How to Develop Your Brand Identity

A logo is a graphical representation of how a company wants to be perceived. A brand is a collective perception of the experiences it creates for customers.

~Kapil

1. Analyze / Make a plan

For starters, you need to thoroughly analyze the market and establish a plan - in other words, a direction for your brand. Go through your domain and find out what is happening, what is trending. Who are your competitors and what are their strengths and weaknesses. Then, define your product or service. What are you going to sell and how is your product going to stand out from the competition. The list below provides you with words, choose 3 to 5, that you can use to define the personality of your brand.

Photo: https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-build-a-brand

It is important to ask yourself several questions. To start, what are your values and goals? Where do you want to position yourself within your domain? Is your product easily accessible or a more luxurious brand? Who is your target audience? Are you going to sell your product to teenagers or seniors? Once you have gathered all this information, you can then create a persona, a fictional person to whom you will attribute characteristics and who will represent your target audience. This persona will help you understand how your target audience interacts with your brand. You can then establish a branding strategy. (We are _____, we sell this product to these customers in this a way. We are different because _______.)

2. Create a logo

Once you have your plan, you can translate your criteria into graphic rules and create your logo. You need to decide: which color expresses the values you want to represent? Which font is best for your type of business? Are you using the right icon style to resonate with your target audience? Take a few minutes to read our blog. We have several interesting articles on color psychology, symbolic shapes and how to choose the right font for your logo.

 Remember all the decisions you make in Step 1 have a great influence on the look of your logo. Use our editor to create the ideal lhttps://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2017/06/08/the-meaning-of-colorsogo according to your desired criteria.

Let's say you have defined your brand as professional and serious as you are communicating to members of the government? If so, you probably don’t want to include rainbows and handwritten font! On the other hand, if you have a daycare and have defined your brand as flamboyant and childish, rainbows are a reasonable choice. All the choices regarding your logo should be based on the plan and the research you have done.

3. Developing the Brand

The logo is only a small part of your brand identity. That means you need to think about the entire picture of your brand: from the shopping experience to the choice of vocabulary in your communications, to the style of your brand and your visuals on social networks. To create a consistent graphical environment, create several graphical elements that you can use in a variety of contexts. Establish a color palette, choose a font, create patterns, and use a set of custom icons. Make yourself a folder of different resources that you can use according to your graphic needs. All these resources will help you create a strong brand.

4. Implementing Your Brand

Now that you have created a strong visual identity for your business, it is time to use it. To communicate your new brand identity, you can follow our tips from a recent article on what do after creating your logo. In short, you have to be consistent across all your communication channels. Everything must have the same vibe, whether it is for your social networks, business cards, the store environment or website.

To help you in these steps, you can create a brand guide, a document that contains all the information concerning your visual identity (colors, use of the logo, fonts, etc.). It can be a reference when creating new promotional items and wanting to stay consistent throughout your branding.

Finally, remember that your brand will evolve over time. It is not worth trying to stop it from doing so. You only need to keep the evolution clear and make consistent changes across all your channels. If you do an update in one place, do it everywhere else! Enjoy creating!