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Let's discover key components that form the foundation of a strong and cohesive brand identity!
From logos to typography, color palettes to brand imagery, explore each essential element that contributes to shaping the identity of a brand. Whether you're a student learning about CIS or a designer looking for inspiration, dive into these fundamental building blocks of brand design to elevate your understanding and craft impactful brand identities.
1. Logo
1. Logo
A logo serves as the visual face of your company, embodying its identity and values. While many businesses prioritize achieving the perfect logo, the design process doesn't have to be overly complex. Logos generally fall into three main categories: wordmark, icon, and combination mark.
Wordmark Logo
Pros:
Clear and straightforward
Easy to adapt to many platforms or medium
Recognizable by reading the name
Cons:
General and common
Inconvenient if the name is too long
Fonts can be a problem for rebranding in the future
Icon Logo
Pros:
Clear and straightforward
Easy to adapt to many platforms or medium
Recognizable by reading the name
Cons:
General and common
Inconvenient if the name is too long
Fonts can be a problem for rebranding in the future
Combination Mark Logo
Pros:
Easy to adapt or rebrand in the future
Direct image and message
Distinguish the brand from other companies
The most popular choice for designing a brand's logo
Cons:
Pressure for uniqueness
Complexity of image and logo can make customers hard to remember or understand
Explore various logo styles beyond the common wordmark, symbol, and combination mark. These include lettermark, letterform, pictorial mark, abstract mark, mascot, and emblem logos. Each style offers unique benefits and challenges. Understanding these characteristics helps designers and organizations make informed decisions about logo selection to effectively communicate brand identity and stand out in the market. Considering reading an article comparing the pros and cons of each style to gain valuable insights into logo design.
2. Standard Guidelines
2. Standard Guidelines
After designing the logo, it is essential to create a standard guideline because it sets the tone, aesthetic, and value of the entire brand. Setting a guideline helps establish the way to use the logo correctly, and avoid things such as altering the logo in any way, causing it to lose its integrity by stretching or presenting it in a way that is not harmonious with the rest of the brand’s voice.
Every brand should set its own guidelines for logo usage. Here are fundamental aspects to include in the guidelines (take the Canny brand guideline as an example):
Space around the logo
Color Palette
Typography and font
Logo size
Description of logo
Colors
Logo versions
Bad logo usage
Navigating brand guidelines can be a complex and creative process that demands careful consideration. Accessing online resources for standard references can greatly facilitate this journey. Explore how various brands leverage their guidelines to ensure alignment and clarity in their visual communication.
👉 Here is a website providing branding guidelines from many brands. You can access and find defined guidelines to compare and get their insights.
3. Fonts/ Typography
3. Fonts/ Typography
Fonts/Typography is one of the major elements when designing a brand identity. Different typefaces can evoke distinct moods and set the overall representation of your brand. Choosing the right font is important since one brand communicates with its customers through fonts.
Before selecting fonts for your brand, it's crucial to ask specific questions to determine the most suitable fonts for various functions, offering consumers a clear impression of the brand's industry.
What font represents your brand?
Why was this font chosen?
What font is utilized for other brand communications?
Are any shading or effects permitted in surrounding typography?
Typically, a brand employs one primary and one secondary font to convey its message across various functions, with one font serving for titles and headlines, and the other for body text and subtitles. In most cases, excessive use of fonts can result in a design appearing unprofessional and amateurish.
Just Font is a website focusing on Chinese fonts. They have great applied case studies of using fonts in brand design and articles to share thoughts on issues of fonts in Taiwan.
Future Fonts is a website that sell and share about fonts that are curated by professional font designers.
Fonts and their personalities
Fonts play a big role in brand identity. They help set the tone and personality of a brand. Each font style has its own unique vibe and impact on how people perceive the brand. So, choosing the right font is key to effectively communicating your brand's message and personality.
