To know how to create a visual brand identity, it is necessary to know what the brand itself wants to convey. The way of communicating with the public, the concept of your product and the idea that you maintain of business. Whether it's a personal brand, which you will have to answer those questions for yourself, as if you work for a company, which you will have to ask, there are a number of questions that you have to answer.
This can be better understood with an already created example. If we go to recognizable companies like Apple, we can understand what message they want to induce in their clients. The apple brand is full of luxury. White, gray and black colors give exclusivity to the brand. Clean designs and very minimalist products with premium finishes. High-resolution images with slogans like "healthy progress» or «Pro, very pro».
These messages denote superior quality in your brand's products. and all its added graphic set make it very recognizable. The same happens with brands like McDonalds, which no longer even need to use their logo to recognize them from afar through their two iconic colors. At Creativos we are going to teach you the basics you need to create a recognizable visual identity for your brand.
Essential elements for your visual identity
There are certain elements that are immovable when it comes to creating a visual identity. These elements are unique features that should not be moved once you have created it. That is why it is important to decide well, since the small modifications that will come in the future will involve ironing out certain aspects that have become outdated, but never those big changes.
The elements we are talking about are the following:
- Color: The chromatic choice of your brand
- Typography: Typography determines your message, so it is important.
- Photography and image design: The images that you expose in your brand determine the type of product
- the ultimate logo: The image par excellence of your brand, this is how a whole set of products is recognized
- The vision of the client: How should customers see your products?
- Brand value: What brand values are you going to transmit? Is post-sale service, product quality or speed important?
All this is important to create your brand image, since it positions it in one type of market or another. We can see examples like Aliexpress. Where his brand was positioned in a type of products called "gadgets". Cheap, relatively functional and low quality. In addition to a distant product, that you could not have in the short term. At first it was funny, since people asked for it and made jokes about it, something that positioned it in an electronic bazaar.
This is something that Aliexpress is trying to remove from your vision and it is costing you. That is why it is so important to know what vision you have of the brand, since it will be what the public sees and the way in which they consume your product.
Research the market first
To know how to create a visual brand identity, we must first know how the market we are targeting is. Defects and virtues of our competition can guide us to elaborate the elements of color, vision and brand value. We imagine that we are a mobile phone repair shop. We can see how competing businesses often use names similar to the Apple brand.
They want to imply that their service is as premium as the brand. This can generate some failures, such as thinking that they only fix iPhone phones and not the entire range of Android. But it can also imply that these services are very premium and that they will use top quality products. This can be a guide to develop our brand with a value and a vision.
The colors chosen by this type of business are white, blue and more electric tones. This may determine that we may have to use bright colors that imply electronic elements. After all, you need some knowledge of electronics to fix mobile phones.
Your brand value proposition
Once you have analyzed your competition, you can determine what value you are going to give to your brand. Since we have chosen the colors, the type of product we sell and have analyzed our competition, this time we are going to determine what we want to convey. Today it is very necessary to have the phone at hand, so fixing any phone in record time is essential. A value can be transmit speed.
We also need to transmit securityTherefore, during the time that we have a customer phone in the workshop, we can try to provide a replacement phone. That offers a service guarantee. The second value can be transmitting confidence.
In addition, with the new laws on climate change, which harms us all, we can know how much we save per part that we repair, instead of completely changing mobile. That commitment to nature and saving waste, can be our third and last value.
With these values we can create a brand vision as a whole, adding the typography and the ideal colors for each creation process. A main color and a secondary one, and even a third one to give the project more versatility. Also the typography, which must encompass this vision. One as main for large texts and another as secondary or for more explanatory texts.
Conduct a SWOT analysis
This is very common when you don't know how to create a visual brand identity. This analysis through four key points allows you to find out if all of the above that we have raised is on the right side or not. But you have to be honest with yourself or even, if it is a company, ask these questions with them or colleagues in the sector who can help you. This analysis is made up of:
- Castles and Fortresses: The positive part of your visual identity
- Opportunities: The changes that can provide your brand with new markets
- Weaknesses: The negative part of your visual identity
- Threats: Elements that may present problems for your brand