So, you’ve decided to start your own business. Congrats!😀 You’re about to embark on a journey filled with the potential for growth, creativity, and — of course — the perks of being your own boss. Now, before you set sail, understanding how to create a brand identity is one of the crucial aspects of taking on a competitive market and succeeding like a pro. But, where to start? In this blog, we’ll break down the step-by-step on designing a brand identity effectively. Read on! ✨
Unlock Your Brand’s Potential! Hop to Your Topic of Choice 🪄
- 📍 First Things First, What Is a Brand Identity? 🧐
- The Importance of Designing a Strong Brand Identity ⭐️
- How to Create a Brand Identity: The ABC of Branding With Placeit ✨
- Placeit’s Brand Kit: Everything Your Brand Needs in One Place ✨
- Launch Your Brand With Placeit! 🚀️
📍 First Things First, What Is a Brand Identity? 🧐
Your brand identity is the culmination of how your business is perceived by customers. It comprises what it communicates, how it looks, and what emotions it conveys through a combination of visual and written elements. As a result, it shapes the entire customer experience by reinforcing your brand’s purpose and setting up a differentiator that makes it instantly recognizable to your audience.
When thinking about “How to create a brand identity?”, most people tend to focus solely on the logo. While it is indeed an important aspect of defining a strong image, it involves much more than that. That being said, let’s take a peek at the brand identity elements every business should have. 😀
🌟 Name
💜 Purpose
®️ Logo
🎨 Color Palette
✏️ Typography
📸 Photography
🌈 Illustrations
🟢 Graphic Elements
💬 Tone & Voice
📩 Messaging
Brand Identity Design by Placeit ✨
Later on, we’ll dive deeper into defining all your brand identity elements, so stay tuned! For now, keep in mind that an important aspect of knowing how to create a brand identity relies on building a narrative that resonates with your ideal customers and genuinely showcases your business’s vision, mission, and values.
➡️ Still not sure why acing how to create a brand identity is a must? Don’t worry! We’re just getting started. Let’s go over the benefits this brings to your business. 😉
The Importance of Designing a Strong Brand Identity ⭐️
1. Creating a Positive First Impression 🤩
A strong brand identity sets up the tone, image, and messaging of what your business is all about, thus influencing what people associate with it. And remember, first impressions do matter! So, as the audience understands your brand’s purpose, story, and values, they’re more likely to feel connected to it. Is your brand’s personality playful, assertive, or friendly? We’ll find it out! 😃
2. Connecting With Your Target Audience 🎯
A well-defined brand identity communicates professionalism and authenticity, ultimately instilling customer confidence. On top of that, your chosen visuals and messaging can drive the audience’s emotions helping them connect with your brand on a deeper level. Plus, as you maintain a consistent image across all communication channels, your business will foster familiarity and recognition, making it instantly stand out. 😌
3. Optimizing Marketing Efforts & Driving Sales 💸
Understanding how to create your brand identity serves as the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. How? By providing a clear framework for crafting the messaging, visuals, and campaigns that resonate the most with your target audience. Think of it this way: every initiative will clearly reinforce your brand’s unique selling point (USP), maximizing the impact of your strategies and driving long-term success for your business. 🚀
How to Create a Brand Identity: The ABC of Branding With Placeit ✨
Tackling how to create a brand identity from scratch may seem like a daunting task at first. However, we promise it’s not at all! In this guide, we’ll share how to make your business thrive, communicate the right message, and reach your target audience.
For every section, we’ve included the best brand identity examples that will help you get every concept down to a T. By the end of this guide, you’ll know just how to create a brand identity with Placeit by Envato as your creative ally. Without further ado, let’s get started! 😀
1. Define Your Brand’s Purpose & Values 💜
In short, your brand’s purpose is the heart and soul of your business. AKA, the “why” behind everything you do. This goes beyond gaining profits and, instead, focuses on how your products or services impact people’s lives and the world around them. So, whether it’s Apple’s continuous push for innovation or Nike’s strive to move the world forward, the brand’s purpose is its reason for being.
