Logo Design vs. Branding

Creating a strong brand identity is a journey, not a quick fix. It’s not just about throwing together a few colors and designing a logo. Building an identity that truly represents your brand and can support your growth requires thoughtful planning, a team with excellent communication and design skills, and a deep understanding of who you are, what you do, your competitors, and how you want to present your brand to a relevant audience.

Developing a brand identity can feel overwhelming and confusing. What should it include? Where do you even start? Who needs to be part of the process?

With the right guidance, you can navigate this journey effectively, and that’s where this toolkit comes in. We’ve simplified the process into an easy-to-follow guide, complete with a toolkit to support you every step of the way. By following this guide, you’ll emerge with a beautiful, functional brand identity that not only outshines your competition but also helps you connect with the right people and share your brand story through every piece of content.

What Is a Brand Identity?

Identity = Identify. Brand identity are the elements that help an audience identify with a particular brand.

A brand identity is the sum of how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to people. (Sometimes that even includes how it sounds, tastes, feels, and even smells... think of Chanel)

The components that make up a brand identity are:

1. Brand Story (brand’s origin, values, vision, goals and mission narrative) Why you matter.
2. Brand Personality (human characteristics that resonates with an audience)
3. Brand Name (sets brand tone)
4. Services and/or Products (brands unique selling point)
5. Verbal Identity (personality and consistency through words)
6. Visual Identity (logo, colors, typography, composition, graphics, icons, patterns, photography, illustration and marketing collateral templates

When most people talk about brand identity, they’re referring to a brand’s logo, which is just part of your visual identity.

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The Power of a Strong Brand Identity

A strong brand identity is not about having a nice logo; it’s about communicating your brand story effectively. It’s like a lighthouse in the stormy sea of the marketplace, guiding customers towards it. Your identity is a powerful tool that can transform how people interact with your brand in these important ways:

Differentiation: How can you stand out in a crowded marketplace? Your brand identity can play a strong role. Whether you want your product to stand out on a shelf, or you want your ads to stand out on social media, creating a consistent, cohesive presentation is the secret to success.

Positioning: The more effectively you communicate who you are, the easier it will be for people to engage with you and, ultimately, join your community of fans. If you don’t position yourself, you will be positioned!

Image: A strong brand identity will help manage the image of your business.

Consistency: Everything you create reflects your brand. Thus, if you want to create a consistent, cohesive brand experience, you need to present a consistent, cohesive identity. From your website, to your social media, to your signage, to your sales brochures, a consistent brand identity is key to elevating your brand experience.

Some brands elevate brand identity to an art (think Apple or Patagonia). While others struggle because they don’t know who they are or don’t know how to communicate it effectively. (Too many brands fall into this category.)

Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, one thing is certain. If you want to be a competitive and successful company, crafting a strong brand identity is a must.

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"People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic." —Seth Godin

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What Does a Brand Identity Include?

When you create a brand identity, you’re basically building a toolbox of elements to help you communicate effectively with an audience. This can be basic or extensive; it all depends on your brand’s needs.

The components that make up a brand identity are:

1. Brand Story - An audience focused narrative. It tells the story of a brand’s origin, mission, vision, values and goals. This will define an audience, and create an emotional connection that helps build a relationship. Authenticity is the key.
2. Brand Personality - It’s the human characteristics and traits that consumers can relate to. It will enable consumers to identity with and creates a connection… they see themselves part of your brand.
3. Brand Name - A great brand name sets the tone, is easy to pronounce, creates a positive image, last over time, and is protectable.
4. Services and/or Products - A brand’s products or services are part of its identity. The key is figuring out your unique selling point.
5. Competitor Analysis - Helps define an audience, helps position your brand by finding your competitive advantage and helps find out what not to do. Helps define what makes you different.
6. Verbal Identity - Conveys your personality through words, helps set you apart from your competitors, and allows an audience to feel like they are always hearing one voice… consistency.
7. Visual Identity - Logo, colors, typography, spacing, graphics, print elements, photography, illustration and digital elements.
8. Regardless, every brand needs a basic visual identity, which includes three core elements:

Regardless, every brand needs a basic visual identity, which includes three core elements:

• Logo
• Color palette
• Typography

Additional elements to express your visual identity across touchpoints, include:

• Photography
• Illustration
• Iconography
• Spacing, size and placement
• Print elements (stationary, packaging, brochures etc.)
• Digital elements (social media, website, etc.)

