What is Corporate Branding And How is it Done?

Just Creative Designs
8 min readDec 11, 2020

Corporate branding refers to promoting a brand name of a corporate organization, instead of specific products or services.

Corporate Branding

Corporate branding is a complex term it refers to all marketing efforts of an organization and their relation with each other. It can be termed to involves promoting a brand name of a corporate organization, instead of specific products or services.

Corporate branding is how a corporation presents itself to the world and to its members as well. The key strategy should answer the Who We Are question.

Difference between Brand Identity and Corporate Identity

Brand identity refers to the visual parts of a brand that will distinguish or separate it from others to consumers and stake holders. This includes, Logo, Brand Colors, Design.

A corporate identity refers to the activities a corporation undertakes internally to shape its general view or perception

How to build a powerful Corporate brand?

When developing a corporate brand, you need to verify:

  • What is your brand all about?
  • Product and services you offer
  • Solutions your organization products and services you provide
  • Who are you targeting?
  • Why should people choose your brand over others?
  • What do you promise to offer?

After answering these questions carefully you can move forward and do some homework which includes:

  • Identify anything wrong in your business
  • Build clear and convincing brand message
  • Work on your business’ visibility, get a professional website
  • Design a nice professional logo that best represents your business
  • Develop a good brand identity

Although the business should evolve, having your initial motivations and plans clear upfront will give you a strong foundation and ensure that you build the business you dreamed.

Where to Start when building a corporate identity.

Before you start to look at where you want to get to, you’ll want to work out where you are today. Take the time to do some research to answer questions like:

  • What do your existing customers and employees think?
  • Which impression does the company materials give?

You may find some really positive feedback and keywords that you’ll want to keep but you may also find areas of improvement. Use the positive and negative input to build your corporate identity for the future. Find out everything you can about your client/or your own business before getting started with the corporate identity.

Find out where you are

Looking ahead like this will help to ensure that the identity you’re developing now will not only be relevant in years to come but will even help you get there.

Build clear and convincing brand message

You know where you’ve come from, where you are today and where you want to get to; you know what your competitors are up to; and you’re now ready to craft your very own corporate identity! both the design aspects and the culture and personality side of things.

  • Study how to develop your branding strategy it will take you through the important elements of your purpose, core values, your brand personality and your position.
  • Research about developing your brand identity this shows the details of your brand design i.e typography, color palette and form as well as how these will be brought to life in your logo, website, business cards, etc.
  • Learn more about coming up with a brand style guide this is where you’ll keep track of all those items of your brand identity in one handy reference document.

When you’re a small company with just one brand, your company will successfully be based just on that one brand. There may be differences between how you present your brand to your clients and how you present your company to investors and other corporate; however the process is the same!

Develop your Corporate Identity

Brand identity is the face of a brand. it is an visual and emotional and even philosophical concept, and is therefore important to start with.

It is also the visual component of a brand that represents the large ideas.

Brand identity includes logos, typography, colors, packaging, and messaging, and it acclaims and reinforces the existing reputation of a brand. Brand identity attracts new clients to a brand while making existing customers feel at home. It’s both outward- and inward.

It’s vital that brand identity be consistent. Because it’s representing and reinforcing the emotions of a brand, the message portrayed by its needs to be clear, and it needs to be the same no matter where it’s displayed.

For this part, you will need to hire the services of a professional Brand Designer.

Elements of a Good Brand Identity

Below is an overview of key designs you need to create a brand identity that is strong, consistent and attractive. I have put a link to my recommendations of freelancers offering the services, but if you want to interview more, i have added a search box above. Just type the name of the service.

Clear brand purpose and positioning.

Determine what your purpose and positioning is.

Brand purpose is the reason for the brand existence. Brand positioning is the naming of who is benefiting from your product and why your product is a better option than that of the competitors.

Defining these will inform your strategy as you create logo, decide on a color pallet etc. Brand positioning is the process of making the purpose actionable. By naming your target customer and differentiating yourself from the competition, you lay the groundwork for your brand to accomplish your purpose.

Brand Positioning Professionals

Through Market Research

A brand’s purpose and positioning can be known, at least in part, by market and buyer research. To comprehend the cultural tension described in the previous section, research is critical.