Here are 4 standard types of fonts that represent personalities, provided by Visme:
Below are the fonts of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Helvetica Neue is their primary typeface, chosen to reflect the boldness and impact of UCSF. Granjon is our secondary typeface, chosen to reflect the humanity and inclusiveness of UCSF. When used together, Helvetica Neue and Granjon help communicate UCSF's core principles.
4. Colors Palette
4. Colors Palette
Colors play a big role in visually representing one brand's personalities and core values, helping to convey messages and leave a lasting impact on consumers. When colors are used consistently across different brand elements like logos and packaging, it strengthens recognition and reinforces what the brand stands for.
In the same industry, companies often choose similar Pantone colors to influence how people perceive their field and to enhance brand recognition within the industry.
For example:
Blue symbolizes trust and calmness => suitable for the service and technology industry.
Green reflects growth and sustainability => suitable for the agriculture and the healthcare industry.
This infographic, created by Towergate Insurance, analyses the logos of 520 companies. It identifies their colour preferences and explores the emotional responses that these logos may be designed to provoke.
A brand’s color palette is usually made up of four or five colors and either include or are complimentary with the colors of their logo.
The rule of thumb is to pick:
One light color to use as the background
One darker color for text
One neutral shade that goes with everything
One color that catches the eyes
Know more about choosing the right colors for brands through these articles:
👉 https://www.vistaprint.com/hub/branding-colors
👉 https://webflow.com/blog/brand-color-scheme
Apple color palette
Here are two websites you can consider for your brand:
Color Hunt: This website offers a variety of popular color palettes, including different shades and tones, making it easy for designers to find the perfect color scheme to set the desired mood for their branding design.
Realtime Colors: This website allows you to check how colors appear on your site in real-time. It's a convenient tool that saves time and helps you select the right color palettes for your brand website.
5. Position
5. Position
The best practices of logo placement suggest logos should be best placed on the left side. According to research by Nielson Norman, since a majority of humans read from left to right, eyes are drawn naturally to the left first. Hence it follows that left placement usually draws user attention the most.
An example from London Metropolitan University for logo positioning.
6. Pattern
6. Pattern
Brand Patterns are one of the most exciting and interesting branding elements. They're a big part of making sure people remember your brand. They make your brand stand out and give it a unique vibe. Sometimes, people even remember the pattern more than the logo!
Stores, restaurants, and companies that sell and deliver things can use fun patterns to help people recognize their brand. These patterns make sure everything looks the same wherever you see the brand, like in stores or on packages. It's a neat way to make sure people remember your brand!
University of California San Francisco (UCSF)'s patterns are designed to allow for a plug-and-play approach to pattern customization.
7. Iconography (Optional)
7. Iconography (Optional)
Icons serve as concise visual representations of objects, actions, or concepts, enhancing information communication and adding visual appeal to graphic design. Their versatility allows for simplifying complex ideas and facilitating quick message translation. Consistency in style and structure across icons ensures unified communication and contributes to a cohesive brand experience. Explore IBM's curated collection of icons, covering various domains such as application, commerce, and data, exemplifying their effectiveness in diverse contexts.
IBM's library for iconography
8. Mascots/ Characters (Optional)
8. Mascots/ Characters (Optional)
All the design elements above are essential for a brand identity, but there is still a new compelling element that is believed to enhance communication between one brand and its customers, which is a mascot or a character. Most of us are visually driven and our brains work in such a way that we notice images faster and remember them better than text, that's the reason why having a brand mascot can help the brand be memorized. To be considered as an effective mascot, it should be:
memorable
recognizable
original
representing a consistent character
flexible to adapt and adjust
applicable for diverse tasks
looking good in different sizes and resolutions
stylistically harmonic
lively and user-friendly.
“To Let the World See Us”
A series of TAIWANIMAL was developed based on five animals in Taiwan, which are Formosan Black Bear, Formosan Sika Deer, Taiwan Dog, Farmland Tree Frog, and Leopard Cat. These exceptional animals in Taiwan convey the cultures and traditions of Taiwanese people’s way of loving this land and let foreign friends meanwhile get to know Taiwan with these cute mascots.
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