You want to make sure your business impresses everywhere it is seen. One way it can do this is with a visual identity.
The way in which you present your brand says a lot about you. The professional image of your company conveys a lot of information to your customers, stakeholders and even your employees.
Corporate image is how people perceive a company. Visual identity plays an important role in forming those perceptions and is a means of determining them.
All companies, regardless of size, can benefit from having a visual identity. It will help to express your company ethos and differentiate you from the competition. A visual identity is the visual manifestation of your brand that represents the personality and values of your company. And by manifestation, I mean the tangible component of your brand.
The components that make up a visual identity are various. It will typically include a logo, business cards, letterheads, envelopes, corporate folder, email signature, compliment slips and pamphlets. But it can comprise so much more, such as pens, notebooks, DVDs, badges, t-shirts, caps, packaging and social media covers. Even your office space and company vehicles.
A visual identity is more than just business cards and letterheads, though. Fonts, colours, graphic elements, icons, and shapes are equally vital components.
So, how exactly does having a strong visual identity help you and your business?
It makes you look important, infers credibility, imparts trustworthiness, and makes your company look more prestigious. But even more than that, it is a means of instituting consistency in your brand’s applications.
If you walk into any bank branch, you will notice how the use of colours, fonts, and imagery is the same no matter what branch you are in. All those elements confer distinctiveness to that particular bank over other banks. The bank’s corporate identity is an essential component of its overall corporate image and brand. A professionally crafted visual identity helps standardise your brand’s representation across various media. It also helps establish consistency in your organisation’s use of colours, fonts and imagery.
Shouldn’t how your business is perceived be the same, no matter whether it’s in print, on social media or even internally within your employees? You want the same brand design to extend across all of your branding materials.
A visual identity assures that your company can be recognised and remembered. Don’t you want to be confident that when your company sends out communications that it is immediately evident who it’s from? Just from a glance, people ought to know it’s you who is sending them an email, a flyer, a letter and so on.
Using a visual identity for all your communications helps to imprint your brand into the minds of your audience so that they assimilate it. You are not going to have the benefit, like Nike, of a large advertising and marketing budget. But you can make use of something far less expensive to help form favourable perceptions of your company whilst creating awareness for it. And that is a visual identity.
It will always take multiple impressions for consumers to assimilate your brand. Therefore, your communications must all look the same to reinforce brand recognition. Putting a visual identity in place does make it a lot easier and convenient every time you send out any emails, announcements or flyers. If every time your fonts and graphic elements changed, how are people going to recognise that it is you whenever they see any of your messages?
Another benefit of using a visual identity is that it truly is a cool way to energise and drive engagement with your brand. An awesome-looking letterhead with your logo is going to look far more impressive than just a plain letter. Imagine receiving a letter, and the envelope design is bold and striking. You would not hesitate to open it to find out what’s inside.
A visual identity communicates the personality of your company. It says whether you are conservative, quirky, retro or chic. Think of how a skateboard company is different from a law firm. That skateboard company is going to express itself in a very different way from that of the law firm.
In Conclusion
- Imparts a distinctive look to your company
- Elicits a positive perception
- Expresses the personality of your company
- Represents your company’s ethos
- It bestows credibility and professionalism to your business or organisation
- A professionally crafted corporate identity helps standardise your brand’s representation across various media
- Helps to establish consistency in your organisation’s use of colours, fonts and imagery
- Is a fun way to engage with customers
What should you have as part of your visual identity? A good place to start would be with the logo, typography, colour palette, business cards, letterhead, email signature and social media cover (especially if you don’t have a website yet). You could always add more as you need it and as your business grows.
Getting a visual identity and corporate stationery is easy. Team up with me to design your logo (if you don’t already have one) and your corporate stationery, corporate fonts and colours. I offer a variety of visual identity packages.
