Today in this highly competitive market, it’s essential for a business to stand out among the crowd. And, for this, a company needs to be unique and highly recognizable by customers. In this article we discuss Brand Identity Design: 6 Highly Effective Principles To Achieve A Competitive Edge Over Your Competitors.
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Know Why Branding Matters So Much:
The Global New Product Innovation Survey conducted by Nielsen.com has established the fact that almost 59% of the people prefer to buy new products from the brands that are familiar to them and nearly 21% of the people say that they are ready to purchase products from the brands that they like.
Some people still believe that it’s the marketing specialist who designs the entire branding, but that’s not the truth because branding is a smart and comprehensive combination of marketing and designing. Paul Rand, a very well know American Graphic Designer said- «Design is the silent ambassador of your brand. »
Now, this article is going to tell you about the six critical principles of brand identity design-
The Goal Of The Business and The Personality of The Brand:
It’s not the designer who will set the goal for your business or defines the personality of your business; instead, it’s your responsibility to have a specific goal for your business and to know what kind of character you want your brand to have. Share your business’s purpose and personality with your designer at the starting point of time so that they could see the right direction to go.
Before designers start working on the visual part of the brands, designers need to determine the personality or the character your brand wants to have. Always remember one thing that the customers always connect with the nature of the brand first, and they buy and turn into loyal customers. The entire game starts with the personality of the brand, so you should not ignore the role of brand personality. Create 5-6 keywords that describe your business in the best manner and share the list with the designer team so that they can have an idea about the personality that you want your brand to have.
Psychology plays a crucial part in brand designing. Psychology-oriented design can help know user’s behaviors and their possible reactions to the design. Moreover, psychological design principle can help your brand to establish effective communication with the clients.
Audit Your Marketplace Properly
Know what your competitors are doing well and what are the things that they are struggling with. This will help you to find a new angle that your business can leverage.
First thing you need to do is identifying your competitors and, use your due diligence to find the right ones. Try to look at a broad spectrum of competitors so that you will be able to analyze the companies whose segmentation of customers is vastly different than yours. Ask yourself this question whether or not a customer could come up in a situation where he/she has to choose between you and the competitor? If the answer is yes, you should add the company to the list of your competitors. Review each of your competitor in a thorough manner so that you would be able to identify their strength and weakness.
Let’s take an example of Ola, a Bangalore based online cab company currently has the overall market share of 56.2% and now expanding its service in the global market that includes Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Australia.
From the data given below, you can easily understand the fact how OLA is dominating the Indian market and, the highly intelligent market research done by OLA played a significant role for OLA to reach the top position in the Indian Market.
Logo Design:
A large number of people still mistake a logo for a brand, but, the truth is that it is just a part of a brand designing. The logo is the prominent symbol of the brand image, which creates the foundation of a marketing strategy that bridges the connection between the brand and its target audience
The essential stages of the logo design process are-
- Setting a task
- Well user-research
- Market research
- Creative search
- Selection of style direction
- Variety of color-palette
- Testing various sizes and environments
- Creating a style guide setting right and wrong cases of Logo use.
One of the most valid reasons behind doing extensive research is avoiding unnecessary similarities with other logos in the relevant sector and make a completely original identity for the brand.
Once the logo is complete, the designers start with the testing part. It is vital to test the logo design in all possible situations and placements to make sure there won’t be an unpleasant situation.
As Logo significant element in the brand identity of a business, so designers must pay serious attention in its creation process. A well-thought logo is worth time investment.
Consider The Visual Elements Of A Brand:
The logo is not the only visual element of a brand. The logo is indeed vital, but other things that require your attention are mascots and typography of your brand.
Mascots are the custom design characters that are specially designed to represent the brand symbolically. They can be designed as a part of the logo or as an individual character. A well-designed mascot can quickly draw the attention of a large number of people.
Zoo Zoo is a very popular mascot of Vodafone India. Zoo has almost 200 pages with 250,000 fans.
Another crucial visual element responsible for brand identity is typography. You can also use the fonts to speak about your brand. The designer often creates custom fonts for companies to be unique in such small details.
Create A Manifesto For Your Brand:
Create a manifesto for your brand and stick to the manifesto-like it’s your bible. The belief of your company and what it stands for will create an emotional connection with your customers. You can take the help of a professional copywriter who can vocalize what your brand stands for. A business manifesto enhances the trust quotient of your company.
Social Network:
When it comes to branding for your business, especially your website or any Android Apps, social networking could be an essential channel supporting strategy. You should use popular social networking platforms like FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and many others to increase brand awareness in a meaningful manner.
Corporate A Proper Brand Style:
When you have the major elements like Logo, Color palette and other visual elements are ready, it’s time to gather them all in a harmonic unite style. It is specifically required for the companies that are providing some kind of service. Based on the type of the company, various attributes can become a branded item. Now, this article sheds the light on the common brand items used by most of the companies-
Business Card:
Today, it’s a must-have element for business communication, so you must make sure that your business card is designed in a proper manner. It should include-
- Name (personal and business)
- Job title
- Phone
- Website
- Social media sites
You would be just shocked to hear that 27 million business cards printed daily turns into just under 10,000,000,000 business cards printed annually.
Correspondence:
Business communication always has a formal style. To showcase a brand as a highly legitimate partner and service provider, a well-designed correspondence presentation should be prepared. Letterhead and envelope should have the brand identity so that it can show the level of professionalism.
Banners and billboards:
No wonder they are the backbone of branding and marketing so the designers need to emphasize working on a creative idea for outdoor adverts and web banner.
Branding With The Company T-Shirt and Hats;
According to the recent studies and research on branding and marketing, T-shirts and hats with brand mark always give a boost to the team spirit of each employee of the company.
Vehicle Marketing:
Companies that provide delivery services need an effective brand decoration of the vehicle. Brand identity elements on the company vehicle can also be an effective way of doing outdoor promotion.
Style Strategy:
The work has almost been done. The visual material is complete. The only task now the designer has is to ensure clients will use all the properties in a proper manner. A style guide is a document that provides instructions about the right and wrong ways of using the graphics created for the brand. Usually, a style guide includes the explanation behind the main idea standing behind the Logo, a presentation about using the corporate color palette. It can be an excellent way to showcase examples of improper usage in order to avoid poor visual performance.
The example given below is the Style Guide for the logo design.
You might have already realized that Branding is a challenging process. Based on the requirement of your target audience and business objective, you need to take each step and enhance the brand awareness of your business in the best manner, We hope you found this article about Brand Identity Design: 6 Highly Effective Principles To Achieve A Competitive Edge Over Your Competitors interesting, and be sure to leave any comments below.
Author Bio
Payal is a Content Consultant at Enuke Software, a pioneering Blockchain, and Mobile App Development Company in the USA. Payal is passionate about the start-up ecosystem, Crypto world, entrepreneurship, latest tech innovations, and all that makes this digital world.