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Your brand identity is more than just a logo. The following elements help create a cohesive brand, that is reinforced in every interaction your audience has with you.

Logo

A logo is one of the principal elements of a brand identity. A logo is a symbol, wordmark, and/or other design adopted by an organization to identify itself. Nike uses the swish, while FedEx uses a stylized wordmark. 

While many organizations have a primary logo, we recommended brands have a couple of variations of a logo to use for various purposes. Your business card may use a stacked version of your logo, while your website banner may call for a horizontal layout. Having a few variations of your logo to choose from offers flexibility while maintaining a strong brand identity. Similarly, you may require a different color option when you use your logo or wordmark on dark background versus a light background.

The image below shows 4 different logos that make up the brand identity of the Lover of None clothing brand.

Color Palette

Your color palette can convey essential emotional information about your brand. When you select a color palette, think about how you want clients to feel when interacting with you. Do you want them to feel excited or relaxed? Is your brand serious or playful?

Make a list of these feelings, and start thinking about what colors you identify with those feelings?

You can also identify some images that make you feel the emotions you want your brand to represent, then use a tool like Canva’s Color Palette Generator to identify potential colors.

You should choose two primary colors and up to three accent colors for your brand. In developing marketing materials, you can use different shades or tints of the same color to increase variety while reinforcing your brand.

Corporate Font

To maintain a consistent brand identity, you should use a consistent font across all of your marketing collateral, from your website to your business cards, and in many cases, in your logo itself. 

Brands should select a font that is easy to read – while script and handwriting fonts may be fun and pretty, they are usually difficult to read in paragraphs. Keep stylistic fonts to headers and find a complementary serif or sans-serif font for body text.

Shape

Shape can be a subtle yet powerful tool in communicating your brand values to your audience. For example, if your logo uses rounded edges and circles, people will react differently to it than they would to a square logo.

Shapes and lines inspire different feelings, for example:

• Rounded shapes symbolize unity, flexibility, and wholeness.

• Figures with straight edges suggest efficiency, stability, reliability, and strength. 

• Vertical lines imply strength 

• Horizontal lines express balance and tranquility

• Right-leaning diagonal lines represent growth and progress

Visual Elements

If your organization uses photos, illustrations, line art, or other similar graphical elements, the style of your elements should be consistent across all marketing channels, whether online or in print media. Having a brand pattern that appears on the back of your business cards, on your website, and across your social media accounts can help people identify you.

Style consistency is particularly important for images you use with your brand. For example, photos may be crisply detailed, or you may choose a soft focus. Consider filtering photos using a standard filter, like those available in Adobe Lightroom, can help images pull out your brand color palette to create a consistent feel.

Taglines

For some brands, taglines can help identify what your brand does or what you stand for. Recognizable taglines include Nike’s “Just do it.” and MacDonald’s “I’m lovin it”. A tagline can be a clever way for people to remember your brand.