In last month’s issue we explored the core elements of your brand, its values and traits. A brand’s values and traits feed directly into everything that a brand does and says and therefore they are central to the creation of your brand’s overall identity. But what is a brand identity? Identity is a very complex, multi-faceted concept and so over the coming months we aim to break down the term and explain how we at The Pudding understand identity and how our approach to the subject allows us to become creative partners with our clients and holistically develop their brand identities.
This article focuses on the visual manifestation of a brands identity ie: visual identity. Branding, as we know it today, originated from farmers needing to identify their cattle and in turn these marks developed into symbols associated with quality. During the early 1900s, as advertising grew, the demand was placed on businesses and organisations to develop visual systems of communication for their brands. And as a result of this, we now live in a society which is highly aware of branding, identity and visual identity.
A brand’s visual identity however is far more than a logo. A visual identity consists of a visual language that has been curated based on a set of core concepts. The brand’s values and traits are distilled into a visual language that is communicated through colour, typography, photography, imagery, illustration layout etc. Our strategy, as discussed in previous issues, allows us to gain an intrinsic understanding of your brand. We assist you in defining your objectives, mission, value and traits and all of these aspects contribute to the development of a creative brief. How do we communicate what your brand is all about? How do we get the message to people that you stand for quality, for example, or that you are results driven or environmentally friendly? This all starts with the creative brief. The brief allows the creative team to identify exactly what the objectives of the visual identity should be. Take for example an extremely interesting brief which had only two objectives. One, the brand wanted a package so unique and different that you could find it in the dark and two, they wanted the glass to be so distinctive that even when it was shattered on the ground, you could still identify it. This was the creative brief set for the design of the Coca Cola bottle in 1916. The strength of the outcome is mirrored in the precision and clarity of the objectives, so much so that the design has stood the test of time and is to this day revered as iconic.
This demonstrates again how important it is to lay the groundwork for your brand identity. Strategy is key in the creation of a strong brand identity because it will inform every decision that needs to be made, especially within the design process. It feeds into absolutely every aspect of your brand’s visual identity from the choice of colour palette to the typography and layout as well as the materials and even social media platforms that you use.
A brand’s visual identity can be seen as a toolbox of carefully considered visual elements that can be combined to communicate a precise and consistent message. For example business cards printed on rich, thick card with metallic foil emboss say something about the organisation and business and person that it belongs to. With this understanding that a brand’s visual language is far more than a logo we will, over the coming issues, look at the role that some of these elements play in the creation of a visual identity that truly reflects your brand.
Article by: Eva Shortt – Creative Lead, The Pudding