What is Branding?
Branding is the name of a product or service. For example, a MacBook or Tide laundry detergent is a brand. Brands are also referred to as “brand names.”
A “brand” also represents all the attributes of a product or service.
For example, a MacBook’s brand represents:
- People-driven product design
- Simplicity
- Innovation
- Empowerment through technology
- High quality
These attributes can be both factual (“high quality”) and emotional (“empowerment”).
And unlike a brand name, a brand’s attributes are less physical i.e. they largely exist in the consumer’s mind.
In short, a brand can mean the perception of a product or service, or a company as a whole.
When to Use a Brand in Design
A brand is both a brand name (“MacBook”) and the perception of that company/product (“cool”).
In design, you can make brand guidelines that help shape how you communicate with consumers. This helps consumers perceive your business a certain way.
Brand guidelines standardize design elements such as:
- Logo
- Colors
- Style
- Visuals
- Fonts
The elements you choose can be more conservative, modern, quirky etc. according to how you want the company to be perceived by customers.
For example, here’s a company’s brand guidelines for their brand fonts and color palette. You can customize this template to make your own brand style guide:
How to Create a Brand
This infographic covers exactly how to create a brand style guide, from how to choose the right logo to what kinds of images to use:
Once you’ve decided on your branding, you can lay it out in an eBook for the entire company to reference.
The below completely customizable brand style guide focuses on the basics: logo, colors and typography.
Examples of Brands
This is Venngage’s branding guide:
Here’s a brand guide for a company’s color palette:
