We are living in a world concentrated with products and services ready to grab our attention. In all this traffic, how do we make choices? We use visual identities of each company and of its product mix to identify, memorize and recall.
In 2009, researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston found that the human brain learns to process objects at an early stage of life. It was concluded that it takes just 100 milliseconds for our visual cortices to recognize visual representations as compared to textual information.
This is no rocket-science, it is just the way humans communicate and learn. Let’s explore why businesses should have a visual identity design and what is the role of branding objectives in this entire process.
First of all, it’s important for business owners to realize that branding is not the same as visual identity design. In fact, the latter is only a part of this progressive journey.
According to the book Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team, branding can be defined as “a disciplined process used to build awareness and extend customer loyalty. It requires a mandate from the top and readiness to invest in the future. Branding is about seizing every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another.” Some of the most common branding objectives include:
The different ways to share your message with the target market. To build a brand identity, you don’t just use visuals. You also use textual, auditory and experiential methods to deliver your vision, story or solution to your audience.
Audio Visual Logos
Media Service Logos
Marketing Firm Logo
Communication Company Logos
This has to do with the perception your customers have of you. Consumers pick a product not necessarily for its usefulness but also for the image that is attached with the brand. A good example of this is the iPhone, people don’t buy it because they need it but also because it creates a unique lifestyle for it – that of extravagance and minimalism.
It involves the information dissemination process of your brand. This is why when I think about water, I go with Aquafina. Perhaps it is different for you, but the point is to spread your brand into the market via a variety of channels and methods so that more and more customers get to know about you and pick you over others.
This word is often used in marketing but it is a branding objective because the promotional material is part of branding. Brand equity is concerned with the value of owning a well-known brand name. It becomes fairly easier to sell products of a popular brand name than to make sales for a less recognized name. A positive and strong brand equity is a sign of success.
According to Wikipedia, brand engagement is “the process of forming an emotional or rational attachment between a consumer and a brand.” There was a time when the only engagement customers could have with a brand was via a phone call or by buying the product. Today, there are a number of ways to induce engagement because we have the internet and the web. To delve deeper into this topic, you can read more on Design Rush.
This is a hard-to-achieve branding objective but if you win at this game then you can say cheers. The idea here is to retain customers so that they become recurrently use your product or service. There are a number of ways to achieve this such as premium customer service, special discounts and loyalty cards.
Once the objectives and the goals are set, it becomes easy for professional designers to create an appropriate and a customized visual identity design for startups, small businesses and large enterprises.
A visual identity of your business is any brand element that mainly requires the sense of sight. Know that a logo design is just the tip of the ice-berg. For example, your physical store and your website design are part of your visual identity design. Your visual identity will include everything that can be first seen then felt or experienced. It can include your corporate video, marketing collateral, packaging design, photography and much more.
This is one question several business owners still ask despite the global realization that a visual identity is a significant part of branding, marketing and conversions. You may argue that in 2016 the buzzword ‘debranding’ took off, but what you don’t realize is that the entire idea of this approach is only about detaching the name of the brand from visual so that the identity appears to be less corporate and more personal.
It’s time you stopped finding reasons to avoid investing in your visual identity. To start off with, I’ll tell you the importance of a logo design and how this visual gives you a lot more than its size.
Let us explore more reasons why you should spend your time, money an effort into planning, executing and maintaining your visual identity.
Popeyes Packaging for Holiday Traveler
Arby’s Subscription Box
UK’s Bulb brand comical advert
Coca-Cola’s Instagram Feed
National Art Museum Ukraine Rebranding
How has visual identity design helped your brand?
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