Corporate Identity Design might seem like an alphabet soup of organisation jargon, but your brand identity design is very important in business. Your Corporate Identity Design is like your business’s passport book: it defines what your brand looks like and says who it is married to and where it goes.
A CI or corporate identity design document is like your business’s passport book. It defines what your brand looks like, gives its full name and particulars, and says who it is married to, where it has been and where it is allowed to go.
A CI is a comprehensive guide that outlines all the information needed to create a visual identity for your business. It includes things like color palettes and fonts, logos and taglines as well as more specific information like the tone of voice that should be used in promotional materials.
The purpose of a CI is to make sure that everyone involved in creating your brand’s identity knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing so you don’t end up with a bunch of products that look different from each other but have nothing at all in common (like a bunch of different shades of blue). The CI helps ensure consistency across all communications channels so that whatever image you’re trying to convey about yourself stays consistent throughout all media outlets (social media accounts, print ads, etc.).
If you’re ever in a CI class, the first one you will receive is the logo. Without logos, you can’t have company badges and they make up a significant part of branding. So let’s take a minute to answer that most important question: What makes up Logos? Let’s find out as we explore what a Logo is.
The word logo is thought to be an abbreviation of Logotype. Logotype is a name derived from the printing industry where it was used by early printers to describe a single piece of type (group of letters) that printed a name. Logos is Greek for ‘word’.
Logo was first used in 1892 by Arthur W. Dow, a business professor at Dartmouth College, in his book “Commercial Arithmetic”. He defined it as “a symbol of an idea.” The word has since become synonymous with a company or brand’s identity.
A logo is the visual representation of a company, brand or product. It can be used on stationery and other marketing materials, websites and social media posts. A logo represents your business in ways that words cannot describe.
It’s not just about putting your name on something—it’s about what that something looks like. Your logo should reflect who you are as well as what you stand for as an organization or business entity. It should also be timeless so that it doesn’t look dated over time while still looking modern enough to stand out among competitors’ logos today.
The first thing you should consider when designing your logo is how it will be used. Business cards, letterheads, and websites all have different requirements for size and placement of logos. Once you’ve chosen the best way to display your logo, you can move on to deciding what kind of look you want.
The most important thing to keep in mind when designing a logo is that it needs to clearly identify with your brand. It should reflect your business’s values and services. Think about color and typography and how they set the tone of the design. For example, if you’re a construction company you probably don’t want to use the color pink in your logo.
Once you’ve decided on an overall look for your logo, make sure that it works well in both black-and-white and full color versions because the two versions will likely appear on different types of materials (i.e., business cards vs. print ads).
A logo is the most important part of your brand, and while it may seem like a small thing, it’s actually incredibly important. The fact is, a good logo should be three things:
Appropriate – logos should be appropriate in it’s feeling. It doesn’t need to say a whole lot, but it should feel like you when you look at it.
Distinctive & Memorable – It has to be unusual enough to persist in our mind. This means that the logo needs to stand out from the crowd.
Simple – Logos are displayed across various mediums in many different sizes. This means that they must be simple enough to reproduce at any size without losing any of their meaning or appearance.
The next step is likely to see a further development of the logo as traditional graphic design. I can imagine a time when logos are crafted by hand, from a blank canvas, with all the skill and craftsmanship of traditional art. As other areas of our lives start to slow down and we become more conscious about what we want and who we want it from, it’s not inconceivable that designers will eventually find themselves with more freedom to be creative, more opportunities to be noticed, and the chance to create something truly individual that people will remember.
