Visual Identity: 7 Steps to Creating a Unique Сorporate Style

Introduction

Your own style is a reflection of the most vivid traits of your many-sided personality. Likewise, every brand has its own set of unique traits that can be proudly represented in the visual design. This will help set the brand apart in a crowded marketplace and boost sales. However, creating a unique visual identity is a rather daunting task as all the elements must work in harmony with each other to ensure win-win results. Here, every detail matters: a logo, fonts, colors, and more.

Thanks to a strong visual identity, your brand is sure to grab the potential customer’s attention and boost its prestige. And vice versa, inappropriate choice of colors or wrong visual element placement can negatively impact the overall brand perception and conversions, resulting in reduced rates. That’s why it’s vitally important to follow certain steps and trust professionals that have a profound experience and deep understanding of these issues.

Well, let’s dive deeper so that you’ll know how to define your brand’s unique identity to take your business to a whole new level. We asked one of the experts of our creative agency, boasting an extensive portfolio of successful visual brand identity creation projects, and here’s what we found out.

What is a Brand’s Visual Identity, and Why Does it Matter for Your Bussiness?

A brand visual identity is a mixture of visual and graphic elements that shape the company’s image in the consumers’ eyes, define its status in the industry and build recognition. Simply put, this is all about what customers see and associate with your business: from a logo to the color palette and fonts to the website, packaging, and advertising materials.

The very concept of identity is much deeper and goes beyond just a good visual design. It is a holistic expression of the company’s spirit, philosophy, mood, and goals with the help of visual assets.

A visual identity is a powerful tool for businesses, both large and medium. After all, it is what makes a brand well-known and recognizable, and helps earn the loyalty and trust of customers, keeping them coming back again and again. In addition, a solid visual identity can emotionally capture the audience, causing a certain association so that a customer will make a choice from the variety of presented brands and products in your favor.

Important Steps for Creating a Strong Visual Identity

Let’s consider what steps are the key to creating a unique and memorable company image that will favorably put you and your products and services head and shoulders above the competitors.

1. Defining the target audience and forming the general idea

This step is the first and extremely important. After all, the right definition and understanding of your target audience is the basis of the formation of the company’s general idea, which will be expressed through visual elements.

When you start from scratch, you may consider options for an identity that will match the product category. For example, for sportswear or equipment, a designer can offer a dynamic identity with bright colors and an italic font.

2. Logo design that represents the brand

A logo is the “heart” of the brand, the most important element of the identity. It conveys the image of the company and looks great in any medium, ensuring 100% recognizability.

A modern company logo should be simple, not overloaded with a large number of colors and elements. It can simply display your brand name being written in an appropriate font. The main thing is that it should be easy to read and remember.

If you want your logo to follow the latest design trends, you’d better give preference to animation than complex drawings.

3. Choice of a color palette

The next step is choosing a corporate color scheme that will ensure brand recognition even if the name or logo is not visible. With the help of the chosen color scheme, the brand, and its personality will be visually represented. This means that, through color, we will convey the mood of the company, communicate what it does, evoke emotions in the consumer, and boost the effectiveness of advertising.

The right choice of colors and their combination allow for delivering the intended emotion and creates a positive overall impression of the brand. Even unconsciously, the buyer will associate these colors with you and your product because we are visual creatures who perceive up to 80% of information through our eyes. In a matter of seconds, a person evaluates whether they like the selected colors and if they have a feeling of inconsistency.

The brand’s color palette can consist of primary and complementary colors that match each other. Depending on where they are used: in advertising, on the company’s website, etc., it is important to pay attention to the balance, psychological impact, and appropriateness of using them there.

The Comfy chain of stores uses its signature green color as a background on banners but on the website — shades of white and gray. Green and orange are used only as accent colors on the company’s website. Users understand that they are on the Comfy website but their eyes are not being irritated. They’re searching for products and spending their time comfortably.

4. Choice of typography

Typography is also a great tool for identifying a brand and its products. Thanks to the stylistic features of fonts, it is possible to communicate a certain brand character, support its general idea, and influence the decisions of buyers. There are many variations of fonts that can be selected to create a single image concept.

At present, simplified grotesque fonts have gained particular popularity. The absence of serifs makes them universal. They are suitable both for printed materials and the web. So far, there are no signs that some new trends are going to appear in the nearest future, so simplified grotesque fonts promise to be relevant for a very long time.

The world’s most famous font Helvetica started to lose its position due to its mega popularity. Unfortunately, almost everything that becomes mainstream sooner or later is replaced by something new because it loses its uniqueness. Currently, the use of Helvetica may be appropriate as an alternative, but not the primary font.

