How To Create Visual Identity For Your Brand?
Let’s find out step by step.
What is Visual identity?
Brand visual identity is a set of characteristics that define the look and the feel of a brand across channels. It is a feature that makes a company’s services unique and recognizable among its competitors.
Essentially, visual identity is the visible representation of a brand, from the logo and colors to the website and design of physical stores. It encompasses everything you can see in connection to a company. Since it plays an essential role in branding, it’s important to understand how to create one.
Define your brand identity
Your brand identity should guide the visuals, because they were supposed to express who your brand is. To start, define your mission and vision statements, core values, and brand voice. Ultimately, your brand values, vision and mission should guide your visual decisions. To understand your brand identity, define your core values, your purpose and how you communicate with clients.
Know Your Audience
Your brand’s visual identity will speak to your audience. Knowing your audience’s pain points, desires and personality can help you build a visual identity that they can relate to. Start with identifying their problems.
The insights will inform the way you approach your solutions and, ultimately, the visual identity that represents those solutions. Furthermore, it will inform you of factors that affect their decision to use your services. To find the right audience to message your offers to with brand visuals, define your buyer persona by analyzing their:
- Age
- Gender
- Income and education level
- Job description
- Lifestyle
- Interests
- Values
Share a compelling brand story
A brand story can help you evoke an emotional appeal with your clients and set the standard for your visuals and imagery. Specifically, it allows you to connect with your target consumers in a way that is meaningful to them and beneficial to you.
Ultimately, your brand story will serve as a basis for your brand visual identity. People remember stories more than facts, which is why visual identity must focus on telling a great story. You can draw people in with characters and conflict, or incorporate your values into your visuals.
Define Visual Brand Identity Purposes And Roles
Your brand’s visual identity covers a wide array of specific platforms that have different demands on terms of approach to design. Depending on the type of brand identity, you may want to employ different platforms. Some of them include:
- Ads
- Packaging
- Brochures
- Corporate identity
- Presentations
- Websites
- Wearables
- Digital projects
- Artwork
Aim for simplicity
You have limited time to make a lasting impression on your target audience. Thus, focus on the specific concepts you want to share. To avoid confusion, concentrate on one message at a time and organize your visuals around that. Consumers will take in visual information within a matter of seconds, and unless they are actively seeking out your brand, they will move on just as quickly.
Adapt to multiple mediums
Next, think carefully about your visuals in different environments. Different media can drastically change how your visual elements come across. For example, colors and type choices will differ depending on the medium. Thus, it’s crucial to cater your visuals to the medium you’re using to promote your brand.
Experts will be able to provide advice on how your visual choices affect things like user-friendliness and convenience. Serif fonts, for example, are more legible in print, but sans serif fonts can be easier to read on a screen. You can consult us here to see which will be the best fit for your firm. We will discuss how to adjust visual assets for each medium to ensure all elements, from colors and fonts to images and animations, appear consistent across channels.
Define Your Brand Elements
Finally, convey the values and personality of your business through the visual elements you align with your business. Ultimately, your visual identity should amplify your brand message. Consequently, your brand story should sell customers into why they should do business with your brand.
At the core of your visual identity are the following brand elements:
• Color
Research suggests that between 62% to 90% of consumer decisions are based on color. Thus, your color palette needs to fit what you are trying to convey. If you’re promoting a luxury product, you may want to use blacks, golds, and silvers. If you have a financial product, you may want to incorporate greens and golds.
• Logo
Essentially, your logo needs to convey what you do. Additionally, you need to have imagery that sticks into the minds of the people who see it. A logo can be a combination of your color palette, type, and design. Ultimately, your logo should evolve as your identity evolves.
• Type
Fonts play an important role in making an emotional impact on your audience. The font and the arrangement of your text affect your brand’s visual identity and the way it impacts consumers. Additionally, it’s important to choose a typeface relevant to your brand personality.
Maintain consistency
While visual identity aims to create an emotional connection with a customer, consistency becomes priority in order to maintain the customer’s loyalty. By creating a brand style guide, and outlining the specific visual identity systems and styles, you can successfully maintain consistency.
To start, pay attention to the customer service, the service you deliver, or the content you create that engages your audience. Furthermore, once you’ve chosen a brand identity from a visual perspective, make sure you use it wherever your brand interacts with customers. Additionally, showcase the same essential components of your visual identity on every platform, through every consumer conversation.
This will help to build a sense of familiarity which helps clients to recognize your brand in the future. Finally, as your company evolves, upgrade or enhance your visual identity from time to time. This can be a necessary part of continuously appealing to your target audience and remaining competitive in your chosen niche.
Conclusion
Creating a visual identity is an essential part of a general branding strategy of any business. Apart from messaging and brand voice, brand visual identity plays a key role in consistent business presentation. Additonally, visual identity is a powerful tool for telling a brand’s story, building customer affinity, connecting with customers, and increasing revenue.
Once you outline your visual identity and create graphics, you’re ready to share your visual language with the world. If done effectively, with time and consistency, visual identity can communicate a particular feeling or message without words.