Visual identity
Content and brand
Content and brand
Your visual identity is the fixed visual system of your brand: logo, colours, typography, image style, shapes and how you combine them.
A visual identity is more than a logo. It is a set of agreements that makes a quote, an ad, your website and your van feel like the same brand. That recognisability is not cosmetic: people remember what they see repeatedly in the same form.
Usually it is captured as a logo with variants, a colour palette with codes for screen and print, one or two typefaces with their licences, guidelines for photography or illustration, and examples of applications. Together with tone of voice this often lives in a brand book.
The practical test is not whether it looks good, but whether others can use it. An identity only the designer understands falls apart within a year, as soon as colleagues start making their own decks and posts.
Tip
Base your visual identity on recognisability and usability, not on today's taste. That way it lasts for years and still works small, in black and white and on a building.
Related terms
- Brand identityBrand identity is how your brand looks, sounds and behaves: logo, colours, typography, imagery, language and how you treat customers.
- LogoA logo is the mark of your brand: a wordmark, a symbol or a combination, meant to make you recognisable at a glance.
- Brand bookA brand book documents how your brand must be used: logo, colours, typography, imagery, tone of voice and examples of right and wrong.
- FontA font is the typeface your text is displayed in: the shapes of letters, numbers and symbols, in various weights and styles.
- Tone of voiceTone of voice is how your brand writes and speaks: word choice, form of address, sentence length and what you deliberately don't say.