Answers

What Does a Brand Identity Include?

Every brand needs three core elements as a basic identity: logo, color palette, and typography. These form the foundation of your visual communication toolkit.
If you create a wider variety of content or plan to expand, you may design additional elements, including photography, illustration, iconography, and data visualization to express your brand across different mediums and applications.
When building a brand identity, you’re essentially creating a toolbox of visual and verbal elements that help you communicate effectively across all touchpoints. Start with the core elements and build out additional components as your content needs grow and evolve. This systematic approach helps maintain brand integrity, whether you’re creating a website, social media content, or sales materials.

Why Do You Need a Brand Identity?

In today’s competitive landscape, a strong brand identity is mandatory for business success. A strong brand identity is not about making pretty packaging—it’s about communicating your brand story effectively. Design is a powerful tool that transforms how people interact with your brand in three critical ways:
- Differentiation (helping you stand out in crowded marketplaces)
- Connection (making it easier for people to engage and join your community)
- Experience (creating consistent, cohesive brand experiences across all touchpoints)
Brand identity serves as the visual and verbal foundation for all your marketing efforts. From your website and social media to your sales brochures and product packaging, every piece of content reflects your brand. A cohesive identity ensures that every interaction reinforces your brand story, builds recognition, and creates the consistent experiences that foster trust and loyalty with your audience.

What Makes a Strong Brand Identity?

A strong brand identity must work for everyone—both your internal team (brand ambassadors, content creators) and the people who interact with it (customers).
Six key characteristics define a strong brand identity:
- Distinct (stands out among competitors)
- Memorable (makes visual impact like Apple’s logo-only products)
- Scalable (grows with your brand)
- Flexible (works across multiple applications from web to print)
- Cohesive (each element complements the others)
- Easy to apply (intuitive and clear for designers to use consistently)
Success comes from aligning your visual presentation with your brand strategy and ensuring every element works together to tell your authentic brand story.

How do you build a brand identity?

A brand identity should be a comprehensive and flexible set of tools to help you communicate visually across all channels. These are the key steps to build a solid brand identity.

Step 1: Know your brand foundation, including brand heart, brand name, brand essence, and messaging.
Step 2: Assess your current identity to identify any gaps or misalignment.
Step 3: Audit your competition to identify ways to stand out.
Step 4: Choose a visual direction.
Step 5: Write a branding brief.
Step 6: Design your logo.
Step 7: Choose your color palette.
Step 8: Choose your typography.
Step 9: Design additional elements, including photography, illustration, iconography, data visualization, etc.
Step 10: Build your brand guidelines to help content creators apply them correctly.

How Do I Choose a Brand Name?

To choose a strong brand name, follow this five-step process:
- Articulate your Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values) to understand who you are.
- Identify your differentiators through competitive analysis.
- Brainstorm 15-20 names across different categories (founder, descriptive, fabricated, metaphor, acronym, magic spell).
- Vet frontrunners through trademark searches and legal review.
Your brand name should be meaningful (communicates brand essence), distinctive (memorable and unique), accessible (easy to say and spell), protectable (trademarkable with available domain), future-proof (grows with company), and visual (translatable through design).
Pro tip: Test your top three names with target customers using branded landing pages or ads.

How Do I Write a Tagline?

A tagline is a short phrase that captures your brand essence, personality, and positioning while distinguishing you from competitors.
Follow this four-step process to write a tagline:
- Write a paragraph explaining who you are and what you do.
- Condense that into one or two lines, focusing on emotional hooks and brand benefits.
- Tighten and polish further while using succinct, exciting language.
- Test your top options with customers and employees to see what resonates.
Before writing, ensure you have clarity on your Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values) since your tagline is an extension of these core principles.

What Team Do You Need to Build Your Brand Strategy?

There are six essential roles needed to build a successful brand strategy:
- Chief Brand Officer: Ultimate brand-keeper who shepherds the brand and bridges business strategy
- Chief Marketing Officer: Crafts marketing strategy and oversees content creation
- Creative Director: Monitors content quality and enforces brand guidelines
- People Ops Rep: Culture ambassador who integrates brand values into company organization
- Brand Analyst: Translates strategy into metrics and provides insights
- Communications Lead: Documents information and educates team members

Multiple roles can be filled by the same person, but you need to make sure that every area is covered. As a team, the goal is to align business to brand goals, promote the brand, cultivate culture, preserve identity, and share knowledge

Why Do You Need a Brand Strategy?

A brand strategy helps you:
- Define your purpose to attract value-aligned customers
- Build trust through consistent experiences
- Differentiate your brand from competitors
- Improve team collaboration
- Cultivate better company culture
- Foster innovation
- Ensure sustainable growth
Without a brand strategy, businesses suffer from misaligned organizations, chaotic marketing departments, siloed communication, messaging inconsistency, and inefficient resource use. When you don’t know who you are or what you’re trying to achieve, everything from customer communication to employee retention suffers.

What Is a Brand Strategy?

A brand strategy is “a plan for the systematic development of brand in alignment with a business strategy.” It helps you understand who you are and acts as a blueprint to help you communicate it consistently and authentically across all touchpoints.
A comprehensive brand strategy includes three core components:
- Brand Heart: Your purpose, vision, mission, and values (why you exist and what you believe)
- Brand Messaging: Your voice, personality, tagline, and value proposition (how you talk about who you are)
- Visual Identity: Your logo, colors, typography, and imagery (how you present yourself visually)
A strong brand strategy aligns your beliefs and actions to create cohesive brand experiences that build trust and long-term relationships.

What Is a Brand?

A brand is not just a logo or physical mark. It’s an emotional experience that’s strengthened or weakened through every interaction with a business. A brand is what people think, feel, and say about your business (which differs from marketing, which is what you say about your business).
A strong brand is built through three core attributes that shape people’s perceptions:
- What you stand for: Your purpose, vision, mission, and values
- How you communicate: Your voice, personality, and messaging
- What you look like: Your logo, colors, fonts, and visual identity
Building a strong brand requires delivering positive and consistent emotional experiences that cultivate trust. This emotional connection is what compels people to choose you over competitors and return to your brand repeatedly, creating the familiar feeling that drives brand loyalty.

How to Build a Brand Strategy

A brand strategy includes three key phases:

Phase 1: Find Your Brand Heart
- Purpose: Why do we exist?
- Vision: What future do we want to help create? What does the future look like?
- Mission: What are we here to do? How do we create that future?
- Values: What principles guide our behavior?
Phase 2: Articulate Your Messaging
- Create Your Brand Essence
- Identify your personality
- Identify your brand voice
- Identify your tone
- Create Your Brand Messaging
- Articulate your value prop
- Distill your tagline
- Identify your messaging pillars
Phase 3: Design Your Visual Identity
- Logo
- Typography
- Colors
- Imagery

Read more → How to Create a Brand Strategy

How to Create a Content Strategy

A comprehensive content strategy contains three phases:

Phase 1: Discovery
- Step 1: Review Your Business Goals
- Step 2: Do a Content Audit
- Step 3: Review Your Tech Stack
Phase 2: Planning
- Step 4: Document Your Content Strategy Goals
- Step 5: Identify Your Personas
- Step 6: Map Your Customer Journey
- Step 7: Determine Your Measurement Approach
- Step 8: Choose Your Channel Mix
- Step 9: Create Your Content Pipeline
- Step 10: Assign Workflow & Governance
- Step 11: Know Your Tools
Phase 3: Creative
- Step 12: Brainstorm Campaigns
- Step 13: Build Your Editorial Calendar