Brand identity
Brand identity refers to the visual and emotional representation of a brand’s values, personality and characteristics.
A rebrand or brand refresh ensures a unified and professional appearance that builds user trust and loyalty, aligns a brand’s messaging with its values, and ultimately leads to higher engagement and conversions.
Introduction to brand identity
Rebranding is a strategic decision that should be carefully considered. Therefore, it’s crucial to distinguish whether an organisation desires a brand, a rebrand, or a brand refresh. The latter may have varying requirements, while the former two follow a similar process, which includes establishing a logo, a colour palette, typography, etc. While a rebrand calls for a new identity for a business, which may include a revised name, slogan, visual identity or brand values, a brand refresh entails changes to an existing colour palette, logo or font style to keep the visual identity fresh, up-to-date and appealing.
What is brand identity and why is it important?
Brand identity encompasses various design elements, including colours, typography, imagery, logos and visual styles. The consideration of these various elements is important as they convey the brand’s essence across all touchpoints of a digital product.
The role of brand identity
Establishing a brand identity is important as users become able to develop a strong and recognisable connection with a brand, which consequently fosters trust and loyalty.
Benefits of rebranding or a brand refresh
A well-designed brand identity system maintains a coherent look and feel, creates the perception of a trustworthy and reliable website and increases the likelihood of users recalling and recommending the website to others.
Supporting your users' needs
Builds emotional connection
Creates long-term value
Differentiates from competitors
The stages of establishing a brand identity
Stage 1: Gather materials
The following are typically supplied to us:
- Brand values
- Brand positioning
- Tone of voice
- Identification of the target audience, which could be personas or audience segmentation
- Brand personality
- Competitor/market analysis
Stage 2: Audit current materials
Rebrands and brand refresh benefit from an audit and review of existing brand elements at this stage. This can help update any existing market segmentation to include any new audiences. It can also shed light on any potential negative perceptions that need to be counteracted as part of the brand updates. This can involve social media listening, surveys, focus groups and data from any loyalty programs.
Stage 3: Workshop
During the workshop, we define the brand direction, goals and aims, as well as review the materials supplied.
Stage 4: Iteration
The initial concepts will be iterated upon the following feedback. Examples will be shown to visualise the brand.
Stage 5: Create brand guidelines
The brand personality will documented in the form of guides.
What’s included
Depending on project requirements, a light brand style guide (covering logo usage, colours, typography and icons/illustrations if applicable) is the usual minimum documentation supplied in branding projects.
Why choose Make it Clear
At Make it Clear, we take an evidence-based approach to everything we do. Understanding your organisation, audiences, and the context in which they interact is paramount to the way we work and deliver a best-in-class user experience.
