What is brand identity?
A company’s brand identity is the combination of visual and content choices that represent your company’s personality. It’s the face of your brand.
Your brand identity is composed of the visual brand elements you’ve chosen, like your color palette, but it also includes your brand’s voice and tone. If created successfully, your brand identity will represent and allude to your brand values and mission.
Creating a strong brand identity will help you develop a brand image that’s recognizable to your target audience, even if they only see one small element of it.
Here’s some of what brand identity includes:
- Brand visuals, like colors, logo, fonts, layouts, and design elements like photography and illustrations
- Brand voice and tone, including a slogan or tagline, social, email, and in-product content messaging, ad copy, and website copy
Key takeaways
- Brand identity includes visual design elements plus a brand’s voice and tone. When done correctly, it can represent a brand’s ethos, mission, and vision.
- Your brand identity should resonate with your target market, so market research is crucial.
- Creating a brand identity builds awareness of your product or service and helps you rise above the competition.
- A brand identity can shift and change over time — but be mindful about maintaining a positive customer perception even through rebrands
Brand vs. brand identity vs. brand image vs. brand
Brand encompasses everything that defines your company: your color palette, logo, fonts, imagery, voice and tone, mission, vision, goals, personality, products, pricing, social media use.
Brand identity is a little more specific. It’s the face of your brand: the visual, content, and tone choices you make to represent your values, story, and product.
Brand image focuses on the visual side of a brand, including colors, fonts, and logos, but also brand photography and videography, and the look and feel of all types of communications.
And branding is the verb that describes the process of creating a brand and implementing a brand strategy to run campaigns, increase awareness, and grow the business.