How Does Graphic Design Shape Brand Identity?

What is one of the first signs that a business is unprofessional, disorganized, or unreliable? While there are a lot of clues to help customers learn a business’s reliability, website design is one of the bigger clues. Coming to a website and finding that its brand personality is confusing, its graphic design poor, or its brand identity weak is discouraging. On the other hand, a business with a professional and reliable webpage is sure to build trust with its customers. So how can you strengthen a customer’s first impression of your website and your products? Graphic design is the key to creating a professional brand identity to appeal to potential customers in a digital age.

What is Brand Identity and Why is it so Important?

Brand identity is one of the most important aspects of your business–and for good reason. It’s what makes up the visual appeal of your company and brand, including your color palette, certain fonts, images, and website videos. These items all give the brand an image that customers can recognize and point to.

Of course, how do you get there without some sort of roadmap? It’s not easy to just invent an identity and try to put together its visual elements in a consistent way. This is where graphic design comes into play. Graphic design is the ability and skills to communicate your brand identity through visual aspects only. A strong brand identity will have strong graphic design, and vice versa.

But why does this matter for small businesses? Even the smallest business will benefit from becoming a more visual brand. Because visual information is communicated much faster than text or auditory, all businesses should pay attention to creating a memorable brand identity. 90% of the information absorbed by the brain is visual, and it’s processed 60,000x faster than other types of information. Talk about the best advertising scheme possible! Creating a visual appeal for your brand might seem challenging, but with the tools of graphic design, it’s much easier to build a successful brand.

What is the Role of Graphic Design in Building a Brand Image?

Because graphic design is a visual way of presenting your brand identity, it has a power that nothing else has: telling your brand’s story through images, colors, shapes, and fonts. These aspects come together to portray the brand’s personality and identity. If graphic design has one strength, it’s connecting the target audience to the business and its image. It can help customers better understand the brand identity through assets like colors, typography, shapes, and images, and it provides a visual front to the psychological aspect of the brand.

How Can a Graphic Designer Enhance Your Brand Image?

The actual strategy for building a brand image is where the details of graphic design happen. Graphic designers can help you formulate a brand strategy and create a brand style guide that portrays your brand identity. There are a lot of ways that a graphic designer can harness their creative juices to capture the key elements of your brand, so let’s talk through a few of those so you know what to expect from graphic designers.

• Company logo. Graphic designers specialize in brand identity design, and the core element of this is the company logo. This is the symbol that will represent your business throughout the branding process and beyond. Your logo should communicate the company’s mission in a creative and eye-catching way.
• Visual language. This includes a range of things from your color palette to your font choice to your images. A graphic designer should target keeping everything consistent by creating designs that are timeless and unique, but easily unified under one brand identity and image.
• Packaging design. A popular way to maximize graphic design potential and brand image is in product packaging. Design elements in packaging serve to remind the customer who they’re buying from and the best aspects of the brand. Fun and exciting packaging can even keep customers coming back for more.
• Marketing collateral. Graphic designers can also use your marketing materials like brochures, banners, and emails to create a brand identity. These are great places to remind your customers of your brand identity and create a memorable brand. Your target audience will enjoy receiving consistent, creative brand material.
• UI design. User interface is a growing area of popularity for companies, and why not? Making your website easy to navigate is a great way to increase the company’s strengths, and a graphic designer can help with this process. Web design is the place to incorporate brand colors and other brand elements all while keeping the website easy to understand.
• Social media. This is a great base to branch out from and reach new customers. With consistent brand identity communication and a little creativity, graphic designers can use your social media page to make your brand voice heard.
• Print advertising. Having hard copies of your brand identity design is never a bad idea, and graphic designers can help with this too. Their specialized skills allow them to create designs and color schemes to remind customers of who you are, thus enhancing brand recall.

With so many ways for graphic design to enhance your business, it’s a great choice to better your marketing, branding, and business. Graphic designers are skilled at data visualizations and know how to make your logo, color palette, and other elements of your website reflect your brand identity.

Why is Graphic Design Crucial for a Strong Brand Identity?

Because so much information today is processed visually, a good brand will create its identity with a visual basis. Customers remember visual information they’ve interacted with, so graphic design makes it easier for them to recall your logo and brand identity. This often results in an uptick in performance and profits.

Aspects of your brand like font and color choices have the power to evoke feelings and thoughts in your viewers. Whether you use bright colors and an energetic font to capture the minds of artistic customers or sleek and polished colors and shapes to appeal to today’s professionals, graphic design can help you appeal to your target audience.

A strong brand understands how color psychology affects the brain and the potential it brings to marketing, social media, and business. Your brand style guide can be one of the biggest master plans for your business: it can help you constantly learn how to better communicate the brand identity.

The Impact of Graphic Design on Your Brand’s First Impressions

These design elements are what make the first impression on your customers. Before they even read your website text, they’ll notice your style, brand colors, logo, and the creative process it took to make your brand identity. This first glance can make or break a brand-customer relationship. That’s why many brands choose to use graphic design to make that first impression powerfully positive.