Your visual identity elements should be designed for your audience, personality, position and values.

You don’t need to design everything all at once. If you don’t have a ton of resources (or don’t know what your future needs will be), start with the basic logo, color, and typography. You can build out additional elements as needed.

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What Makes  A Strong Logo?

While a logo is not your brand identity it is an important part of your visual identity. Having a logo doesn’t mean your identity is good or effective. Even if you design every element needed, it may not help you achieve your long-term goals. Always remember, a “logo is not communication. A logo is identification.”

A strong logo needs to work for everyone, both your internal team (brand ambassadors, content creators etc.) and the people who will interact with it (customers).

So, what makes a great logo?

Appropriate: A logo should be appropriate in it’s feeling. It doesn’t need to say a whole lot.

Simple & Timeless: Despite changing design trends, good logos remain effective and relevant, demonstrating its timeless appeal.

Distinctive & Memorable: It needs to be unique, stands out among competitors and catches people’s attention. It has to be unusual enough to persist in our mind.

Flexible and Scalable: It can adapt well across all platforms and sizes, maintaining its impact and legibility.

If you design an identity that doesn’t resonate with your target audience, or doesn’t truly reflect your brand, you will have wasted a lot of work.

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"A logo is not communication. It's identification. It's the period at the end of the sentence. Not the sentence itself." —Sagi Haviv

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So, How do you Create a Strong Brand Identity?

Now that you understand what brand identity is, and what makes a strong brand identity let’s take a look at how to create your new brand identity. Follow these steps to get started with your new brand identity.

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Define Your Foundation

Before jumping into the steps detailed here, know that the visual aspect of your brand identity is not the first thing you should tackle when you’re building a brand; it’s actually the last thing. A brand is like a house; it should be built on a solid foundation.

First, you need to know who you are: What’s your personality? What do you care about? What do you do? How do you talk about what you do? These are the core elements of your brand that your visual identity will communicate. If you don’t have this foundation to build upon, you can’t design a visual identity that properly tells your brand story.

Action Plan:

Make sure you know your:  

Brand Heart: This is an articulation of your brand’s core principals (vision, mission/purpose and goals). Use your Core Identity in the toolkit.

Brand Name: Choose the right name. You really cannot design a logo without a name.

Brand Personality: Find the right words, voice, images and ways to describe the brand as vibrant as if was a person.

Messaging: Find your tagline, value proposition, and messaging pillars to ensure your visual identity communicates the right story to your audience.

You need to know why you’re going through this process at all. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s obvious. If you’re rebranding, make sure everyone on your team understands the challenges you’re facing with your current identity and what you’re hoping to achieve with a new one. It’s very important to establish these core brand elements.  

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"Brand is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is." —Marty Neumeier

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Assess Your Current Identity

Good branding is ultimately about good communication. To make sure your visual output aligns with your brand values, reflects your personality, and communicates your brand story, you need to have an intimate understanding of your brand.  

Start with a brand assessment to understand:

• The current state of your brand’s identity
• How that brand identity might be crafted or tweaked to align with your goals going forward

By taking a critical look at your brand, you can get the insights you need to build an identity that accurately communicates it.

Action Plan:

Use the Brand Audit Template in the toolkit, and follow the guide to assess your current brand identity. This is the first step to make sure you’re moving in the right direction. Download our Brand Identity Toolkit.

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Competitor Analysis

Building a brand identity is all about differentiation: making your brand visible, relevant, and unique. It’s crucial to understand not just who your competition is but how your brand compares in terms of your visual presentation.

