How To Create a Strong Brand Identity

Powerful visuals and a coherent identity tie a business together.

Everywhere your brand steps foot matches up, and feels well put together.

A strong, strategic brand identity helps you stand out. It creates a visually pleasing framework to consistently wrap up your content, and your message.

Brand identities can evolve over time - with visual rebrands signalling a new era for your business.

But it has to feel complete - or you’ll look unprofessional. And untidy.

Working with a professional designer is key - which is why we have many top notch graphic designers and branding experts in our network.

But our designers always tell us that the work is so much better when the client has an understanding of what goes into it.

So here’s some of the key elements you should be thinking about, as a client getting ready to create a strong brand identity:

STEP 1 - Determine what your brand is about

Thinking about the top level strategy and foundational ideas that bring together your entire business can be a weighty process. But the work - and the output that comes after -  is worth it.

Plenty of business owners try to skip this step. They try to move forward without the clarity, focus and research they really need, and wonder why the design output from the freelancer feels wrong.

You need to get clear on your mission. Your vision. Your strategy.

Who are your audience?

What do they need?

What do you offer?

Why are you different?

When you have a succinct and snappy answer to each of these questions, you’re ready to move on to design.

Keep scrolling for knowledge…

STEP 2 - Focus on the building blocks

When you’re feeling solid on your identity - now you can move on to the fun stuff.

Brand colours. Fonts. Imagery. Logos. Taglines.

These elements are where the personality of your brand can come out to shine.

Generally you need a primary font for headers, and a secondary font for body text.

As for a brand colour palette - choose a main colour that represents the essence of your business, and evokes the kind of emotions you want to be associated with. Then you want an accent colour that contrasts nicely. 

You might like to look at those colours within a selection of 4-5 to make up the overall colour scheme of your brand. It has to be said - professional designers are fantastic at this. Exceptional, aesthetic colour choice is not as simple as it sounds.

Do the top level work to choose your brand colours and fonts - and then make sure everything your brand creates stays consistent with those choices. 

STEP 3 - Wrap your brand up, and work with a designer to flesh out the vision

Now you have the brand assets designed and ready to go, implement your new visual branding across every channel.

Debuting your new branding with a launch campaign is a nice way to signal the new look for your business, and get some attention. It takes some coordination, but it’s an opportunity to share the logic and intention behind your brand with the people in your audience. 

We’d also recommend using professional designers to create visual graphics using your new brand identity. Quality design makes the right impression - don’t undo all your hard work with DIY visuals!

Before you go!

We help companies with their brands. Giving a prominent voice to the unsaid, the hidden and the marginalised, we use our creativity and compassion make sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. We help clients connect with audiences in a meaningful way that challenges perspectives and changes behaviour. To see more of our purpose led campaigns, and brands we’ve created check out our project page, or just holla us at the contact page.

A full list of our services can be found here.

If you’re a charity or work in the third section why not download our free ‘‘Top 5 Freebies for Charities and NonProfits’, which covers website, branding and video creation, at the link.