Corporate Identity and Branding

So why are Logo’s important?

Corporate Branding all the way from your company logo, across your digital footprint to your printed materials is essential to getting your business noticed and your consumers on board. Coherent branding will get you noticed and at Rak Design we can manage all of your assets for an effective, ground-breaking design. Let’s help rocket your business to the next level.

Your logo has an immediate visual impact and represents your company or product with a symbol or an icon. Logo design is usually quite simple, and it may or may not include your company name. Your logo doesn’t sell or elaborate the description of your company.

To be effective, a logo should be instantly recognisable and preferably, memorable. McDonald’s has the golden arches, Apple has the apple logo, Starbuck’s has their trademark symbol. On their own, they don’t tell you anything about the company but yet they are all effective in that we can immediately identify the big business names behind them.

So, if my logo represents my company, why then do I also need a corporate identity?

Corporate identity is an extension of your logo. It widens the visual identity of your company. Creating a corporate identity involves drawing up a set of identity guidelines that deliver visual consistency across your company’s activities. This consistency creates a professional image and makes you immediately recognisable. Corporate identity guidelines lay out the visual devices to be used across your marketing and communications, including:

• Stationery – business cards, envelopes, letterheads, notepads
• Promotional materials – flyers, brochures, catalogues, t-shirts, mugs, posters
• Digital media – website and social media
• Signage and banners
• Products and packaging
• Staff uniforms
• Interior and exterior design

Take Richard Branson’s company, Virgin, as a good example. Across all his businesses, the same shade of red and V logo is used as a symbolic corporate identity which we can immediately identify as Virgin.

So, in that case, what is branding?

Branding builds into another, much deeper, level of engagement between a company and a consumer. Branding moves beyond the visual to elicit an emotional response, often working on the subconscious mind, provoking feelings and associations which convince a consumer to buy into a product or service.

A good way of looking at branding is to consider it as the personality of a company. Branding embodies the ethics and values of your company, and affects how consumers perceive it and the emotional response that they have to it. According to research, marketing uses the language and visual codes of cool, caring, reassuring, sociable, respect or status to create brand desire. Apple’s branding as an innovative and cutting-edge tech firm focuses on putting out new models for its products – if you don’t have the latest model, you don’t have the status.

Branding creates certain associations. They might be that a product/service/company is:

• Youthful
• Energetic
• Responsible
• Healthy
• Exciting
• Trustworthy
• Fun
• Inspiring
• Creative

Branding will help you stand out from the crowd.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is more important than ever that your customers know what your company represents, including the founding principles of your business and the ethos that is behind the quality of your products and/or services.

At Rak Design we work hard to understand the core of your business as well as the goals and challenges faced by your customers. This is what your corporate identity should be all about, ­ being attuned to your customers’ values and being there to help solve their needs and problems.

Do I really need a brand identity?

It doesn’t matter whether your company is global or community based. Developing a brand identity which effectively communicates your ethics and values will provide instant recognition and awareness by your target audience. Take the heart-warming example of Innocent Drinks, which grew from three friends selling drinks at a British music festival to a European success story, simply by focusing on communicating its core values of simplicity, creativity and responsibility.

So, how can we help?

To ensure a consistent message, your branding should run through every single aspect of your marketing, from your website and digital assets to any other marketing material you may use, such as brochures or posters.

This is where our unique experience and expertise come in. At Rak Design we can design and create all of your marketing communications, whether that’s a responsive e-commerce website, digital design, photography or exhibition stand. By employing just one agency to work with you on your branding and marketing you can be sure that all your communication asset will be consistent with your brand’s message.