A solid brand is one of the most valuable assets a company can have. But what does a strong brand actually include? Marty Neumeier defines a brand as follows: "A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an identity. A brand is not a product... a brand is the gut feeling a person gets about a product, service or organization." Read more about how we help our customers with visual identity, branding and logo development.
So you can’t completely control your brand, but you can help it along by giving it a very clear direction. To build a brand with a strong market position, it is essential to develop your visual brand identity, as it should represent and convey your company’s characteristics, values and vision. Your brand identity is therefore an important part of your communication.
Your company’s brand identity is expressed visually through the logo, color scheme, typography and overall design expression. The crucial difference a strong visual identity can make to a brand also makes it one of the most interesting projects for us as designers to work on. At Iternum Digital, we have created a large number of visual identities to help elevate a wide range of different brands. We’d like to share some of our experiences about the process we typically go through when developing an identity.
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We will go through these phases here.
To develop a brand identity that is spot-on for your business, we’ll talk to you about your vision, goals and wishes for what your business should be associated with. In addition, we research your specific market situation, your competitors and your target audience in order to create something unique and relevant to your target groups and give your brand a strong and differentiated position. This first phase results in a design brief, which can vary slightly in format, such as text, mood boards and style boards. After a conversation with you about the design brief and any modifications, the development of your brand identity can begin in earnest.
Picture: Moodboard made in connection with the development of Vilstrup Bacon’s visual identity. Vilstrup Bacon produces gourmet bacon, where animal welfare, good ingredients and taste are in focus.
A logo is defined as the graphic representation of a brand, and a good logo communicates the brand’s concept and values. The graphic element is therefore important in your brand identity. We all know many great logos that create high value for leading brands due to their recognizability and function as the core of the brand’s identity and cornerstone of further communication. A logo typically consists of a mark/symbol or a logotype – or a combination of the two.
A logo should be:
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The technical side also needs to be in place, because your logo needs to be scalable and work in both positive and negative, so you can use it on many different platforms and elements. In addition, the trick is to try to find a look that isn’t too time-bound – your company and your brand should exist for many years.
The final logo for Vilstrup Bacon. The logo communicates quality and is developed based on the moodboard.
We often start by creating a mind map consisting of the company’s most important ‘value words’. We place the words individually in the middle of the paper and start writing down the different associations we get from each one. Some words may give some of the same associations, while others pull in different directions and may appear almost as opposites. It’s often the combination of opposites that creates the unique and different angle or interesting idea.
When we create logos at Iternum Digital, we strive to have only one fixed visual point in a logo. Multiple elements fighting for attention in different places in the logo makes for a cluttered and therefore weaker look. For the same reason, it is sometimes necessary to prioritize some of the values and de-prioritize others if they work against each other too much. In that case, we will prioritize those words in the first instance.
Mindmap in connection with developing a name for Vilstrup Bacon.
Based on the mind map, we typically continue in the development phase by sketching a heck of a lot by hand, which can be compared to a kind of “sketch brainstorm”. This way we don’t limit ourselves and we get more ideas to work with. We then select the best ones, which are then finalized digitally. The logo is also tested on different platforms and elements to see how it works.Â
The logo is the basis for the surrounding elements, which we can call the identity system. The purpose of the identity system is to create a systematic visual universe around the logo. This includes color choices and typography, which we’ll go into a little more depth here.
Logo design process.
Sketches for a logo we developed for IDEAL Law Firm and the logotypography.
The final logo we made for IDEAL Law Firm.
There’s no doubt that color choices have a huge impact on how your brand is perceived. You need to choose a color palette that best reflects the identity you have defined.
Should it be one or more bold colors, a soft palette, a single color or a black and white look? Strong, contrasting colors versus a soft, harmonious palette, for example, give two very different looks. Color choice should be appropriate for your business and is important to stand out from the main competitors and contribute to brand recognition. Color choice is thus an important factor when designing your logo.
Very often we define one or two clear signal colors, which can be used as the primary corporate color or as an eye-catcher on e.g. specific items on the website such as a call-to-action. The signal colors are often combined with a softer palette.
The typography your company uses for all written communication is also a big part of your brand identity and should match your company’s tone of voice. For example, a font can convey warmth and friendliness or directness and seriousness in its expression. This can have a big impact on how your company is perceived. The typefaces you choose should be able to work consistently in everything from PowerPoint presentations to brochures and website text. It should be a font that meets technical standards, contains enough different cuts to ensure broad layout possibilities and is technically optimized for both print and screen.
Sometimes there may be some contradictory value words we want to focus on when developing the identity, and it’s not always possible to incorporate them into the logo itself. Here we can use typography to pull the overall expression in a slightly different direction than the logo does, so that the overall experience of the identity encompasses more aspects.Â
When considering typography, you should also consider whether you want to use an open-source font that is easy to implement everywhere in the company without subscriptions or other costs, but which you risk encountering in many other places and which may end up not adding much identity to the brand. Or if you’re willing to pay to stand out more and use high-quality typography that you don’t often come across. Buying the right to use fonts is generally not expensive, but sometimes we find that customers are a little reluctant at first because there are things like licenses and page views to consider.
At this point in the process, a large part of your brand identity has been developed, but that doesn’t mean it’s finished. It is an on-going process, as it is important to maintain and monitor the brand identity continuously to keep up with the changing times and the development of the target group, market etc. In addition, several other elements may also be relevant to take a closer look at. For example, corporate image concepts, corporate graphics, illustrations and icons. Finally, we develop a design manual to ensure that you have the right prerequisites for using the brand identity in the future and thus get the most out of it.
Or do you have a new business area, new product or service that needs a strong visual identity? Feel free to call and we can have a chat about your specific task.
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Iternum ApS
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2000 Frederiksberg

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