If you are looking to start or update your brand, you may want to begin with a few basics.
It can be super daunting as the client, if I blurb out brand terms that you’re not familiar with. You’ve heard the word “LOGO” used in about a thousand different contexts and in reference to different things and right about now you’re probably thinking that it’s the same as a ‘brand’, right?…..NO.
You think you need a logo but you might need a brand identity as well, then people keep talking about having ‘guidelines’ and it’s all just a bit much!
1. Brand Assets
Elements that part of your brand identity; they are anything created that helps identify your company to potential customers.
2. Guidelines
Your Brand Guidelines outline all .the ‘rules’ associated with your brand in a single document. Guidelines ensure complete uniformity in style and formatting wherever the brand is used. Covering topics such as: brand colours, tone of voice, font usages, brand logo designs and brand standards.
3. Logotype
A font-based only types of logo, usually focused on the company name.
4. Brandmark
A type of symbol logo. A mark that represents your business/brand but not literally.
5. Brand Board
A brand board is a visual reference of your brand identity, providing an at-a-glance summary of the look and feel of your brand. A brand board is made of all the graphical elements created for your brand, and usually includes: logo design, colour palette, brand typography, logo variations, illustrated elements, brand textures and associated patterns.
6. Illustrated Elements
They can be from digital icons or hand-drawn illustrations, and are the visual components to a brand identity, generally representing the brand’s values or services/products. Illustrated elements should be a complementary part of the overall framework of a brand, and used as supporting assets to the overall brand message or call-to-action.
7. Resolution
The resolution of an image determines the quality. As a rule of thumb, the higher the resolution, the higher the quality. A high-resolution image will be clear and crisp whereas a low-resolution image will appear pixelated and blurry.
8. CMYK
CMYK or ‘Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (Black)’ are the colours used in the printing process. A printing press uses dots of ink to make up the image from these four colours.
9. Typography
Typography is the strategic arrangement of type in order to make written language readable and visually appealing.
10. Tagline
Taglines usually accompany a company’s logo, and is a condensed version of the company’s slogan used in marketing campaigns of a business to sum up the value of a brand or its products and create a positive brand impression.
Now you’re ready to discover your branding journey and get excited about the design process. Have fun and feel free to bookmark this page or download the Resource Sheet to always have the most essential branding terms at hand for reference! If there are any other words you’ve heard of but just get utterly confused, drop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to explain them to you.
Let me know if you find posts like this useful in the comments and I’m happy to share more fundamental content aimed to help move your branding forward! If you need further help with discovering your brand's voice, feel free to send me an email or drop me a DM on Instagram 👉 @cindycheung.designer.
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