Through a competitor analysis, you can compare your brand to each competitor, and compare your competitors as a whole, which can surface some surprising insights. Take note of competitor weaknesses to gain market opportunities.

Action Plan:

Use the Competitor Analysis Template in the toolkit to assess your main 3 competitors.  

As you move through the process, pay attention to how your competitors present themselves in terms of common visual elements, trends, industry-specific visual themes, brand personalities, and positioning.

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 "To be irreplaceable, one must always be different." —Coco Chanel

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Establish a Visual Direction

Now that you’ve taken a critical look at both your current identity and your competitors’ identities, it’s time to get aligned on the direction you want to go.

Design can be incredibly subjective. Colors that convey power and strength to one person may be perceived totally differently by others. Even the vocabulary you use to describe your brand can be interpreted differently.

At this stage you aren’t ready to design yet; you first need to have important conversations and move through exercises that will help land on a shared vision for your identity.

• What are the key brand traits you want to express through your visuals?
• What type of visuals communicate these traits?
• What do you want people to feel when they “see” your brand?  

Action Plan:

To prompt these conversations, it helps to conduct exercises to guide your conversation. Use the Brand Attributes Exercise in the toolkit to help identify the main brand attributes you want to convey. Download our Brand Identity Toolkit.

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Write Your Design Brief

Once you’ve completed the previous steps, you have the information you need to start designing. Start with a creative brief that details the pertinent information you need to keep everyone on the same page—and ensure you create an identity that aligns to your brand goals and audience.

Action Plan:

Use the Design Brief Template in the toolkit. Don’t provide too much or too little info. Your brief should always inform, not overwhelm. Download our Brand Identity Toolkit.

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Design Your Visual Identity

A visual identity is an intricate design system. Each element influences the other, but it starts with your logo. A strong logo captures the essence of your brand, helping you make your mark (literally) in the world. Remember, your logo mark is to identify, not to communicate.

Action Plan:

Go old-school here and bust out the pencil to free-sketch in black and white. You want to make sure that the core imagery is powerful enough to deliver the message on its own, without the enhancement of color. To start, work on loose shapes and complementary imagery to inspire your logo mark. Refer back to your foundation, audience and competitor discoveries to guide your design.

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"The way a company brands itself is everything—it will ultimately decide whether a business survives." —Richard Branson

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Color Palette

Once you have a solid logo, start to explore your color palette. Color plays a significant roll in differentiating your brand from competitors, and is vital for brand recognition.

Action Plan:

A good color palette is clean and flexible, supplying enough choices to be creative but not enough to overwhelm. This includes:

• Primary color palette
• Secondary color palette
• Black and white usage
• Color tints
• Color pairings/combinations
• Accent colors

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Typography

Fonts influence your readers’ perception of your brand. This is why selecting brand typography that conveys your business’s personality and values is one of the key elements of visual branding. In fact, few things communicate the look and feel of a brand more clearly than the way letters, numbers, and symbols are put together. Typography should strike a balance between legibility and interest. Every visual element in your identity should contribute to a cohesive visual language, and thus each should complement the other. This is particularly true of typography, which should be informed by the shape of your logo.

Action Plan:

Every stage of design has its own unique challenges, but typography can be tricky in a visual language, especially when brands follow trends that are hot for a second but quickly become dated or appear unoriginal (serif vs. non-serif).

To keep it simple, limit the number of typefaces to 2-3. This generally includes primary and secondary brand typefaces for specific purposes, such as headers, body copy, hierarchy, text weights, UI typeface, etc.

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Design Additional Elements

Every brand’s needs are different, so you may or may not need to design a comprehensive identity. Consider your brand’s future needs. If you are planning to experiment with different types of content, make sure you include those elements in your identity.

Photography Guidelines - Photography is one of the most important elements in our identity system. It not only showcases our designs, but the spaces they inhabit, the people that use them, and the processes that create them. It captures the story of our brand. It’s important to identify clear guidelines about the types of images (and visual treatments) that are and aren’t appropriate. This will ensure a consistent look and feel.

