Branding Design is a process of creating multiple brand elements in a particular design style, suiting the brand’s philosophy and essence. Branding in Graphic Design is all about creating distinguished visibility in this competitive market through a whole set of design elements, making the brand stand out. Further, these elements are utilised for creating brand required materials across multiple platforms, either print or digital. A Brand Designer majorly offers a package of main brand elements, which includes Logo Designing, Colour Palette, Typography suggestions, Illustration/Iconography and Patterns, representing the brand’s philosophy. The list of brand elements grow, as the need increases. This can include Layout style, Packaging, Stationery, Typography hierarchy, Market representation, Social Media visibility, Web Design, and Advertisements.
Table of Contents
Logo:
Logo is also referred to as Visual Identity, the first interaction the audience encounter’s to a brand. As we are moving ahead with time, Logo Designing is becoming a more important part of modern day competition. Logo is considered as the most crucial part of Branding in Graphic Design, as it lays the foundation and legacy for deriving the other Brand Elements. Modern day Logo Design must stand out in this vibrant environment, the Brand Designer starts with the deep research of Brand’s services and philosophy it carry’s. Further, analysing the market trend, competitors branding and the gap to create a smashing Logo for making a personality, the costumers can connect to and impressions the brand wants to highlight in terms of their philosophy.
The Logo Variations:
1- Primary Logo, is the main logo which will be used at the majority places.
2- Secondary Logo, is mainly considered a simplified version of the primary logo, also an alternative vertical/horizonal representation of the primary logo. This can be utilised where the space is less, hence the primary logo can not be placed.
3- Sub Mark/Logo Mark, is the most simplified version of a Brand’s Logo, it’s either a symbol or a single letter representing brand. To epitome, the ‘star’ of Heineken, the letter ‘D’ of Disney are the prominent examples. Social Media profile pictures, are the optimum place for using this variation.
4- Black and White Logo, the logo is in the shades of grey and not the actual brand colours. This is majorly for budget/bulk printing usage.
Clarifying a myth, the Smashing Logo is just a part and not the actually branding. To maintain consistency for Brand’s philosophy across multiple platforms and brand materials, the list of Brand Elements is necessary. As the logo alone can not highlight the Brand’s essence and advocate about the same. As we are proceeding with time, the urge to craft a modern logo design is increasing, it majorly consist of simplicity and minimalistic approach. Where as more graphic heavy logo can be connected back to history. The Logo evolution of Starbucks, Apple is a great example to learn from.
Colour Palette:
A Colour Palette is a combination of multiple pigments used to enhance a brand’s identity and principles. Brands see it as an important opportunity to stand out by sticking to specific hues that creates a lasting impression in the customer’s mind. For example, the Red and Yellow of McDonald’s is instantly recognisable worldwide and creates a strong connection with the brand.
Before creating a colour palette, it’s essential to understand key terms such as Hue, Tint, Shade, Tone, Saturation, and Brightness. Additionally, understanding formats like RGB (for digital media) and CMYK (for print) is crucial.
Colour palettes are generally divided into two categories: Primary Colour Palette, the main colours representing the brand’s philosophy and identity. Secondary Colour Palette, an extension of the primary palette, offering additional colours to provide variety and flexibility in design.
There are many tools available to help both beginners and experienced designers creating effective colour palettes. Adobe Color Palette Generator, is considered as one of the most popular and user-friendly tool, which offers several features. Adobe Color Palette Generator, highlights features such as: Colour Wheel, here you can create a palette by selecting a single base colour. Extract Theme, helps generating a palette from uploaded an image as per your choice. Extract Gradient, creates a gradient based on an image, uploaded by the user. Interestingly, Accessibility Tool, lends a hand in checking the contrast ratios for better visibility and differentiation for text, colour, illustrations.
While the Adobe Color Palette Generator is free for many functionalities, an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription unlocks added features, making the tool even more powerful to use.
Typography:
Typography refers to the art of styling and arranging text or letters in a specific way to achieve certain objectives. The particular style in which letters are designed, conveys certain specific emotions. Brands often use particular typefaces across their communication platforms and documents to maintain consistency and evoke the emotions they want their audience to feel.
When selecting or working with typography, it’s essential to understand key terms such as Typeface, Font, and Type Family. It’s also important to learn about the main categories of typefaces: Serif, Sans Serif, Script, Decorative. Each category represents multiple emotions and can influence the audience’s perception. For example, typefaces with rounded edges, no restrictive shape are often used by kid’s brand to convey softness, fun and playfulness, creating a joyful feeling. On the other hand, premium brands tend to prefer Serif typefaces because they convey authenticity, heritage and elegance.