Some brands create their own custom typefaces — this increases their recognition and allows them to stand out from the competition. It’s not cheap, and it’s not that easy but getting your custom font can really make you stand out. Such companies do not simply adjust some existing font but rely on the brand character when creating it.

5. Website interface design

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine a brand that is not present in the online space. For those who want to be able to compete in today’s world and/or run an online business or have a digital product, a website is a must-have. And, this is where your identity can shine through.

The interface design of your website should be not only aesthetic but also very user friendly. The more simple and understandable the interface structure — the better. Why is this so important? If the user cannot easily find the information they need or the website takes a long time to load, you may lose a potential buyer. The best option is not to reinvent the wheel but place important elements, such as: a catalog, basket, and everything in between where the consumer expects to see them.

When one of the sales giants went completely online during the Covid-19 pandemic, users were pleasantly surprised by convenient filters. Well-configured filters complement the simple interface as yin and yang, improving the efficiency and convenience of the search, which ultimately fosters brand loyalty.

To understand how convenient and fast your site works, it needs testing. You can do it yourself by trying to find the necessary product or order it. For the most accurate result, you can contact our specialists who have already tested many sites and will be able to really evaluate and tell whether these parameters meet the requirements of users and if any changes need to be made for more effective work.

6. Use of graphic elements

To our expert’s mind, such graphic elements as 3D graphics, “live” photos, short videos, or animations can become a marvelous zest of your website. But again, it has to be a thought-out, creative solution that’s right for your business and meets the needs of your target audience. For example, if your brand is associated with products for children, the use of children’s hand drawings will be appropriate, and totally not acceptable for a serious financial organization.

7. Creation of promotional materials

When it comes to brand identity, visual consistency should be your mantra. No matter whether they are banners, posters, brochures, social media posts, or anything else, you need to make sure they all speak one visual language. The logo, color combination, typography, and other elements of the brand’s visual identity should be repeated throughout. A good solution is to create templates that you will use in your promotional materials. Thus, consumers should immediately have an association with your brand, products, services, etc.

Update and Rebranding of an Existing Brand Identity

Over time, the brand’s visual identity may need to be updated to keep up with the times and meet the needs and values of the target audience. If you already have a recognizable style with a good logo and corporate colors and you need to breathe new life into it, it is better to partner with a professional agency.

Our creative agency knows how to make the visual identity more modern and relevant while preserving the uniqueness of your brand’s personality, taking into account its history and the associations consumers already have with it. That means, no drastic changes are needed. Everything should happen unobtrusively so as not to ruin the emotional connection and customer loyalty.

Big companies update the style from time to time but don’t change the font from grotesque to upper case, for instance, because it will be a shock to users. With the help of an agency, changes can be made organically: choose cleaner shades that will better differentiate the brand from the rest, make the logo more dynamic, etc. But it is necessary to work within an already existing framework. Such a visual identity benefits the company.

Conclusion: Visual Identity Redefines a Business Strategy and Profitability

So, we do hope that we have covered the main trends and features of creating your own visual identity that will be useful to you.
To summarize:
• Visual identity is the external manifestation of the bright personality of your brand with the help of visual and graphic elements
• Brand visual identity is all about style, prestige, and a great way to inspire customers’ trust
• Visual identity helps distinguish you and your products from others
• Visual identity should be developed taking into account your industry and brand core values
• Like your personality, your brand’s visual identity should be striking and appealing to customers
• Visual identity works both online and offline. It is a must to maintain an authentic and consistent visual identity in all materials and across all your social media channels
• Your brand’s website should be simple and user friendly, without excessive use of bright colors and elements
• The simpler, the better — the main and enduring trend of modern brand visual identity

If you want to create or update your brand visual identity, our creative agency can develop an unforgettable brand image or skillfully emphasize the existing features of your brand. We are sure that the client’s tandem with a professional agency always guarantees high results and is a necessity. After all, an incorrectly selected font, failure to match the needs of customers, values of the company or the industry in which the business operates, a disharmonious combination of colors, and inappropriately selected graphic design elements can spoil the company’s reputation and cause unwanted associations with your brand, which, of course, will negatively affect profits.

In addition, we can fully develop a website, create promotional materials, bright creatives, catchy, provocative slogans, and much more that will definitely attract and hold the attention of old and new customers. So, don’t hesitate to contact us, and we will tell you how we can improve your marketing strategy and boost your sales potential.