. A logo must acquire meaning in the mind of the consumer to become more than just a graphic device.

4. Brand Architecture: Organizing a Brand Portfolio

Brand architecture is a way of describing the hierarchy of brands within a single company’s portfolio.

Master brand and sub-brands. Brand architecture defines the hierarchy of brands within a company's portfolio. A common model consists of a master brand with several sub-brands beneath it. This strategy enables an organization to target different customers by developing a variety of brands with different names, colors, imagery, logos, promises, positions, and personality traits.

Brand families. Once a brand achieves success, it may extend into new products or services, creating a brand family. Each member of the family has its own unique identity while reflecting the original values of the parent brand.

Consistency is key. Brand architecture is about organizing the relationships with different brands and customers to reach business objectives. To develop a successful sub-brand, it is important that the elements remain consistent to retain the focus and strength of the original brand.

5. Brand Strategy: Standing Out in a Crowded Market

One of the key challenges when developing a brand strategy is to define how the design will create a strong and unique identity.

Visual communication. A key challenge in branding is creating a strong and unique identity. The designer must develop a clear visual communication system that attracts the target consumer and differentiates the brand from its competition.

Color, shapes, and symbols. Shoppers take just five seconds to find and select a product. Appropriate use of color can increase brand recognition by some 80%, while also serving as an important brand identifier. Symbols are a nearly instantaneous means of communicating meaning.

Unique selling point. The USP is critical in defining a brand’s competitive advantage and fundamental to a successful branding strategy. In addition to ensuring a clear differentiation from the existing market, the USP must also include attributes or benefits that consumers will strongly, uniquely, and positively associate with the new brand.

6. Semiotics: Decoding the Meaning Behind Brands

What does it all mean?

The science of signs. Semiotics is the science of understanding signs and how meaning is created. A successful brand relies not only on good creative design but also on meaning. How we build meaning into the brands we create is a complex art and involves the design of three key elements – the brand name, the icon, and often a strapline or slogan.

Graphic toolbox. In our graphic toolbox, we have the use of typography, color, image, and style, and our choices for these will be determined by the message we wish to communicate. Appreciating and manipulating the level of meaning contained within a brand identity, and the consequential subliminal effect this has on consumers and their buying decisions, is the key objective of branding design.

Unconscious perception. The semiotic meaning of a brand is not always consciously perceived by consumers. Rather, their meaning is perceived unconsciously, having been shaped in our minds by cultural and historical forces.

7. Naming and Brand Story: Crafting a Compelling Narrative

A brand story gives meaning to a brand and defines what it is and what it does.

More than just a name. A brand name is one of the most important elements of a brand identity, as it needs to define a unique offer, communicate effectively to a particular audience, capture a set of specific values, and look and sound good. It is therefore probably the most difficult aspect of creating a brand, and should not be undertaken lightly.

Connecting with consumers. Consumers are becoming increasingly educated about retailing and often demand to know where their products come from and how they are made. Brand stories that offer a background to products being sold are therefore an effective way of engaging with customers.

The power of narrative. Brand stories are not fixed; they can develop over time to capture and respond to changing customers and markets. Key to the development of a successful brand story, though, is defining the core truth about the product or service concerned, as this will become the heart of the message.

8. Ethical Branding: Building Trust and Value

The primary function of brands is to reduce our anxiety in making choices. The more we sense we know about a product, the less anxious we feel.

Beyond profit. The ultimate objectives in branding have become the domination of the market and the elimination of competitors. In this ruthless world, competition for market share has taken priority, with consideration of moral issues being the last concern for many.

Ethical considerations. Ethical issues that need to be considered by designers are not always easy to define. It is often difficult to distinguish between ethics and legality, and values can vary between individuals, organizations, and cultures – they can also change over time.

Enhancing reputation. An ethical brand strategy can significantly enhance a firm’s reputation, while unethical behavior can severely damage or even destroy a brand’s carefully created but intangible assets, as evidenced by high-profile corporate scandals.

9. The Design Process: A Structured Approach to Creativity

In some ways life has not changed much over the last 2,000 years. The fundamentals of living, our instinctive human needs, are essentially the same.

A scientific methodology. A standardized design process has evolved within the industry that provides the designer with the resources and framework for producing their most innovative and creative work within a reasonable timeframe. This process helps organize the creative process and allows design agencies to demonstrate how a client’s money will be spent.

Key stages. The design process typically includes stages such as research, concept development, design development, design implementation, and testing. This staged method incorporates a holistic approach to developing an identity, ensuring that the client is involved in making key decisions during the process.

Benefits of a structured approach. A structured design process not only helps organize the creative process but also allows design agencies to demonstrate how a client’s money will be spent, as well as helping to demystify what, for many, can be perceived as a magical process.

10. Research Methods: Understanding Your Audience

Trust is one of the key reasons why we brand.

Foundation for success. Research is the first, and possibly most important, stage of the design process. For contemporary brand design practitioners, it plays a key role in achieving original and distinctive work.

Primary and secondary research. The various research methods used to collect data can be divided into two main categories – information that is collected first-hand from a particular source (primary research) and pre-existing information (secondary research). Primary research aims to produce new data using either direct or indirect methods.

Qualitative and quantitative. Primary research can be further divided into qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research deals with subjective qualities of things, while quantitative research deals with quantity and measurement.

11. Analysis Techniques: Defining Your Competitive Edge

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers.

Defining the USP. The unique selling point/proposition (USP) is what differentiates a brand from its competitors and what ultimately gives it its competitive advantage. The key to defining this advantage is by asking the question ‘Why would the target audience choose this brand over all the others?’.

Market sector analysis. Market sector analysis involves identifying the position a brand will aim to occupy in consumer perception. There are three broad market sectors, determined by their roles in satisfying either desires or needs: value or economy, regular or mid-market, and premium or luxury.

Competitor brand analysis. Competitor brand analysis is a method for evaluating and comparing a brand’s main competitors. Recognizing who your main competitors are, how they are positioning themselves, what products and services they offer, and how consumers are talking about them is a reliable way to ensure that your brand is differentiated and makes a compelling offer.

12. Concept Development: Finding Inspiration and the Big Idea

In some ways life has not changed much over the last 2,000 years. The fundamentals of living, our instinctive human needs, are essentially the same.

The creative process. To create outstanding work, designers need more than good software techniques and typographical skills: fundamentally strong design is about ideas, and lots of them. Great design is defined as imaginative, daring, individualistic, and innovative, but where do these ideas come from and how can you nurture them?

Sources of inspiration. Inspiration may be visual, three-dimensional, textural, musical, or even involve some form of physical activity. Most creative people usually know the types of things that stimulate their ideas, but it is always useful to explore other alternatives to find new triggers and ways of thinking.

The big idea. The big idea is the point where research and inspiration meet the problem to create a unique personal insight or idea. It usually strikes an emotional chord although it has a rational appeal, is powerful, and has the ability to communicate to its target audience in a meaningful way.

Last updated: March 30, 2025