When designing a logo, brand designers often customise typefaces by tweaking certain strokes to make the design unique and reflect the Brand’s thought process. This ensures that the logo stands out in the market and sets the brand apart from competitors.
It’s generally recommended to select two typeface families for a brand to use consistently across all communication materials. These typefaces are highly researched, as they should align with the brand’s essence. Clear readability, letter/number being easily distinguishable helps in offering a good User Experience. For example, distinguishing between similar characters, such as the letter ‘O’ and the digit ‘0’. Similarly, Lowercase letter l ‘l’, Uppercase letter ‘I’ and digit ‘1’, have a really close knitted look which needs a clear differentiation.
Iconography + Pattern:
This section deals on using added graphics to visually communicate the brand’s philosphy through illustrations. Here, Patterns are crafted to be widely used by the brand, across various applications, such as Packaging, Interiors, Merchandise, Brand Stationery. These patterns may involve creative repetitions of the logo or multiple illustrations arranged in a balanced format representing the brand’s philosophy.
Iconography, involves designing popular icons to align it with the brand’s unique style and aesthetic, this can include Logo’s of brands such as Instagram, Facebook, websites, location. The process often includes experimenting with strokes and colors while maintaining the authenticity of these logos in terms of it’s shape, size, placement. The enhanced icons are creatively used across Website, Business Cards, Advertisements and so on.
Extension of Branding:
Once the basic outline of the brand is established, the client understands the overall look and feel of the brand. This is achieved through the incorporation of various Brand Assets, including the Logo, Typefaces, Color Palette, Icons, Patterns and Illustrations. These elements are then applied to craft the packaging for products or services, visual displays (such as websites and social media) and stationery items like brochures, business cards, letterheads. Additionally, these assets are utilised in advertisements (both print and digital). The process doesn’t stop there, brand’s requirements expand over time, leading to the creation of items such as gift hampers, exhibition designs (for participation in events), and more.
Different Types of Branding:
What is Corporate Branding?
This aspect of branding focuses over the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and image building of the Company. Instead of focusing solely on the products or services the company offers, it works on establishing the company’s reputation. Main elements include highlighting the firm’s Mission, Vision, the culture they aim to incorporate among the employees and customers. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives is another key point, a resource which curates in image building. Corporate Branding helps distinguish a company from its competitors, build Trust and Loyalty, and attract top Talent. Apple is an excellent example of Corporate Branding, as it focuses over revolutionising the tech industry and actively communicates this vision, rather than solely promoting its products.
What is Service/Product Branding?
This type of branding majorly involves marketing, publicising and drawing attention to a specific product or service that the company wants to highlight. While the company may have a wide range of products or services, but here the spotlight is over a particular offering, whether it’s a recent addition to the company’s portfolio or an existing product/service.
This approach often includes in an extended Brand Identity and Assets crafted specifically for the product or service the company aims to promote. It can help the firm to introduce a premium range or expand its market through new additions or upgrades to its portfolio.
Understanding and learning the multifarious sections of this type of branding is crucial for employees and owners both. As it helps them to ensure their offerings reach to the right audience and create a gateway for the new customers. In this process, graphic plays an extremely important role, to effectively communicate the message and creating impact across market.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal Branding focuses on establishing an individual’s unique position within their industry, in contrast to corporate branding, which emphasises over the business entity. This category highlights an individual’s skills, achievements and helping them to build trust with in a specific or diverse audience, creating a close knitted connection and enhance their credibility with collaborators, employers.
This type of branding highlights personal growth and individuality in a professional life. In today’s world, this category is gaining a significant increase, where CEOs and Higher Management prioritising personal visibility on social media. This approach allows them to connect personally with customers and share their philosophies, not only restricting to professional but personal pointers as well. Additionally, there is a growing trend of individuals emerging as content creators, working over their growing visibility as influencers and summing up to launch their own product labels and establish unique brands.
What is Geographical Branding?
This section of branding highlights a specific location and talks about it’s USP, it either can be a city, state, country or even a continent. This approach is often utilised by travel agencies or government bodies to boost tourism, a culturally driven type of branding. Additionally, attracting investments and talent is another significant objective of location branding. For example, Paris is known as the ‘City of Love’ and is also renowned for its Fashion and Art. Similarly, Udaipur, famously referred to as the ‘City of Lakes’, majority of them are man made lakes. It is fascinating to learn that these vast reservoirs were created during the rule of the Mewar Dynasty to address water needs centuries ago. Over time, these lakes became an integral part of the city’s identity and playing a crucial role in its branding.