Here at Crib Projects, you could say that branding gives us life! It's one of our favourite things to assist clients with because it means we've been involved from the start of the journey. It’s creative, it's collaborative and it's always a lot of fun.
Getting a brand right is all about thorough planning, keeping things relatively simple and understanding your brands story.
At its most basic definition, brand identity is essentially the ‘’face’’ of a brand. While the idea of a brand is more of an emotional concept, the brand identity is the visual component that will be front and centre with prospective clients and continue to represent these greater ideas.
Brand identity is made up of logos, colours, typography, and messaging and it can be used to compliment and reinforce the existing reputation of a brand or cement the values of a newly launched one (paving the way for its story).
One of the most important concepts of good brand identity is consistency. The message that will be portrayed by brand identity components should stay the same, no matter where or how it's used. Maintaining this consistency can get tricky, that is if you don’t get things right from the get-go.
Just starting out? Here are our top 3 tips...
CLEAR BRAND PURPOSE
The first part of establishing a brand identity is the ‘why’?
Why does it exist? In other words, who does it speak to and what message is it sending each time it interacts? In our world of real estate, it's all about making connections via trust and quality.
PERSONALITY
We read this question many years ago and it still resonates with us…
"If your brand were a person, what would they be like?"
Ok, it’s a little cliché, but it’s a smart thing to keep in the back of your mind when thinking about your brand's attributes. Your brand’s personality has a huge impact on the voice and tone used in your marketing materials and other communications going forward. If your brand was a person how would you describe them? Dependable? Fun? Trustworthy? Confident?
Jot down some key words on what you envisage your brand's personality to be, and use these as a starting point.
LOGO - NOT THE BE ALL AND END ALL
The logo is important, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.
What should come first; the logo or the identity? The most influential brands of the world are constantly being refined so this is a tricky one to say, but in our opinion, the story should come first… Why? Because the story will be what sticks.
Take a look at this iconic logo for example…
What did you think of first when you looked at it? More importantly, what did you feel?
Nostalgia, joy, laughter, Peter Pan, Mickey Mouse, MAGIC? That's what brand identity is…
Ok, we're not creating Disney here, but we’re definitely in the business of creating great stories!
Here’s a fun case study if you’re interested in the story of Disney
When designing your logo - keep it simple. The simpler the logo, the easier it will be to adapt to different marketing mediums - print, digital and so on. Your logo should also be flexible, it needs to look good on a small Facebook ad as well as a large billboard.
Keeping things simple will help streamline this process.
Need a little help and direction? We're always just a call away...
Happy Creating!
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