Illustration Guidelines - When it comes to illustration, you need a cohesive and uniform language. It is an important tool when photography either can’t be used or when needing a stronger or clearer point of view.

Infographics - Information graphics are a crucial component for showcasing more detailed information. Whether product details, data, or timelines, various styles of infographics can be used to help make communication clear.

Composition - Each element in our visual system is designed to work together and dial up or down as needed to meet any communication need. Composition principles determine how each piece can sit alongside one another to meet these needs. Can include spacing, size and placement.

Applications - Depending on the required brand collateral you need, you can create several template files for both print and digital. From business cards, stationary, packaging and social media to website design these templates will help craft a consistent brand identity.  

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"When you brand yourself properly, the competition becomes irrelevant." —Dan Schawbel

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Build Your Brand Style Guide

What is a brand style guide?

A brand style guide is the rulebook for everything you create, from what fonts to use to how logo treatments work with different color schemes. Whether you’re creating a business card, social media post, or developing an ad campaign, a style guide ensures your work is consistent with brand identity — both visually and in tone of voice.

The only thing more heartbreaking than a poorly designed brand identity is a beautifully designed identity that is never used or used incorrectly.

Why is a brand style guide important?

You want customers to recognize your brand no matter where they see it — on their phone, on TV, or on a billboard. The best brands use common visual elements and styles to increase brand recognition. A brand style guide is an essential tool to ensure your company produces consistent, cohesive work — especially if you work with freelancers or a marketing agency.

Action Plan:

Include clear, easy-to-follow guidelines for every part of the brand identity. Download our Brand Identity Toolkit.

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What to Include in your style guide:

• Articulate the Mission Statement - Core values, what sets your brand apart from competitors.
• Explain the Name and Tagline -The tagline should be the first thing you want people to know — a quick expression of value, in the brand’s voice.
• Identify the Voice and Tone - If your brand were a person how would it speak? It should reflect the intended audience and purpose of communication.
• Introduce the Intended Audience - Describe the buyer personas that make up your customers, prospects, and referrals.
• Describe the Visual Identity - Logo, color palette, typography, photography, infographics etc.

In the end, guidelines are just that—a guide. Always use your best judgment when creating materials and use this as a starting point.

Once completed, make sure guidelines are distributed to your team, stored in an easy-to-access place, and regularly updated.

Click links below to see samples of style guides:

• Rad Hat Co. Brand Style Guide (Brand Guidelines)
• Marni’s Beach Bar Style Sheet (Visual Guidelines)

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"Design is the silent ambassador of your brand." —Paul Rand

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How to Use Your New Brand Identity

Once you’ve created your brand identity, it’s time to implement it. This involves integrating your brand identity into all your brand touchpoints and communicating it to your audience.

Consistency is key when it comes to building a strong brand. You can’t toss your fresh brand identity into the world and expect people to know how to use it immediately. Designate a point person to answer any and all questions related to the brand application, and implement a system of quality control to preserve your brand integrity at every touchpoint.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t have the resources to take on the project yourself, consider bringing in some expert help. Download our Brand Identity Toolkit as a guide to designing your new brand identity.

Before you build your new website, it’s important to research different web platforms to learn what platform is going to be the best for your business. Each website builder has its own strengths, but some platforms have more strengths than others. We prefer Webflow for creating custom, high-performance websites for small businesses. Below are a few reasons why we have focused on becoming Webflow experts located in Orange County, CA.

Total Customization

One of the primary reasons that we like to use Webflow is because we have total design control. Every site we create is built from a completely blank canvas.No templates. No themes. 100% custom. This is important because your business is unique, and so your website should be unique too! Webflow doesn’t require a theme or template, and I’m able to create a completely custom solution to fit your business needs. This level of customization also allows us to build a fully branded website that showcases your products or services exactly as you want.

