Today I’m going to talk about the importance of brand identity: why you need it, why it’s important, and how you can get it done. So let’s go ahead and dive in on my computer.
Right here, I have one of our brand guidelines up for one of our clients. We do this a lot for clients, especially if we’re doing web development and marketing for them. We make sure that we want to be consistent across the board in regards to the mission, their core values, bonds, their tone, also the look and feel of the logo and all of the branding that they have.
And so the main reason we do this is so we have a catalyst to work from when we’re designing all the elements for them in the future. And this is really good, because it gives us a benchmark of where to work from.
Now we’ve done this plenty of times. Here’s some other ones we’ve done, here’s one for our internal project Black Wallet. As you can see, all the info’s here.
We usually follow a pretty normal table of contents, usually the mission, the core values, our tone, the location, logo guidelines, iconography and typographic, sometimes you get a little bit more detailed, contingent on the client type, but you can see everything is here and filled out. We usually put this in the footer of the website.
Here’s another one for a mobile app that we did about a month ago. Here’s one for an air conditioning company we just finished up. So yes, you guys can see that there’s kind of a normalcy or actual template when it comes to contents and what we provide for clients.
So to break down what a brand identity is, it’s all the components related to a product service company or person. This can be the logo, the tone, the tagline, the typeface, the voice, your online aesthetics—just everything that encompasses who you are as a brand. And there are six reasons why I think this is important.
If you’re a one man show, two man show, small business, by having a brand identity and keeping all of your content consistent across the board, this really, really helps you look large, consistent, and clients want to work with you. Because they’re seeing everything that you do is in line with your brand.
It also allows you—if you’re a marketing agency—to charge premium pricing. Instead of saying, "Yes, we’ll just do you a logo," now, you’re creating this entire process.
Does it take longer? Yes, but in the long run, creating this brand that has longevity will help you by making you more money on the backend, and help the client by making them look consistent in the digital landscape.
If you see Nike, if you see Pizza Hut, if you see McDonald’s, if you see those golden arches, you know that you can get a bomb Big Mac and medium fries, and you know that brand is always going to deliver.
It also makes you memorable, going into number four. Now people can read, remember you consistently over time. I get people all the time saying they love the branding and color scheme behind 5Four, and we find pride in that.
As you guys can see—I’ll show you guys one more—this is one we did for a legal firm. This is essentially the visual version of your business value. So here, you’ll be able to see through the Introduction, their About, the Vision, the Core Values and a lot of this content translates to the website online.
And as you scroll, you can even see the brand mark and how we came up with the idea for the logo construction. So it’s a good visual component and aid to what you’re doing.
People will be more prone to want to work with you, because they’re seeing that consistency across the board.
So to go into what you need: if you’re going start offering this as a package or you’re a business owner and you’re thinking about doing a brand identity, the main components you’ll need are the brand identity package—which you can basically follow in this template. You want to have the main pieces intact, essentially the Introduction, About, info about the brand mark, typography and color palette.
Now you can also do a lot of other things—and we’ve done this for other clients—where you’re doing personas for this different type of clientele they’re going after, and a ton of other attributes that you can add to make this thing longer and more developed.
You also want to have business cards, right? And I could probably find some of those on our Dropbox. Stationary, if you need it—I mean, it’s a digital world, but they might need some letterheads. And then print material, any flyers or materials that are needed.
Now, when you have the brand identity, it helps you get a lot of that stuff done, because you can just work from that, right? So if you have a designer, the brand identity is done, they know exactly what to work from and what to do.
And the ways to get it done—here, internally, we have a full-time designer on staff, but you can find amazing people on 99 Designs. The strategy that I like to use is, do an inquiry for 99 Designs for a logo, and then based on what your feedback is and what’s provided, talk to the designer that you really, really like, and see if they work on projects outside of the platform.
And I know that’s against their policies, but you can find some really, really talented people on there really high level. One thing I would stay away from: websites like Fiverr.
You don’t want to have your logo built for your business on Fiverr, unless you’re really, really strapped for cash, and you’re just, just starting out. I think you should definitely allocate some of your resources to doing a real brand identity and creating a real logo.
You can find great people on Fiverr, but you’re going to end up paying the same as you would on Upwork or other platforms like that.
Upwork.com is probably my favorite freelancer platform, and I’ll bring that up too, just not on the same screen the whole time. But Upwork is a phenomenal platform, I probably found the best remote workers on there hands down, the platform just works really, really, well.
And the last thing to do is, let’s talk about this process a little bit. The first thing we always do is we have a brand discovery session, that doc looks like this, and these are essentially the questions that we ask. You can see that this one is already pre-filled.
We asked things like, "What are the top brands you love? What are your values? What’s your mission, the vision for the business?" We pull out of this content and use it in the brand identity, and we actually go over this with the client.
We go over different logo types that they might like, different content they might succeed from. And then we also have a list of color palettes and a list of 45 to 50 logos that they can look at and kind of choose from. And the main reason being is so that they can find the affinity in those logos.
And then lastly, we talk about the slogan and the name of the business. So one example that we’re working on right now for a client, after the feedback, where we're working and tweaking the logo. As you can see, we’ve got multiple versions here with tweaks to the S, with this custom font here.
And so, it really comes down to doing the front-end work, doing the brand discovery, making sure that you’re adding value to your client or yourself. You can actually do this as a business owner and outsource a lot of this work. But you want to make sure you have a process in place to get it done.
So guys, I hope you got value from it. I’ll push the link down here for our brand discovery, If you want to go ahead and grab that doc to get started. And I hope you guys have a great day.
