Brand, Identity and Logo Design Explained

When it comes to crafting your online image as a business, it is crucial to ensure that you have a strong brand and identity to help you tie together your various marketing exploits and to help your visitors seek you out in future.

But just what precisely is a ‘brand’ anyway? How is it different from a logo? Are they the same thing?

And what’s a trademark? Let’s break it down and look at the various different aspects that help to create recognition and hyper for a product and/or service.

Logo

We’ll start with your logo because it’s perhaps the easiest to understand and explain…

Essentially, a logo is an image that you use to represent your company. In the vast majority of cases this image will contain the company name itself as text though in some other cases the image might be something more abstract or an item that links directly to your niche/mission statement.

So what are some examples of great logos? One obvious example is the Nike tick which has become synonymous with the brand and which countless millions of school kids have drawn onto their schoolbooks at some time. Like the best logos, the Nike tick is easy to replicate, it’s simple and it’s timeless.

Another example would be Apple’s ‘Apple’ which is very straightforward. Then you have the logo for Virgin which is essentially just the word Virgin written in white on a red background, looking a little like spray paint.

Company Name

This is the name that your company is registered under. So ‘IBM’ or ‘SEGA’.

Where things get a little complicated though is that your company name and your ‘trading name’ can be a little different. So for instance, if you are a sole trader then there’s a good chance that legally, your company name is simply your own personal name. ‘Jeff Blogs’ for instance. However that doesn’t mean that you can’t use another name in your marketing or on your invoices – this is then what is known as your ‘trading name’.

Trademark

Trademark is an aspect of intellectual property law. This is the type of IP protection used for protecting brands in particular and this can mean both the trading name and the logo. If you are serious about investing time and money into your business and growing it, then it’s a good idea to get this kind of protection to prevent other companies from using your same name and thus diluting your brand. At the same time though, it’s also important to check that the name and logo you’re thinking of using are not already taken!

Brand

Your company brand is the corporate image as a whole. In other words, it is everything that links all of your disparate projects, marketing, values and more under one banner. Moreover, it is generally thought of as evoking an emotional response – ideally of familiarity and trust. It is by managing the other aspects (your logo, company name) etc. that you can build this kind of trust.

Note as well that a brand doesn’t have to apply to your business. You can actually have brands for your products too, for instance Microsoft has brands like Windows and Xbox, each with their own logos and expectations.

Identity

Whereas the brand might focus on the emotional resonance of your company, the identity is much more to do with the look and feel. Your brand identity is partly comprised of your company name and logo but it’s also to do with the colors on your website, the shape of your products and the look of your stores. For instance, Apple’s ‘identity’ is largely defined through its products and is made up of things like the white earphones, the beautifully made laptops and phones and the white in their stores and on their website.

Having both a brand and an identity is important as a company as it will help you to cement the way that your customers and the general public see you and it will let you build on that trust and perception over time.

Mission Statement

You don’t need a mission statement necessarily but having one will help you to better explain to the general public what your company is all about. This is basically a short phrase that you use to sum up your organization in and what it is you hope to achieve. Normally the easiest way to come up with a mission statement is to answer the simple question ‘what do you do?’. Note that this is different from answering the question ‘what do you sell?’. You want to focus not only on the short term nuts and bolts of your business but also on the ambition of your organization in the long term.

So your mission statement isn’t to ‘Sell hats’, it’s to ‘Keep heads warm and stylish for affordable prices’.

Why is this so important? Because beyond your identity and your logo, it’s the mission statement, the values and the commitment that will help your company to stand out and that will help you to build fans. It’s not about what you do; it’s about how you do it.

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