Brand Identity

Marketers love to talk about the importance of "branding" your company, of marketing your "brand." What they're referring to is the repeated use of logos, taglines and custom icons – the Nike® swoosh, the white Playboy® bunny – that leads people to associate those elements with your particular company or organization.

A brand identity begins with a logo. A logo is a combination of letters, numbers, icons and/or illustrations that's unique to your business. Many logos are built around the business name – like the Microsoft® logo, for example. Others, like the Toyota® logo, are pictographic icons that appear without words.

As the centerpiece of your brand, your logo is critical. Too many businesses, eager to launch and strapped for funds, skimp on this important first step. By the time the owner has the money – or the awareness – to pay for a professional logo, the one their neighbor hastily sketched for them has already become lodged in consumer's minds. And while a talented graphic artist can update an ugly logo, it makes more sense to do it right from the start, rather than risk being saddled with an unappealing or inappropriate mark.

What's right when it comes to logos? Professional designers aim to create marks that are memorable, visually appealing and that can be easily reproduced in a variety of mediums. They often shoot for simplicity – check out the Xbox 360® logo as an example. Simple, arresting, utterly unmistakable.

Sometimes logo designers get lucky and are able to reflect something of the company's product or service in the corporate mark. This is true with the UPS logo, which features a wrapped parcel above the letters U-P-S. It's also true with the Air Jordan® logo – a simple silhouette of Michael Jordan in flight, a basketball in his upraised hand.

Now a logo is just a logo until it's applied to business cards, letterhead and envelopes, products, signage, print brochures and ads, TV commercials, Web pages – in short, everything associated with the company it represents. Then the logo becomes something bigger. It becomes a brand identity. The NBC® peacock is made up of six teardrop-shaped "feathers," each in a different color. Although simple, it's unmistakable to the TV viewers who've seen it over and over. The repeated use of this icon – which really had no meaning until the broadcaster adopted it – has "branded" it in the minds of consumers. Even without words, or even a single letter for that matter, everyone knows instantly who that logo belongs to. This is brand identity.