Getting on Brand | Part III
How to plan a big future for your small business
How to plan a big future for your small business
Welcome back our almost Branding experts. We know you’ve already learnt a lot, like why you need a brand and a strategy and how your brand’s heart is the centre of it all. Trust us when we say, there is still a whole lot more to learn.
And we’re excited to share it.
We already know the question on the tip of your tongue, what’s the difference between a brand and a brand identity. Well, your brand is more so a concept and a bundle of beliefs and ideas whilst your brand identity is the physical counterpart which depicts these beliefs — both of which are informed by your creative brand design strategy. Think of your brand as your brain and heart, and your brand identity as your face and expressions.
Your brand is more so a concept and a bundle of beliefs and ideas whilst your brand identity is the physical counterpart which depicts these beliefs — both of which are informed by your creative brand design strategy.
Think of your brand as your brain and heart, and your brand identity as your face and expressions.
Brand identity includes all key visible elements that work together to either reinforce, or sometimes help reinvent, a brand’s existing reputation. Put even more simply, your brand identity is what you, your customers and your prospective customers can see. As a logo design agency in Brisbane, we often help brands to identify themselves with a logo, palette, patterns and textures, and imagery.
Smaller businesses might believe that consistency within their brand identity is not important, but this is a big mistake. People recognise businesses from their brand identities. You could recognise Apple, Nike or Google from their logos. Not because they’re elaborate, or extremely eye-catching, but because they are used consistently and displayed across the brands’ offering and advertising.
Looking for the secret recipe to your brand’s identity? We’ve got it here, but we’d suggest maybe not trying this one at home. Instead, consult your local brand design agency, Brisbane or elsewhere.
You’ll need;
We think this one almost speaks for itself. If Cadbury was no longer purple or Coca Cola no longer red, you’d be doing a double take through your local Woolies, or Coles (we don’t discriminate). Having a key colour scheme or even utilising certain colours to communicate and evoke particular emotions is something your business should be leveraging.
Your typefaces and font choices are both crucial elements of your brand design and identity. We’re sure we don’t have to tell you using Comic Sans sends a completely different non-verbal message to Times New Roman.
Style guides play a vital role in ensuring that consistency across your brand design and identity is upheld. We recommend if you don’t know too much about these or what they offer your business, to join us in our other handy blog post on live style guides.
And last but definitely not least;
Your wordmark is a freestanding word or words, which are typically either a company name or an acronym, think Netflix and BMW. Both these examples have distinctive font characteristics which mean that quite often we can recognise purely just the N from Netflix or know what a BMW is, but not what the letters stand for — which we admit could also be due to the fact we aren’t all fluent in German.
Wordmarks are a great opportunity for organisations to integrate abstract or even pictorial elements like how FedEx has a sneaky arrow hiding between the E and x (look it up), to depict the movement or in their case delivery of something.
Your logo is the combination of a brand mark (icon) and a wordmark. This logo is what you then want to be showing off all over town. Hint: if you want to learn more about wordmarks and logos, we prepared this little gem earlier.
But the ingredients are just the first part of the method. How do we recommend you combine them? Well it’s crucial they mix well.
Building a great logo design with an agency is good, choosing a colour scheme is good and deciding on a typography is good, but they need to work together to not only be good, but to be great.
Think of your professional logo design as a delectable insta-worthy ice cream sundae; you need your other brand identity elements to be the dollop of cream and cherry on top that compliment it perfectly (not the scrumptious slice of garlic bread that is good on its own, not so much with the ice cream, yuck!).
We hope we didn’t lose you at the mention of ice cream or garlic bread, because we aren’t finished yet. In fact we’re really only getting started.
Now that you’ve worked through both part one and two of our Brand Discovery Checklists you’re already well on your way to building or revamping your creative brand design and its identity.
To be completely honest it is not an easy feat and it will most likely not be smooth sailing, but if you are willing to put the necessary time and resources into your brand today, future you will be eternally grateful.
One thing to remember is that this isn’t something you need to do alone. In fact, we know someone who might be able to help, drum roll please...
It’s us! We’re a creative design agency in Brisbane, and we just so happen to specialise in all things branding from small business logo design to full scale custom packaging design solutions. We have even more knowledge to share and there’s no better way for us to do so than by guiding you on your brand journey. Feel free to reach out to our fantabulous team here.
Don’t let us do all the talking, let our work speak for itself.
And after everything we’ve been through if you’re still not 100% sold on the idea, or maybe even on our expertise (gasp), check out part IV. This might not be your average trilogy. By which we mean this isn’t a trilogy at all because part four is waiting for you.
Other parts to this branding series:
Doing things differently starts with a conversation.