One of the most important questions when choosing the agency to make your brand identity is «What makes a good brand good?». It’s an essential question for us. That is why we have developed our «evidence-based design» methodology to analyze the competitive market more thoroughly and find the best solutions for our clients. We’re starting from the idea that each medium is designed with a specific task, and the design should help to fulfill the goals.
Let’s go through the main attributes of a good brand identity:
- A good brand identity makes the company stand out from the competition.
- A good brand identity makes the company visually coherent.
- A good brand identity can be systematized and later used by any designer.
- A good brand identity can be easily scaled.
- A good brand identity is based on the idea.
- A good brand identity is easy to print and cost-efficient.
- A good brand identity will be relevant decades from now.
- A good brand identity fulfills the business objectives.
These attributes can serve as guidelines for the development of a brand identity. Therefore, when we research before the brand identity development, we also study the competitors and analyze how much the competitor has these attributes.
Why does some brand identity work while another doesn’t?
The efficiency of brand identity depends on the idea. If the concept is embedded in the ideology, it can be easily scaled up. It’s like big ideas in advertising. If you have a big picture, it’s easy to build communication and constantly develop something new. Think of M&Ms, which can continuously argue about color and taste, and immerse themselves in new stories, and this is eternal communication. The same with identity. You can easily scale it to any medium if you have an idea. Also, from our practice, the simpler the visual solution, the more scalable it is for further work.
Let’s take a look at our Urban Hostel identity. It’s made up of squares. Squares represent rooms in the hostel. As we know, a square is a universal form that can be easily scaled. So you can make a letterhead out of hundreds of squares, draw any image out of squares, make a square big, make a square small, and so on. The simpler the form, the easier it is to work with.
A good identity at the moment of creation is easily verified by answering several questions:
- Is it easy to scale an Identity to 5-7 carriers simultaneously? Can you easily give ideas about the airlines and not lose the main idea? If so, then everything is fine.
- Will a brand identity work with illustrations and in several dimensions?
- Is a brand identity a system? A good identity is adaptable. Any designer can use it to create new forms and expand boundaries.
These questions are enough to know just how your brand identity can generally work. We’ve often encountered situations when there is a good idea, but the problems appear when you start thinking about scaling the essence and working with it. In this case, any idea for identity must be sent to refine. Sometimes the idea can be thrown out to find a better solution for the brand.
One crucial attribute is «an energy charge.» A good identity allows you to generate new ideas. It is contagious. When we introduce an identity to a client and see that the “energy charge” is working, we see the client starting to generate ideas, and his brain is plugged into the creative process. If it happens clients usually want to start introducing the identity as soon as possible to start creating something new. It’s magic that brings joy to everyone involved.
One of the essential criteria for developing a good identity is fulfilling business tasks. So any identity is created primarily to solve a particular business problem. And it is crucial to remember the objectives during the development of the identity. That’s why, during the concept trials, we at Moloko Creative ensure that the identity can solve the problem. And only when the trial results are ready and analyzed we present the brand identity to the client because we must be sure that we have created a product that will allow the client to solve business tasks.
A good identity is not a fantasy but the strategic work of many specialists. We know from our own experience how vital strategists and analysts are in developing the brand identity. If you have a task for our team, feel free to write to us, and we will develop a good brand identity for you.