Brand, visual identity, or logo?

When you own a business, information is very important, because new discoveries can positively influence your path. It’s difficult to identify and assimilate everything that could be useful to you, but even if you can’t have a complete vision, you must make sure you cover the basics. Brand, visual identity, and logo are three essential elements of building credibility in the business environment, but because they overlap to some extent, it’s important to differentiate them.

How is a brand built?

Present in legal terms as a “registered trademark”, the term “brand” was taken from the English language and translates to “marking with a red-hot iron” or “stamping a symbol”, to establish ownership. Nowadays, business owners try to distinguish their enterprises, products, and services from those of competitors, and this effort gives rise to a communication process through which attributes, attitudes, and emotions regarding the enterprise itself or its products are transmitted to the customer. Completed by the perception of those who come into contact with it, this process becomes a brand.

Never say that logo = brand. The brand encompasses everything related to visual identity and logo, but also people’s perception of that brand. The brand helps to differentiate from the competition and enables faster identification of the product, service, or organization; it facilitates communication and represents a guarantee of quality. The consumer has more trust in a known brand and feels comfortable repeating the interaction, thus forming a bond. This bond represents the target of any organization, because its existence leads to an increase in the value of intangible assets—the most important aspect of modern business—recording higher values for many of today’s most famous companies than those of fixed assets.

What is visual identity made of?

Visual identity is created through a set of tools that follow the same guidelines and directions, established to create a unified image across all materials that come into contact with the internal and external environment of a company. This is usually achieved through similar fonts, color palettes, measurements, and layouts. Visual identity is built from all the visual elements that represent the business, the most significant of which are:

• logo: the symbol

• identity materials: letterheads, business cards, envelopes

• flyers, brochures, books

• websites

• products and packaging

• textile printing: t-shirts, caps, uniforms

• interior and exterior design

• other forms of communication (visual, auditory)

The role is to indirectly provide clues regarding the company’s credibility and to establish a positive relationship with the consumer. This process is similar to relationships between people, where the first impression can negatively or positively influence all subsequent contacts between the protagonists.

Last, but not least: the logo

The logo is the most important tool of visual identity. The entire identity of the brand is concentrated in this graphic representation, which aims to transmit deep information in an efficiently concentrated manner. Whether it is a plant, an animal, or an object, the logo is present in all materials that make up the visual identity, being the primary factor based on which differentiation is made. Its importance is obvious because a well-crafted logo can attract customers, whereas one lacking originality, superficial, or even in bad taste, can place the represented subject in a gray or even disagreeable zone.

Consequently, the brand represents the overall image of an organization, product, service, person, or event, perceived emotionally, intellectually, and sensorially, to which the visual identity contributes, its primary element being the logo.