What Is Visual Identity And How Do I Create One?

You read in our recent blog about brand identity and how it is developed, and we know you want even more! This blog continues that topic, diving just a bit deeper into visual identity.

Your company’s visual identity is part of your brand identity, but it has its own distinct process. Developing it requires just as much care as creating your brand identity. Because it communicates who your brand is in just a glance, you need to handle this process carefully. After all, you want to communicate the right message.

Start With Your Brand Identity

When you developed your brand identity, you thought about who your brand would be if it were a person. You talked about values and traits, even a distinct tone that your brand would use when it was “talking,” whether that’s through social media, email or a radio ad.

Visual identity determines what your brand would look like if it were a person. What colors would they wear? Would they be more conservative or edgy in their look? Would their hairstyle be something that would cause people to notice, or would they prefer to be neat, but inconspicuous?

Consider Your Colors

As mentioned above, it can be helpful to think about your brand as a person and what colors they might wear. You should also become familiar with the psychology of color and the messages that different colors send. For instance, a company that offers spa services in a space that is focused on the outdoors might choose a fresh green paired with a serene blue on a pure white background. Luxury brands often choose black as a main color, but purple can also communicate lavish qualities.

You’ll want to be specific in your choices so that color can be used consistently across all touchpoints and communications. Brands do not choose green, but crocodile, pistachio, shamrock, pickle, parakeet or pear.

Launch a Great Logo

Your logo is the heart of your visual identity, offering incalculable information in one look. From the width of the lines to the color scheme, every element of the logo communicates who you are as a brand.

Your graphic designer will offer you a number of options based on what you’ve shared about your brand values and who you are as a company or organization. And there will probably be one or two that jump out at you when you first see the options. But when you talk to companies with great logos, it’s often not the one that jumps out first, but the one that emerges to the top of the list after a few days that tends to be the one.

Font Matters, Too

Whether your logo has some accompanying words, or consists entirely of a word set of initials, or a single letter, you’ll need to determine the right font. You may not even have any letters in your logo, but you’ll still need to consider font for your tagline and your website visuals.

Choose a font that is uniquely you and distinctive in your industry, but is also simple and easy to read.

Simplicity Above All

When you’re packing your visual identity into colors, a logo, or a font, it can be tempting to mash together something complicated in order to capture everything. That just means you’re not there, yet. The right design team can help you communicate thousands of words and concepts in a look, and won’t let you settle for something that’s not effective.