Brand Systems

Designing a Visual Identity System.

What is a visual identity system?

If a person was a brand, there would be two sides to them. The inside and outside. The inside is the mind and body, the way they think, behave and sound, their values, likes and dislikes - their identity.

The clothes and accessories they wear, the colours that really suit them, the glasses carefully curated to their face and the tattoos on their skin are the outside - their visual identity. Think about those people that seem to pull this off effortlessly. It’s co-ordinated. It’s disciplined. It’s designed. It’s a system.

A great brand identity is a system. Co-ordinated, disciplined, designed.

Implemented well, a brand system binds recognition, trust and loyalty; ensuring audiences know it’s your brand. It can embody nuance like the close friend you could pick out from a crowd - from their fashion style, how they wear their hair, or even how they move.

Brands should aim to be universally recognisable to their chosen audiences.

Visual identities extend well beyond combining logos, fonts and colours. Just like an orchestra, a visual identity system is an ensemble of elements that work together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts.

If you can remove your logo from a piece of communication and people still recognise your brand then you’re on the ladder.

We go on to explain the different elements and how they can work together as a brand system. But first…

What are the benefits of well considered brand systems?

More effective recognition or recall in your audiences’ minds.

Brings meaning and personality to visual communication.

Allows design freedom for individual touchpoints whilst maintaining brand look and feel across different types of media.

Design teams working to a system are more efficient, achieving a consistent look but with the flexibility to be creative.

It gives you a solid platform to build on as your brand flexes and grows.

What design challenges can you face?

Creating too many moving parts can lead to clutter - the temptation to overcomplicate things is great. A bit like having too many instruments playing in a song without the harmony. The intelligent part is retaining simplicity and flexibility whilst serving a broad range of applications.

Consistency of application - different perspectives on how to implement a system can lead to issues with quality. You do and will need brand guardians, who understand how your identity was built and how it should work to avoid cracks appearing.

Staying focused, whilst not stifling creativity - The temptation is often there to 'tweak' or create elements that sit outside of the tracks. It's a fine line between setting clear boundaries and giving designers enough space to play within, so they retain some freedom - that should be the goal for a brand system.

Where to start?

Before you start thinking about the brand system, you first need to define your purpose, principles and personality; this is your brand’s identity. This provides a platform on which to design a visual identity based on personality and tone of voice. A strong brand story should provide plenty of inspiration to develop the visual approach.

Start by carrying out a review of all touchpoints currently utilised in the business. These are all the communication points you have with your audiences. You can use a touchpoints matrix to make sense of them. Gather the examples in one place, using online whiteboards such as Mural are perfect for such tasks and allow multiple contributors to review and comment.

Bringing together all the elements you need to design the brand system will give you sight of scale, aspect ratios and how content is seen by audiences across different platforms and media. This will provide key design requirements for the brief.

“Systemising a flexible identity to work across multiple touchpoints needs a carefully considered approach”. Always do the thinking first, as this will avoid potential retrofitting further down the line.”

How do brand systems work?

As well as a strong brand story, personality and messaging, you need a series of solid key visual elements that combine seamlessly into a visual identity toolkit. Creating easy-to-follow guidelines, including processes for how to use each element will help with consistent application.

A brand system can include the following…

A distinct logo or brand mark

Your logo is a small but important part of your identity, (you know that’s not the brand, right?). The best logos say a lot without saying much at all - it can’t possibly represent everything about your brand. Focus on one aspect but don’t force it. It should be clear, flexible and recognisable.

The logo has to appear in many different places, sizes and spaces across multiple media. Considering these options early is essential. How does the logo flex from full to shorthand versions? Does the logo have an icon or separate brand mark? Should it sit with a tagline? How does it share space with other 3rd party logos? Is it distinct enough to be trademarked? How does the colour palette affect its positioning and use? Great logos manage to navigate all of this with ease.

Well considered colour palettes

Your brand colours need to reflect your brand personality and therefore appeal to your audiences. Try to curate a colour palette that sets you apart from your competitors. It’s increasingly difficult to ‘own’ a colour in your market. However, it’s a powerful emotional connection when you can achieve it. It is one colour or a series of complementary colours? Can you use colour coding to accentuate and communicate complimentary services and products? Using colour effectively is a strategy. It’s worth taking the time to experiment and get inspiration through research.

Graphical toolkits - the foundations of flexible brand systems

Toolkits are the key to flexibility, allowing for layering and framing of layouts in static and moving compositions and creating visual cues.

Whether you use a shape from the logo or brandmark to accentuate meaning, or take parts of illustrations and imagery to tell the brand story, developing strong graphic forms or structures will keep content familiar for your audiences. This ‘system’ needs to be manageable and clear on its application. This adds to longevity, keeping communications fresh over a number of years.

Typography says more than the words it writes

Typography is a fundamental part of your visual identity system - and often gets overlooked. In addition to colour it is the visual ‘voice’, setting tone and personality.

There are hundreds of thousands of fonts available. Brands need one or two. Therefore careful consideration should go into the selection of fonts, and how they sit together on page and screen. Using different weights will allow the voice to speak in different tones and provide a hierarchy on which to create layouts. Clear guidance on how and when to use the fonts within your identity should be created. Clear examples should be available to follow.

Remember, good typography is a craft. It takes years to perfect and shouldn’t be taken for granted or left to software to implement.

Photography, make it personal

Carefully curated and selected images can tell your story in a much quicker and more emotional way than graphic. Whilst stock photography offers a wide selection of content and styles, it’s no substitute for commissioning your own - bringing realism to your identity. Consider what themes the brand is trying to communicate, this could be personality, values or elements of your proposition. This will help to form the brief for the photographer and you’ll get better quality for the effort.

Using Illustration to enhance brand systems

Like photography, choosing illustration as a medium for storytelling can be very powerful. Whether it leads as a key identity element or plays a supporting role to photography, getting the right tone and style is key. Illustrations add an extra dimension as they are often created using many objects brought together in a composition or scene. Each object can be repurposed and used as part of the brand identity toolkit.
The illustrative style should fit with your personality as well as the colours and images you use. Illustrations should not be confused with icons!

Iconography as part of a brand system

The word icon is derived from Eikōn, an ancient Greek word meaning "image" or "resemblance". The first function of an icon is to inform by using a visual shortcut for understanding - often using simple geometric forms and lines. By definition icons should not be complex, convoluted or overly concept-driven (that’s what illustration is for). It’s worth checking, does this word or phrase require an icon or an illustration? Understand the difference between them.

For icon libraries, keep the style consistent and unique to the brand if possible - for example by introducing a brand element into the icon structure.

Application, how it all comes together.

If the planning has been done correctly then print and digital applications will work together seamlessly. There will be a process and set of rules on how to create compositions. Capture those in a set of brand guidelines. See how we put together brand guidelines here.

As with the initial touchpoints review, view the brand identity system as a whole by applying and testing a range of formats, size ratios and media. Each requires different considerations.

Good brand systems should be easy to use and easy on the eye. Always make sure you’re designing a system, not just a style! That’s the difficult bit.

The Engine Room designs brand identity systems for marketing departments and as an outsourced partner to in-house design teams. Contact us for more information.