To put things into perspective, take Envato’s statement as an example of how you can state your brand’s purpose: “Empowering creators to thrive”. Now, is it the same as the mission or vision? Not quite! While connected, your brand’s purpose will serve as the starting point to define the latter. For instance, here’s how you can outline these statements for your own business taking a POD store as a model:
Finding Your Brand’s Purpose ✨
The overarching reason for being behind your brand; your “why”.
⭐️ Empower individuals to express their unique identities and passions through custom-designed merchandise.
Your brand’s long-term aspirations for the future.
🚀 Become the go-to destination for personalized products, recognized for our commitment to creativity, quality, and customer satisfaction.
The actions that ensure your brand stays true to its purpose and vision.
✅ Offer a wide range of quality products, streamlined ordering processes, and responsive customer support to ensure a seamless experience for our customers from start to finish.
The core concepts and principles that define your business.
💛 Creativity, Quality, Community, Transparency.
➡️ This is the first step on how to create a brand identity that stands strong and unique among the industry. Once you’ve got it clearly defined, it’s time to put on your detective glasses and move on to the next step! 🤓
2. Conduct Thorough Market Research 🔎
As we mentioned beforehand, an important aspect of grasping how to create a brand identity centers around building a narrative that resonates with the audience. Think of it as understanding what they want from a business within your industry. Here’s where you’ll start to define your target persona. Let’s look deeper into it! 🧐
Creating Your Brand’s Target Persona 👸🏻
A target persona represents the profile of the ideal customer segment for your brand. By understanding their characteristics, preferences, and behaviors, you can ace how to create a brand identity that connects with them. Moreover, this will also help you craft your messaging and strategize your marketing efforts accordingly to address their pain points and needs.
So, how to create a target persona for your brand? The answer relies on research! For example, say you already have a social media following. You can start by pinpointing aspects such as:
📆 Age
👤 Gender
🧑🏻🏫️ Ocuppation level
🛍 Purchasing habits
🏀 Interests & hobbies
💻 Offline & online habits
💬 Communication style
🌎 Geographic location
Additionally, you can also use the following questions as a guideline to gain valuable insights into your target persona and learn how to create a brand identity around them:
⭐️ What goals or aspirations does your ideal customer have?
🤯 What are the pain points or challenges your ideal customer faces?
✅ How does your product or service solve a problem or fulfill a need for your ideal customer?
🤔 What objections or concerns might your ideal customer have about your product or service?
A Quick Dive Into Adidas & Their Target 🎯
Eager for more brand identity examples? You got it! For instance, Adidas and its approach to sportswear focuses on top-performing athletes. This goes hand in hand with their iconic tagline “Impossible is nothing”, which aims for excellence. But that’s not all! ⚽🏆
As a brand, they also target fitness enthusiasts between the ages of 20 and 29 who opt for style and functionality in their gear. Hence their numerous marketing campaigns collaborating with A-list celebrities and sports personalities that appeal to a younger audience.
3. Establish Your Brand’s Unique Personality 😀
Onto our next step on how to create a brand identity! Just as its name suggests, your brand’s personality consists of a set of distinctive characteristics that shape how your business presents itself to customers. This helps them connect better with your brand as it can mirror the traits they value the most or what they aspire to reach through your products or services.
Brand’s Personality Done Right: Duolingo’s Example 🌟
Your brand’s personality also impacts how clients view and interact with your business. For instance, think of Duo the Owl, Duolingo’s sassy mascot. Whether this character is jumping on the latest trend or dancing on the streets, its funny antics prompt users to actively engage with the app’s content on social media.
@duolingo why doesn’t anyone fall for an owl? #duolingo ♬ BAILEYS SOUND - Me!
@duolingo sad g(owl) hours #duoplushie #duolingo #languagelearning #emo ♬ Rio romeo - .𝖒𝖊𝖓'🎧★
While on the surface it may seem like plain humor, the truth is that this quirky style is carefully crafted to reflect the company’s brand narrative. Just take a look for yourself at the traits that define Duolingo’s brand personality. See just how it fits seamlessly with what they showcase across their app, social media, email, website, and all their communication channels!
