Since the modern business environment is becoming oversaturated with each passing day, every aspiring business needs to find a way to stand out from that crowd. It’s no longer enough to simply brand your business and hope for the best. Instead, you should create a powerful brand identity that will speak volumes, thus making sure that your voice is being heard.
However, not a lot of businesses fully understand this concept and the idea behind it. That’s why we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to creating a powerful brand identity, to help you out in your business endeavor.
What is brand identity exactly?
First and foremost, you need to understand that brand identity is so much more than just your logo and the colors you’ve chosen for your business. Brand identity encompasses all the aspects of your branding efforts and it can even affect the way you are being perceived by your audience. Therefore, your brand identity is what you present your target audience with. It includes everything from the logo, colors, fonts and the tone of voice you opted for to your overall company image. So, if you’re hoping to create a powerful brand identity here’s what you should do.
Determine who you are as a brand
Before choosing the visual elements of your brand identity, you first need to determine who you are as a brand. This can easily be done by answering a few questions like
What is your mission? – The easiest way to answer this question is to ask yourself why you exist as a brand. What are the things that make your brand useful and why would customers choose you specifically? Once you answer these questions, you’ll know what your brand mission is.
What are your values? – Your values include all the reasons someone might find you worthy enough to do business with you. Here, you need to identify the beliefs that drive your company. Are you, for example, eco-friendly? Do you have outstanding customer service?
What is your brand personality? – Simply put, if your brand was a person, what type of person would it be?
What makes you unique? – Identify that one thing that makes you stand out from the crowd and stick to it. Your unique selling proposition (USP) can be virtually anything as long as it’s something nobody else from your line of business can offer.
What is your brand voice? – Again, if your brand was a person, how would it communicate?
Lay the foundation of your brand identity
Just like Coca-Cola built a brand identity of an excited and fun-loving, laid-back persona, your design is the thing that will help you create the brand identity of your company. However, aside from the mandatory logo – which will be discussed a bit later, you should also consider the design of your workplace. From the decor aspects, to the overall architectural design of your office building, everything should breathe your brand. Companies such as Superdraft offer a way for you to completely customize both your office design and architecture to match your brand identity entirely. Finding such experts and entrusting them with your office design is always the best way to go because you want to make sure that everything’s done right.
Taking care of your brand design
Finally, since humans are very visual beings, having a strong brand design will help you form first impressions and potentially attract more customers your way. Therefore, consider the following:
The colors – The colors and color combinations you decide to use for your logo need to be unique to avoid confusion. Of course, you can use the same red as McDonald’s does, but avoid combining it with yellow. The color combo needs to be unique for your brand to make you truly authentic, but it should also be chosen in accordance with your audience’s preferences.
The fonts – Next, the typography you decide to use to convey your brand messages need to be in accordance with the message you are trying to present. For example, if your business mainly focuses on creativity, avoid using stern fonts, such as serif, but opt for more fluid ones, such as the script.
The shapes – The shapes you decide to feature in your logo also convey a message of their own. To name just a few examples, rounded, swirly lines can trigger the sense of community and unity, while stern edged shapes present strength and efficiency. Straight lines imply masculinity if they are vertical and tranquility if they are horizontal.
The tone of voice – Finally, the tone of voice you opt for should first match your business in a sense that you shouldn’t opt for a casual tone if you’re running a law firm specialized in divorces, for example. Additionally, make sure your tone of voice is consistent throughout all the marketing channels and marketing efforts to make your brand more recognizable.
As you can see, creating a powerful brand identity is not at all difficult, but you need to understand that it requires maximum devotion, plenty of research and lots and lots of careful planning.
