What is a brand?
Whilst ‘branding’ is a widely used term, it is also a wildly misunderstood one used mainly, in my experience, to mean a businesses logo.
But a brand is so much more than just a logo – your brand is everything.
In short, a “brand” is emotional – its what existing and prospective clients think and feel when they see or hear your brand name, which can vary wildly based on an individual’s experience of a product or service.
As such, the only way your business is going to grow is by developing your customers perceptions of your brand, through positive experiences of your products and services, which you can do by keeping to your promises and exceeding (or at the very least matching) their expectations.
However, all good perceptions start with how a business looks – you could offer the best service in the world but if you don’t look particularly well conceived then potential customers are not going to take that leap of faith and trust you.
Which is where the visual elements of a brand come into play – namely: your brand logo and brand identity.
Your brand logo…
This is purely a symbol directly representing any one product or service: whether elaborate icon, simple text, obvious or abstract, and carrying no strapline (straplines have no place in a logo as they can over complicate and become undiscernable if reproduced at a very small size; on a business card for example).
Your brand identity
With your logo at it’s centre, it uses colours, shapes, fonts, images, content, as well as quality production methods, to promote a common theme across all marketing and sales materials to create a ‘tone of voice’ that identifies any product as your own.
So as your ‘brand’ really is everything in building a successful business, don’t just get a logo, a great logo…
“It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.”
Paula Scher*
If you want us to champion your brand, call us on 01908 965 994
*Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator in design, and the first female principal at Pentagram, a design studio founded in 1972 in London that now has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Austin and Berlin. Which, amongst many other things, worked on the Windows 8 updated brand, Mothercare and Halfords.