15 Brand Personality Traits for Your Business 💡
🏃🏻
Active
🌅
Calm
💖
Caring
💭
Clever
😀
Friendly
🎀
Gentle
🛟
Helpful
🤍
Honest
😂
Humorous
✨
Loyal
🌟
Optimistic
😉
Playful
😜
Quirky
✅
Reliable
🍬
Sweet
Feeling overwhelmed by so many different options to choose from? No worries! Let’s do a quick exercise to get your creative spark going. You can start by brainstorming all the different adjectives you relate to your brand and what type of traits your ideal customer would relate the most to.
Once you’ve got this list, select the 3 characteristics that align better with the brand’s purpose and values you established in the first step. There you got it, now you have your brand’s personality traits! 😀
➡️ What’s most important at this point is staying consistent with your selected set of adjectives as it will help you define your visual assets and messaging. By the way, this brings us to the next step on how to create a brand identity!
4. Create Your Visual Identity 🌟
By this point of our “How to Create a Brand Identity” guide, you already have a strong foundation of what your brand represents as a whole. Now, it’s time to bring it to life through stunning and unique visual assets! In this section, we’ll focus on designing your brand’s visual identity.
I. Designing Your Logo ®️
Your logo serves as a graphic representation of your brand’s values, personality, and essence. It takes a complex idea and transforms it into a simple, unique, and timeless design through a combination of text, images, colors, shapes, and typography. Along with your brand’s name, it is one of the most identifiable elements of your brand as it serves as a standalone emblem while also merging perfectly with your visual identity. ✨
From an Idea to a Design: The Mercedes Benz Logo 🚙
Onto the next of our brand identity examples! Today, the 3-point star logo design is a trademark for luxury, elegance, and prestige. And, this number is not random! It actually conveys a deeper meaning. Each point is meant to represent land, sea, and air, elements the company aspires to one day dominate through its engines.
Along with this design, there are tons of other brands whose logos represent their aspirations, identity, and purpose. Now, onto you! What’s your brand’s story? 🤩
Empower Your Creativity: Placeit’s Brand Logo Generator 🚀
Here comes the good news! With Placeit by Envato, you don’t have to design a logo from scratch. Our brand logo generator has tons of professionally made templates ready to be customized and downloaded instantly.
Explore our extensive library with logos for every industry and niche you want to tap into. Each design is specifically curated by our talented team to perfectly match your creative vision. Just take a look at some of our favorites! 🤩
💡Recommended Readings
II. Selecting a Color Palette 🎨
Colors play an important role in the type of message you want to communicate and how customers view your brand as each hue evokes different emotions. Your chosen branding color palette can help you boost brand recognition and awareness by consistently incorporating it into your logo, website, marketing materials, uniforms, and packaging, just to name a few examples. So, it’s best to choose wisely! 
Wondering how many branding colors your palette should have? To create a cohesive brand visual identity we recommend:
This color will work as the focal point for your brand and be more prominent throughout all marketing materials. As such, it should reflect your brand’s key personality trait.
Based on your main color, the accent color will act as a supplementary shade that pairs visually with it. You can either work with a contrasting or complementary option using the color wheel as a guide.
Your neutral color will serve as a backdrop for your more prominent shades to balance and harmonize the overall aesthetic of your designs. Typically, shades of white, grey, or beige are used for this option.
💙💧🔵 This brand template features Persian blue as the main color. This shade conveys a feeling of calmness, tranquility, and relaxation as it is often associated with natural elements such as water and the sky. Talk about relaxing while enjoying your favorite drink with this branding color palette!
