Designing and identity is more than just making a logo

Posted by Lindsayanng

Phew, first I have to do the happy dance – ITS DONE ITS DONE ITS DONE! I have been working on this website for months, and it’s definitely one of my proudest moments to know that it is launched and ready for business. This website is massive, but I will explain the website in another post, this is about the identity and branding.

When you hire a company to design a brand for you (not just a simple logo design, but a brand) you should receive more than just a logo. A brand, as I have explained a million times in this blog and in individual conversations, is a package. It includes color standards, font options, and any additional graphical and illustrative elements that are part of the brand as a whole. Things like buttons, headers, and styles for text create a solid brand identity throughout all of your marketing materials and creates a standard for creation when you start working with a new designer.

We offer a brand package to clients who purchase our middle or upper level brand packages, and the clients who receive the brand standards package are always very happy they did in the long run because it means their future promotional materials all have that look that they are happy with. When this new client came to me she had a logo and nothing more – I had to even dig just to get the name of the font in the logo!

Since I was creating a website for her based solely on a logo, I was the designer who ended up creating the brand identity, so I thought it would be nice to give her a brand package. First I want you to see the logo as it was given to me:

Now, I really like this logo – I am definitely in love with this logo. It was the inspiration for the entire website that I designed which (i feel) has turned out to be one of my favorite websites ever. Even though this logo came with some pantone colors to be used as the logo color, that was it. There were no standards for background colors, fonts, or additional styles for use along side this logo. It basically leaves the client feeling like “Great, I have a logo – now what?”

So here is what I put together after spending a lot of time and development time with the brand:

Now, this document actually has a few elements more than would typically be in a brand package document, but it is still a lot more than what the client had when she came to me. Typically a brand standards package would have most of what is there, and additional elements like the custom icons, and illustrative elements would need to be requested by the client or spoke about previously with the client. You should not expect to receive a brand standards document with icons and illustrations if you do not request these elements to be a part of your identity. You should, however expect the rest of what you see on there. The little hearts as an element for a heading, the button graphics, and the background color paired with the logo are all part of what will create a solid brand for the client. When you look at this document you can see how having this as a part of your branding will create limitless possibilities for design and promotion.

I am really very happy with the way the final project looks!! What do you think?

Categories: Branding, Design | Tags: | 5 Comments »