Content Management System (CMS)

Webflow’s Content Management System (CMS) is awesome. Apart from the CMS back-end, there’s the Webflow Editor, which allows easily adding new content, or revising content on a published website. This is useful both to the creators of the website and their collaborators, as well as to their clients. What this means is that you get a fully functional website with both editable static pages and dynamic content like blog posts, portfolio projects, etc, without the need to install any plugins. Webflow’s CMS is much more flexible and diverse than that of WordPress, or popular site builders like Squarespace or Wix. Making revisions to your site has never been easier.

No Need For Plug-Ins

While a lot of other website building platforms require plugins for added functionality, Webflow is an all-inclusive platform. With Webflow, you won’t be bothered or worried about plugins being outdated and needing updates.Sometimes, when plugins aren’t updated, they can cause functionality problems on the website without you even knowing. Plus, adding a ton of plugins to your site can actually reduce the site speed and overall user experience.

Fully Responsive Website

The majority of web traffic is coming from mobile devices so having a sleek and mobile-friendly website is crucial. In fact, 52.9% of all web traffic is mobile.

Webflow not only makes it easy to create a beautiful mobile site, but you can also create a custom view for tablets and oversized monitors. This means that no matter how your customers are learning about your business, you can give the man amazing experience that fits their devices. You get a fully responsive website that looks and functions great on all devices.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Webflow gives you quick and easy access to all the on-page SEO settings you need. And backs that up with clean, bloat-free code, massively simplified mobile-friendly design, and free SSL for everyone. And for CMS content, meta titles and descriptions are automatically created, based on fields you create and define.All Webflow hosting plans include advanced SEO controls and the sites developed with Webflow are all SEO friendly.

Ultra-Fast Hosting And EASY Updates

One of the most common questions I get asked is, “What hosting do you use?” Webflow makes hosting super easy. Webflow site hosting plans include Tier 1 Cloud front Hosting, which is the same hosting that big companies like Adobe, Amazon,Dropbox, and MTV use.

One of the nice things about using Webflow’s native hosting is that you won’t need to export any code when making updates. With some platforms, you actually needto export the code and have the website code hosted elsewhere. It’s a true all-in-one platform.

There are several advantages to Webflow Hosting that can really make a difference for your website’s performance:

• Since it is based on the distributed infrastructures on some of the largest cloud providers in the world (Amazon Cloud front and Fastly), it can scale seamlessly with your traffic demands, removing the need to manually upgrade your hosting server.
• A built-in content delivery network (CDN) at no additional cost ensures that your website gets served from the node that is geographically close to your visitors, no matter where they are located.
• The advanced distributed infrastructure means fast loading times and close to 100% uptime for your website, regardless of traffic spikes or even malicious attacks.
• A built-in SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate at no additional cost ensures that your website complies with the modern security standards out of the box – no setup or prolongation required.

Webflow eCommerce

On of the most recent additions to Webflow is the eCommerce version, which brings full online shopping capabilities to the platform. It offers all the essentials for projects which sell things online – including product and inventory management, custom carts, checkout, and other endpoints, full control over customer emails, as well as self-hosted checkout. The main value of Webflow eCommerce is the ability to fully customize your online store’s every detail, from product grids and payment pages to how the purchase notifications look like. This can be contrasted with the current state of affairs in thee-commerce website building software like Shopify, Wix, or even the WooCommerce+ WordPress bundle, where one needs to exert considerable effort, and be skilled in coding to achieve such control.

If you are thinking about upgrading, or designing a new website, Webflow is great option. We are Webflow experts, and offer custom website design, site migration and SEO. If you have any questions about a custom website design, get in touch with us today.

MYDG Studio are Webflow experts located in Orange County, CA. We focus on website design and branding, but tackle all kinds of creative assignments.

Creating quality content that will drive organic traffic to your website can be a challenge. Many small business owners may be able write decent content, but they often fail at writing content that delivers results in a Search. This is the primary objective of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You must have quality content that has value and attracts new clients. Search engines, likeGoogle, constantly update their algorithms, so you'll need to keep up with the latest SEO techniques. Read on for tips on quality content writing and SEO.

