Why Brand Matters

A brand identity is one of the most important parts of a company. It tells your clients and future employees exactly who you are as a company, can communicate your ideals and goals, and distinguishes you from your competitors. One could assume that a company’s brand identity only consists of their logo and a color or two, but in reality, it is so much more. 

A good way of thinking about the brand of a company is it being the visual personality of the organization. A brief overview of a brand identity consists of: 

• Colors (often primary, secondary and tertiary colors) 
• Typography 
• Logo
• Imagery

COLORS

The colors of a brand identity dictate every piece of collateral created for the business. When you see the Coca-Cola red, or the McDonalds red and yellow combination, you immediately know what product is being talked about. A company’s colors are at the core of who they are and what they do and should always be pulled through. 

TYPOGRAPHY

The selection of a company’s fonts requires a lot of research and experimentation. The difference between the typography used for athletic gear versus makeup lines is a perfect representation of why it matters so much. When deciding about your typography, you have to consider your companies main message and your audience while also ensuring that the font is legible and can be used across different mediums.

LOGO 

A company’s logo is the single most important part of a brand identity, as it gets used on almost everything that is tied to it. Someone should be able to glance at a logo and be able to know exactly what the company is within seconds. A logo might be the one thing a person remembers about your company, so it is vital you make sure it’s one that catches the eye and drives people to learn more. 

IMAGERY

It would be easy to leave imagery open to a content creators’ interpretation, but this could actually be a dangerous approach. It’s important to set clear guidelines on what you want represented in the imagery, what you want communicated, even what kind of backgrounds should be included on various collateral. There needs to be consistency and thought put behind this, because often it can make or break your messaging! 

Brand identity is the visual message of your company. You shouldn’t think about it as restrictions, but instead a baseline that you can nurture and expand from with every creation. While the brand identity should remain consistent, it should be considered a living, breathing document that changes to remain up to date with trends and fresh. At Curley, we recently went through our own brand refresh.