Your brand’s identity, no different than your personal identity, creates a distinct and memorable imprint of a brand in consumers’ minds. It is the visual representation and personality of a brand that helps it stand out from competitors, connect with its target audience, and convey its mission, vision, and values effectively.
To guide us through the importance of a brand identity guide, and inform the building blocks to creating one, we tapped Melissa Portillo, Director of Creative & Design at Vebu Labs. With 9+ years of experience on both the agency side and in-house, Melissa is an expert creative process builder and visionary for what it means for brands to have a creative digital presence.
Defining Your Audience
The most important element to crystalize in the early stages of defining your brand is your target audience. Take a pause to consider: Who are you building your brand for? What are their needs and wants? What are their pain points? There are a number of factors to consider when defining your target audience, including:
- Demographics: Start by gathering demographic information such as age, gender, location, income, education, marital status, and occupation. These factors provide a foundation for understanding who your potential customers are.
- Psychographics: Dive deeper into the audience's psychographic characteristics, including their interests, hobbies, lifestyle choices, values, attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. This information helps to understand the audience's motivations and preferences.
- Behavior: Analyze your potential audiences buying and interaction behavior, including how and where they research products, what informs purchasing decisions, and how they interact with brands. Understanding their shopping habits can inform marketing efforts.
Get specific on who you are looking to get in front of and leverage existing consumer research and trend reports to learn as much as you can about them.
Crystalizing Your Positioning
Brand positioning refers to the unique and distinct space that your brand occupies in relation to competitors in the market. In addition to researching the audience you’re trying to reach, research your competition. What are they doing and what could they be doing better? Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of key competitors can help identify gaps you can fill and further solidify your uniqueness. Your mission, vision, and core values answer questions about who you are, what you value, and where you’re going.
- Mission: Outlines your reason for existence. The mission statement is concise and specific, present-state, and actionable, focusing on what the brand aims to achieve for its consumer.
- Vision: Describes your future aspirations and the desired impact you seek to make in the world - it is often inspirational and forward-looking, serving as a guiding star for your brand's growth and development
- Values: Brand values don’t just exist on paper or the values of your office–they represent the core principles and beliefs that guide the brand's behavior, decisions, and interactions with customers, employees, and the broader community.
Distilling Look & Feel
Once your target audience has been defined and your positioning has taken shape, you’re ready to get into the fun stuff– a visual identity that directs the logo, colors, typography, and other design elements.
- Logo: The logo is the most prominent visual element of a brand. It is a unique symbol or design that represents the brand's identity and serves as a visual mark to instantly recognize the brand. A well-designed logo should be versatile and easily scalable for use in various applications.
- Color Palette: A consistent set of colors, carefully chosen to convey the brand's personality and evoke specific emotions. Consider your target audience. What colors, fonts, and imagery will appeal to your target audience? Think about their age, gender, interests, and lifestyle. You can also use color psychology to choose colors that will create the desired emotional response in your target audience.
- Typography: Typography helps establish a visual hierarchy and informs text style that aligns with the brand's personality and messaging. Use typography to make sure your most important information is the most visible.
- Iconography: Icons and graphical elements are other elements that can be used to represent specific features, services, or products related to the brand. These icons contribute to visual clarity and help users quickly understand information. Elements such as patterns, textures, or shapes, can add visual interest and reinforce the brand's personality.
- Voice. Voice defines the brand's personality and character. It encompasses the overall style, attitude, and manner of communication, reflecting the brand's identity and core values.
- Tone. While voice remains consistent, the tone varies based on the specific context and audience of the communication. Adapt your tone by platform.
It’s important to remember that who you are as a brand at the beginning can evolve–brands are living and breathing things and should shift as you grow.
Create a brand identity on a small budget & Melissa’s Creative Tool Stack
If you’re working with a small budget to develop your brand identity, check out THE DIRECTORY (link to directory)–freelancers are an amazing resource for this body of work. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Upwork is another great destination for freelance talent. When evaluating freelance options:
- Look for reviews from validated sources
- Ask for examples of prior work
- Understand what type of designer they are (logo designer, brand designer, etc.) to better understand their strengths (and where they perhaps don’t shine).
- Seek alignment in taste and design styles
You can also leverage existing platforms such as:
- 99 designs: Global creative platform for custom graphic design: logos, websites and more
- Figma: Popular tool amongst designers, product managers to create, share, and test designs for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products and experiences.
- Canva: Great design platform of already existing templates for those who don't have any prior experience
- Adobe XD: Tool to prototype user experience and interaction designs.
Not sure how to use these platforms? Melissa swears by MasterClass, YouTube, and other online tutorials to self-teach.
Early Stage Mishaps to Avoid
- Keep it simple to start. You don’t need to try to do too much. Pick a brand name that makes sense for your position and services. Develop a clear and concise logo. Drawing on the evolution of Apple, it can always change.
- Consistency is key. Ensure your visual elements (colors, font treatment, etc.) are consistent from platform to platform, your tone is the one thing that should change based on platform and audience.
Rolling Out A Rebrand? Tips to a successful launch:
- What’s the Why? Making sure you take the time to explain why you did it or what it was about. Develop a compelling narrative that communicates the reasons behind the rebrand.
- Communicate internally. Before launching the rebrand externally, make sure to communicate the changes internally to your employees. They should understand the reasons for the rebrand and how it aligns with the company's vision and values.
- Consider a phased rollout. Starting with internal communications, followed by a soft launch to a smaller segment of your audience–doing so will allow you to gather feedback and make adjustments before a full-scale launch.
- Create a launch plan. Develop a detailed launch plan that outlines the timeline, responsibilities, and promotional activities for the rebrand rollout. Ensure that all marketing and communication efforts are well-coordinated.
- Update all touchpoints. Ensure that all consumer-facing touchpoints reflect the new brand identity, including your website, social media, paid and organic channels, packaging, and physical locations (if applicable).
- Manage customer expectations. Be transparent with your customers about the rebrand and what they can expect. Address any potential concerns or questions they might have.
- Monitor and measure. Continuously monitor the impact of the rebranding efforts and gather feedback from customers and stakeholders. Use data and analytics to assess the success of the rebrand against the predefined objectives.