What Role Does Graphic Design Play in Customer Perception?

Graphic design is the beginning of building your brand identity, so it’s also the starting place for creating that powerful first impression. Depending on who your target audience is, you’ll make different graphic design choices than the next business. Simple choices like using solid or textured backgrounds, whether or not you’ll use serif fonts, and whether you’ll have round or square shapes have a high impact on your brand identity and its reception.

These choices are all made through graphic design, so it’s important to keep graphic design in mind as you build your brand identity. We have a few favorite ways to keep your identity at the forefront while creating that positive first glance.

• Consistency. Your brand identity should be unified, not easily confused with other brand identities. Brand guidelines like keeping the same color palette throughout all of your products, using the same logo, and making good use of white space can all help move your company toward having one single, consistent brand identity.
• Color psychology. Remember that warm colors tend to create a more energetic feeling for your brand, while cool colors tend to feel relaxing. Depending on your target audience and your brand image, you’ll want to move in one of these directions.
• Storytelling. Just like everyone else, your target audience will enjoy a good story. That’s why marketing and graphic design should always aim to use their assets to tell your brand story.
• Incorporating unlikely areas. Packaging is a great example of this. Some brands just use boring, regular packaging. Why not use graphic design to communicate your brand identity from the website to the wrapping in which your product lands on their doorstep?
• Professionality. No matter what your brand identity or brand guidelines are, you’ll want to harness graphic design elements to make your brand feel professional. A strong brand knows how to communicate its brand identity and seem professional all at once. You don’t have to have a slick design to do this. Making good use of your brand assets and remembering your brand identity are powerful enough to create a brand that feels professional in all its facets.

These are some of our favorite ways to keep your brand identity at the forefront of the customer’s mind while also capturing a positive first impression. The visual elements of your brand often make or break your relationship with the customer. Let’s make customer relations easy by keeping that first impression positive.

Case Studies: Successful Use of Graphic Design in Building Brand Identity

Graphic design, with all its perks and creativity, might sound like a great route to go, but how do you know if it works? How does brand identity impact store sales, appearance, and project management? Having tangible proof often helps people grasp ideas, so let’s explore a few stories about the great success graphic design and brand identity have had in the business world.

Which Brands Have Effectively Utilized Graphic Design for Their Brand Image?

To give you some illustrations of how effective graphic design is for companies, we’ll review five stories about graphic design and brand identity success.

• Coca-Cola: This one is a brand identity classic. Everyone recognizes the Coca-Cola cheery red logo and their unique bottle design. These two elements of Coca-Cola’s design strategy work flawlessly to help people around the world recognize and remember the brand.
• Hustle & Hope: This stationary company has been out to make its brand identity the forefront of its products. Their greeting cards aim to target professionals and encourage them in their work. The card design also includes a code to scan on the back that takes the user to a website full of encouraging suggestions and ideas. The business uses unique slogans to stand out from old, boring card companies, making the whole experience of receiving a Hustle & Hope card fun and unique.
• POP Fit: This company’s brand image is all about making clothes for all sizes. That’s why they use exclusive four-way stretch fabric for ease of movement in athletic wear, and why they don’t edit their photos to change the models’ appearances.
• Burt’s Bees: A favorite company among environmentally conscious people, Burt’s Bees has worked to curate an image that matches its target audience. The company logo, featuring a man with a beard, speaks of cleanliness and simplicity to its users. This logo alone sets it apart from other beauty companies, which strive to appeal to a popular image of beauty.
• Semicolon Bookstore & Gallery: Based in Chicago, this bookstore doesn’t just use graphic design to get out its message. They also carefully curate a store atmosphere that perfectly matches their brand identity. Pushing to increase literacy rates and inspire a love of learning, Semicolon offers free books to students and even includes an art gallery of local artists’ work in their store.

These case studies are just the beginning of those who succeeded in building a strong brand identity through graphic design that forces the brand image to be front and center. If you’re ready to make your brand identity the forefront of your brand, it may be time to explore graphic design!

Keen on Shaping Your Strong Brand Identity With Expert Graphic Design?

If you’re ready to build a strong brand identity that makes recall easy for customers, look no further than Hit Your Mark Media. From our team of analysis experts who can help you identify your target audience and cultivate a brand identity, to our experts in graphic design, marketing, and branding, we’re here to help you grow your business and boost your profits quickly and effortlessly!

References:

1. Brand Identity: How to Develop a Unique & Memorable Brand in 2023 | Hubspot — Access date: 28 July 2023.
2. Designing for Impact: How Graphic Designers Shape Brand Identity and Communication | Linkedin — Access date: 28 July 2023.
3. Graphic Designs Impact on Brand Identity Design | Fellow — Access date: 28 July 2023.
4. Graphic Design’s Impact on Building a Brand Identity | Inkbot Design — Access date: 28 July 2023.