One of the best ways to conduct market research is to simply talk to people. Phone interviews allow for detailed discussions and place a helpful emphasis on the human element of research — an element that’s essential if you want to make an emotional appeal to customers.

Beyond phone interviews, online survey tools, government resources are a powerful tool.

One of the best ways to conduct market research is to simply talk to people. Phone interviews allow for detailed discussions and place a helpful emphasis on the human element of research — an element that’s essential if you want to make an emotional appeal to customers.

Online Market Researchers

Likable brand personality

Brand personality is an important thing to consider. It will come through in every part of your brand identity if you get it right. Brand personality has a huge iimpression on the voice and tone used in your marketing materials and other communications. If a personality isn’t established, customers will get mixed messages and have trouble connecting with your brand.

If you’re having a hard time getting started, here’s an exercise to try: Which celebrities best represent your brand? Is there a media personality, musician, or public personality that embodies the same traits as your brand? This could be a good starting point for nailing down different aspects of your brand’s personality. After listing the attributes of the kind of person your brand would be, brand your personality into a single statement.

Graphic Design Services

Brand Identity Designers

Memorable Logo Design

Your logo is primary to your brand identity design. It’s the piece of your brand identity that will be displayed to people the most. It needs to match with all the other elements of your brand identity, as well as the wider emotional appeal of your brand

To expand your chances of having a memorable logo that inspires a strong emotional response, go for a simple look. When a logo is simple, it becomes an open canvas clients can fill with positive experiences they have with the brand. Also, the simpler the logo, the easier it is to scale between mediums such as digital advertising and the more traditional print advertising such as flyers or brochures.

The final thing to consider when designing a brand logo is all the places it could possibly be displayed. A logo needs to be pliable enough to look great on a huge billboard or as a social media icon. Simplicity is helpful here as well.

By: Ingeniousarts

Attractive color palette

Color palette should be simple with only 1 to 3 primary colors. Knowing a bit about the emotions conveyed by certain colors can help you select the right ones.

A lot of color psychology is intuitive, like blue expressing calm and red and yellow expressing passion and energy. Depending on the tint or shade of a color you use, that response can be adjusted. A tint is the color mixed with white, making it lighter, and a shade is the color mixed with black, making it darker. A lighter tint of blue conveys tranquility, while a darker shade of blue often conveys trust, an effect that many banks use in their color schemes.

Professional typography

Finding the right font might be stressful, but you will come out ahead when you pick a font that works in harmony with your logo and colors.

Fonts are powerful. The popular fonts are recognizable even when taken out of context. You’ll want a single primary typeface to lead your brand design, and it should work well with your logo and your color palette. It should also, like your logo and your color palette, be simple. Below are simple don’ts when using typography

  • Don’t avoid default fonts. They’re readable, and you can set the typeface differently if you want it to stand out.
  • Don’t mix more than two font families at a time.
  • Do mix two or more fonts that are contrasting (such as a serif and a sans-serif).
  • Choose the right font size and line length for legibility.
  • Don’t use all-caps to emphasize text.
  • On-brand supporting graphics

New Visual Assets by Google

Since we live in a multimedia world, the final step in creating a brand identity is an extended visual language with supporting graphics, design assets, icons and photographs.

Take a look at Google’s Visual Assets Guidelines to see how they carefully explain their take on icon design. Because of Google’s close attention to their increased visual language, when you see a Google icon, you know it’s a Google icon. Check out Google’s new logos are bad

Creating a brand guide that addresses multiple elements of brand design will help streamline the production of ad materials in the future.

This ensures that every email newsletter, social media post, or promotional pamphlet adheres to the same familiar standards.

Develop a good brand identity

A brand guideline will provide a reference point for all information about your Corporate an Brand Identity in one printable document or book.

Brand Guideline Designers

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Denis Maina is a Professional Graphic Designer eager to gain and share knowledge and experience in Branding and Graphic design. This article was originally posted at https://justcreativedesigns.com/

Affiliate Disclosure: The article contains Amazon affiliate links for the products you will need to use

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Just Creative Designs

A Professional Graphic Designer eager to gain and share knowledge and experience in Branding and Graphic design. https://justkreativedesigns.com