If your business is just another name in the sea of businesses in your niche, there are zero chances of potential customers opting to become your loyal customers. What saves you here is branding, specifically branding design.
What is branding?
Branding is simply called a process of creating an identity for your business in the minds of the audience and consumers. It is the visual and physical identity of your brand in the eyes of the public. Branding incorporates several elements to make it work, including digital and practical experiences and expressions of the brand. The digital part, mainly includes the logo, tone of the brand, visual design, aesthetics, and so on.
The elements included in the branding design:
Several elements make up the entire branding design and identity. They help to make the brand stand out amongst the competitors, and make it more recognizable to the consumers. The main elements of the branding design are.
- Logo
- Color Scheme
- Typography
- Other Design Elements
Other than these basic elements that form a brand design, branding & identity typically also refers to the way a brand chooses to express itself. The brand’s expression in the real and digital world makes up for the whole branding experience.
The real-world experience of the brand would typically include the aesthetics and design of the office/stores/outlets, the way consumers are treated during their visits, the display of products, the ease of access, and the whole purchasing process.
The digital experience typically includes your brand’s social media interactions, digital presence, website experience, and the overall aesthetics of the brand on social media and the internet in general.
Owing to the emergence of specialized branding units in every business and smaller businesses taking help from specialized branding companies, branding has become all the more important (in fact, most important) to sustain a business and grow it. Ensure the brand’s message is conveyed throughout all the touchpoints of the brand’s physical and digital presence. To strengthen the brand image in the minds of the audience and develop an emotional connection with the audience, branding is extremely important.
How does branding design help your brand?
With many brands competing in the same market and having similar products, it is branding design that differentiates your brand and your products from the rest of the market. Branding is what sets your brand apart and helps it to stay ahead of its competitors.
Branding design represents the personality, and ideas of your brand. It shapes the consumers’ perception and attitude toward the brand. Sometimes an ad campaign does the job, but other times the whole branding package works to get the job essential. Great branding design not only builds up an impression of your brand but also brings about a strong customer base and loyalty for the brand for the future.
A solid brand identity helps your brand to be cohesive, unified, and compact across all digital platforms as well as physical marketing and aesthetics. If you create a strong brand identity, it will help you across all of your digital marketing channels, website, office décor, billboards, stationery, and so on.
Let us now go through in detail, the elements that make up a brand’s identity.
Elements of a brand identity:
- Name
- Slogan
- Logo
- Color
- Images
- Shapes
- Typography
Name:
The name of your brand is the first thing known to people and the most important too. Your brand name defines what the brand is all about. It makes up for the first and last impression of your brand. You always have to make sure that is it worth being remembered, and hard to forget at the same time.
Devising a perfect brand name is a huge and challenging task in itself, you need to consider what the brand wants to convey, and portray, and its synchronization with the brand’s values and strategy. Create a name so that the whole niche becomes known by your brand name. For example, Pampers and Band-Aid.
Slogan:
This tagline defines further what your brand is, in a few words. Always remember that it is the slogan most people remember, “just do it” is a perfect example of it. The tagline also has to be in sync with the niche your business operates in. nobody will appreciate a funny tagline for a hospital, would they?
The slogan does not have to be a quick fix or momentary representation of your brand, rather the slogan has to encapsulate your brand’s growth and future aims too. You can not change your slogan every year, can you? So, the slogan has to be classic, a true representation of your brand, and also be timeless with the brand’s present and future.
Logo:
What is most important after your brand name and the tagline is the logo. The logo is what people will remember you by. It is as recognizable as the name of the brand itself and creates a more lasting impression as pictures and images tend to have a more lasting impression than words.
The logo can have the brand name incorporated in it, making the brand name – the logo. You can also add multiple elements and shapes to the logo to convey more messages to the audience about your brand. Always remember, less is more. Think Apple and Uber. these logos are simple, classic, and recognized worldwide. The kind or type of logo does not matter, what matters is that the logo represents the brand in its truest sense.
Color:
Colors make or break your brand identity; colors are as powerful as they can be. Certain colors trigger certain feelings, and that is a universal fact. You need to dive deeper into color psychology and what colors make the perfect sense for your brand.
Choosing the perfect colors for your brand to portray the exact emotions your brand wishes to convey is just the cherry on top. Once you get what kind of message your brand wishes to convey, the color selection of the colors becomes automatically easy.
Images:
Choosing images or an image for your brand is not necessarily the primary element of the brand identity. But they go well with the marketing strategies that are developed on the brand identity. The editing of the photos used in marketing has to be uniform all across the marketing platforms and social media marketings too. You can also use branded filters and presets. It is ideal to stick to certain hues in capturing and publishing photos in the marketing campaigns.
Shapes:
Choose a shape for your brand that is easily distinguishable from the competitors. So, being different from the others will also help you have a niche within a niche of your own in the market and get specific loyal customers.
Remember that the shape can also take the form of the packaging of the products. So, it also makes up for the marketing aspect of it. It is always an option to bring innovation in the same product shape. Lots can be done with a little bit of imagination and tons of creativity.
Typography:
The typography, just like the colors can simply make or break your entire brand identity. You have to understand that the typography of your brand has to sync completely with the brand’s other dynamics. The typography has to bring out special feelings in the consumers that your brand would like to bring out in them. The typography has to be used throughout all the marketing mediums, to social media marketings, from emails to billboards.
Conclusion:
When all these elements work in perfect synchronization. So, the brand identity and its success in growing the brand are guaranteed. The brand identity plays a crucial role in making the brand a success and elevating its reputation. Trust your instincts, and get ahead of your competitors by getting ahead of everyone with a fantastic brand identity.