Ignite Your Creative Spark With Colors by Placeit 🌈
Creating the perfect color palette doesn’t have to be a hassle. In fact, with Colors by Placeit, you can easily become an artsy guru and select the best branding colors for your business. From the delicate hues of pink to the vibrant vibes of yellow, we explain everything you need to know to choose the perfect match for your business. 😉
Splash into a world of color by diving into the meaning, psychology, and the best branding color palettes for every industry! 🌸☀️☘️
III. Picking a Typography ✏️
When thinking about how to create a brand identity that stands out, choosing a typography might not be at the top of your mind. Nevertheless, font pairings can determine the overall tone and meaning of your message by conveying different emotions.
From the classic, traditional look of a serif font to the stylish and elegant feel of a script font, each combination brings a different impression to your brand identity design. Moreover, they also impact your text’s readability and create a cohesive image for your business. ✍️
Now, let’s talk numbers! How many fonts should you pick out? Remember, less is more. So, as a rule of thumb, you should select between 2-3 typefaces:
🖊 1 for Headers
🖌 1 for Body Text
🖍1 for Accent Text
In this branding template, you can view a stunning combination of:
💙 Josefin Sans
💙 Syncopate
💙 Himalaya
Perfect Match: Spotify’s Typography Explained 🎵
Let’s uncover more brand identity examples! As one of the most popular music streaming spaces worldwide, Spotify has created a distinct brand identity that resonates with its more than 574 million active users. The logo’s famous typography is a custom-made font called Circular, which type designer Laurenz Brunner created.
💡 Learn more about Spotify’s brand identity design here.
Here’s a quick dive at why this geometric sans-serif font is the perfect match for Spotify:
This font was specifically created for digital screens as it provides optimal legibility across different sizes and resolutions.
It comes in different weights and styles which allows Spotify to maintain a cohesive visual identity throughout all its marketing materials, content, and platforms.
This design is meant to add a sense of movement and dynamism which goes with the brand’s attributes of being adaptable, diverse, quality-driven, warm, friendly, and human-centered.
Make Font-Tastic Combinations With Our Font Pairing Guide 🤩
As you can see, creating a brand identity extends to the type of font pairing you pick. After all, it’s about finding the right balance between functionality, aesthetics, and your brand’s (awesome!) personality. Want to discover the best combination for your brand? Create a font-tastic duo with “Font Pairing Made Easy: A Guide for Non-Designers”
IV. Complimenting With Photography, Illustrations & Graphic Elements 📸
Your brand identity design wouldn’t be complete without supporting assets such as:
🔺 Icons
🖼 Illustrations
📷 Photographies
😀 Emojis
This is particularly helpful if you’re aiming to diversify your content in the future and explore different ventures such as social media, marketing campaigns, or creating a website. As we’ve seen throughout this “How to Create a Brand Identity” guide, one of the most important aspects is to base your selection on what resonates with your brand’s purpose, values, and personality.
Branding Template Examples by Placeit 💙
Graphic Groove: How Slacks Aces the Branding Game 🎊
As a brand, Slack is on a mission to make people’s working lives simpler and more productive. So, how does this translate into their brand identity design? Let’s take a look at the shapes they use throughout their platform:
💡 Click here to uncover more about Slack’s brand identity design!
Let’s put on our detective glasses again! Notice how their brand shapes remain consistent throughout their website. You can either find them as containers, patterns, or backgrounds. Not only that, but their design aims to keep things simple, hence why they’re not combined into a single form.
Does that ring a bell? Yes, of course! It aligns seamlessly with the brand’s mission, which is why it works so well with its identity. As you can see in our million-dollar question “How to create a brand identity?” everything ties together when you have a clear foundation to work on. 😌
Elevate Your Branding With Placeit! 🤩
See a brand identity template you love? With Placeit, you can fully customize each design by changing the graphics and pictures with stunning, high-quality visuals that match your every need. Once in our editor, click on the “Edit” option and type specific keywords related to your brand, niche, industry, or theme for an enhanced search. For example, you can see how we used “Coffee-Shop” for brew-tiful results in these branding templates! 
