Creating a Good Brand Identity for Business
Table of contents
When designing websites, we’re asked quite often to design the whole look and feel of a company. This happens with new business whose identity and business revolves around the website.
What is brand identity?
Without getting too technical, it’s the look and feel of a company.
If it’s consistent, it will help the company to be recognized again and again.
Why is the brand identity important?
For large companies, it really has great value. They can use the brand they have created to launch different products and services – and wherever they use that brand identity, the feeling and trust associated with are transferred to that new product or service.
For a small company, it a different matter. It’s more to do with looking professional and giving people a sense of trust and a feeling that you’re here to stay.
More than this, if you develop a great brand story, people will relate to your story and become loyal fans – and you don’t have to be large – just interesting!
What’s the best way to get a brand identity?
There is the fancy way and then there is the simple way.
The fancy way involved going to a brand agency, paying lots of money and then digging deep into the soul of the company.
It’s a great way to launch a consumer brand that’s going big quickly. You want to get that look right.
The second way is to do it in stages.
Start with the basics, which would be the colors and logo and then modify it until you have something you like.
It’s a bit like how we find ourselves, we do it slowly and we see what works, then we change our look as we get to know who we really are.
The basic assets
The basic assets work together to give the foundation of a site’s look and feel. You could stop here and you’d have a perfectly reasonable small website.
Logo
The logo – there is so much to talk about logos. Learn about logos and how to make them.
The color scheme
Primary colors, secondary colors, how to combine them, when to use them.
Fonts
The font – primary fonts and secondary fonts.
The brand personality
The brand is where things get interesting. Brand personality is the differentiator. The thing that makes a website pop and it resonates with its audience.
For this part, you’re going to have to know more about your audience and what’s likely to want with them.
Or you can define find your own personality. This takes longer time but its more authentic and maybe more realistic for those working in smaller businesses.
Photos
Supporting photos and mood photos. Photos that set the tone, the style, the color scheme. Photos ought to be consistent in feel – to give the brand a confident-of-itself feel.
Tone of voice
The writing in the website ought to be done by one person for a consistent and genuine tone. The tone can be serious or casual.
How Starfish creates brands
Since we’re not a professional branding agency – and clients don’t pay extra for branding, we have to have a practical approach.
We start with the basics assets and collaborate with our clients to create a brand personality.
Since we work closely with our clients in the long-term – this allows them to improve their brand over time.
However, if a client wants to impose a stronger look and feel from the start, then our content planning and web design approach can take that into account through deeper strategic planning, mood boards and the like.