Choose the right keywords

Keyword research is the fundamental first step in all SEO. Good keywords not only help your site rank higher on search engines, but they also provide the business owner with valuable information. Thinking about all the words your potential customers might search to find your product or service is a good place to start. Each article you write should have one main keyword or keyword phrase, and 5-10 additional keywords that are closely related to your primary keyword.One common mistake by business owners is using technical terms rather than common terms for their products, or services. It’s important to research related keywords, and find ones that are commonly used by your potential customers.

Identify search intent

When someone does a Google search, they have something specific in mind they want to accomplish. Google spends a great deal of time creating algorithms to refine the search process, and fulfill the user's intent. To get the most out of SEO, you need to understand the distinct types of search intent. These include:

• Informational: When a user is searching for information on a topic, they often include words such as, "how to," "best," and “tutorial.”
• Navigational: Sometimes the user is looking for a specific web page or site. They will use words that are the actual name of the business, or product.
• Commercial: When someone is researching a potential purchase they will include search terms such as, "review" or "least expensive."
• Transactional: Users will perform searches when they are ready to make a purchase. These users will enter terms such as,  "buy," "coupon," or "price."

Examining the search intent that will drive the most traffic to your site is another essential part of SEO.

Create an optimized meta title

The meta title does not need to be the same as the page title, but both should include your main keyword. Your meta title shows up on the search page, while your H1 page header is on the page itself. This is why the meta title is so important for SEO. Consider the following when creating a optimized meta title:

• Give each page its own unique title.
• Tailor the title to the user's intent.
• Be sure to include your primary keyword.

Create an optimized meta description

The meta description is what users will see directly under the meta title on the search page. Don't make the mistake of leaving this out. A meta description that is optimized for SEO can give you an edge over your competitors.

• Each page on your site should have a unique, accurate, and specific meta description.
• Remember to include your keyword in the meta description.
• Keep it to 140-160 words.
• Include a call to action.
• Your meta description doesn’t need to be in sentence format.

A good meta description can be one of the most important things that users see when conducting a search. It has to be enough to convince the user to visit your website page.

Be creative with your H1 titles

Each page on your site should have exactly one H1 tag. Here are some tips for how to make the best H1 for your article:

• Use a  unique H1 for each page on your site.
• Remember to describe the content in your H1.    

Your content must be well written and organized

Creating good structure to your articles is essential for quality content and SEO.Articles with H2 and H3 tags perform better in searches. Some ways to ensure your content meets these criteria are:

• Create lengthy content when necessary, and provide an outline at the top of the page for longer articles.
• Use H2 and H3 tags to make your content more readable.
• Keep each paragraph to one main idea and break up long sentences.
• Include a list in your article to generate more search volume and encourage quick reads.
• Bullet points and numbered lists enhance readability and understanding.
• Use a bold fonts, italics, or both to highlight key points.
• Answer the questions users searched for on your topic.

Create a descriptive URL for each page

TheURL of your page can help a user decide whether your article will have the information they are looking for. It is important to create URL's that provide this information in a simple, readable format. When creating URL's, separate the words with hyphens. Use lower case letters and make it as short as possible. Include your main keyword and be sure to describe the page.

Include photos, videos, or other visual content

Readers will remember much more from your article if you include visual content. Adding visual content to your page will not only enhance the article's readability, it will also increase the likelihood of the content being shared on other sites.This creates valuable backlinks to your site. Engaging videos keep a visitor on your site longer, which Google tracks. To optimize your visual content, be sure to:

• Resize and optimize your images so the site loads quickly.
• Give your photos descriptive file names.
• Use visual elements to attract and engage your visitors.
• Create alt text tags that accurately describe your images.

Include internal links

Internal linking is when the pages of your site link to one another. This helps search engines find your content, and also gives credibility to your pages which can improve search engine ranking.

Using these tips will help you optimize your content, and put you on the right path for higher search engine rankings. This is a lot for a small business to take on by themselves. To find out more about our website design services, and seo services contact MY Design Group, located in Orange County, CA. We offer affordable custom website design and SEO to suit any budget.