5. Develop a Brand Voice & Tone 💬
Your brand’s voice will serve as a guideline for how your business should communicate with the audience. It covers not only the “what to say” query, but the “how to say it”. In line with this, your tone will influence the choice of words you pick, as well as the writing style you use to create your messaging.
As one of the last steps in our “How to Create a Brand Identity” step-by-step guide, it reflects all the aspects you previously defined, particularly your brand’s mission, target audience, and personality. Thus, when creating your voice and tone, keep in mind the 3 C’s of brand messaging:
✔️ Consistency. Ensure your brand’s voice remains cohesive across all communication channels. For instance: your email, social media, website, and blog.
💡Clarity. Communicate a clear, focused, and concise message that reflects your brand’s identity.
😀 Character. Keep it real! Customers want to feel they’re talking to a real person. So, interact, engage, and take notice of the type of language that resonates the most with them.
Pitch Perfect: Examples of Unique Brand Voices 😌
Playful, Friendly & Helpful
Fresh, Relevant & Interesting
Sassy, Edgy & Direct
6. Integrate Your Branding Across Your Business ✅
By this step of our “How to Create a Brand Identity” guide, you already have a strong foundation built and stunning design assets that tie together your visual identity. Now, it’s time to apply your branding throughout your communication channels and touchpoints to ensure a consistent and cohesive experience for your audience. We’re talking about:
📢 Advertising Materials
📦 Packaging & Product Labeling
👕 Storefront & Uniforms
🖨 Digital & Print Publications
By designing a brand identity that remains consistent in visual elements, messaging, and overall presentation, you establish a strong and unified business presence that resonates with your target audience, fostering loyalty and engagement over time.
🚀 With a Placeit subscription, you can access the largest mockup library online, plus 100,000+ exclusive designs, music, and photo assets ready for commercial usage.
Placeit’s Brand Kit: Everything Your Brand Needs in One Place ✨
Placeit’s Brand Kit streamlines the branding process and allows you to apply your visual identity to any template, mockup, or video with one simple click directly from our editor. Say goodbye to spending hours coming up with your next design! Creating a unique and cohesive image for your business has never been easier. ✨
How to Create Your Brand Kit With Placeit 💫
To get you started with your Brand Kit, you just need to sign up or log in to your account. Done? Let’s take a peek at how to create a brand identity with Placeit:
1. Head over to Placeit’s Brand Kit.
2. Begin by entering your brand’s name. Remember, you have up to 50 characters to work with!
3. Then, you’ll need to upload your logo. We recommend using a PNG, background-free format to apply it to different designs without compromising its quality.
4. Next, you’ll need to select your brand’s colors. With Placeit, you can choose up to 5 hues from our color grid or enter a specific HEX color code.
5. Now, it’s time to pick out your three fonts: one for your headers, one for your body text, and one that serves as an accent text. Placeit has more than 15,000 options to choose from to make font-tastic combinations!
6. Click on the “Save Brand” button at the top, right side of the page. Great! You’ve now created your first Brand Kit.
7. Now, every time you edit a design, you’ll have your brand identity design as the main suggestion when you click on the color, font, and graphic options.
Placeit’s Brand Kit ensures every material aligns with your brand’s guidelines to achieve a strong and consistent brand identity design. Ready to create your brand’s signature style? 🪄
Launch Your Brand With Placeit! 🚀️
There you got it! As we wrap up this guide, it becomes clear that your brand identity is the essence of your business. So, take the time to define what sets it apart and embrace its uniqueness. By investing time and effort into crafting a strong foundation, you set your way toward success.
The best thing is, you don’t have to do it all by yourself! With Placeit, learning how to create a brand identity becomes an exciting adventure. Empower your creative journey with the best branding templates, designs, features, tools, and resources at your fingertips. ✨
Now, the spotlight is on you! Are there any other branding-related topics you’d like us to tackle next? Drop a comment below and let us know! Till next time. 😀
🌟 If you’d like to learn more about brand identity design, feel free to check out our 15 Business Branding Trends To Live By in 2024 post!
