Brand Identity Essentials: 100 Principles for Designing Logos and Building Brands

By Kevin Budelmann and Yang Kim

Introduction

As people make choices in their personal and public lives, they seek meaningful experiences. A brand is
a way for them to encapsulate and describe these things, often in a commercial context. A cynic may view
branding as deception, but power in the right hands can yield positive results with a cultural impact—from
the biggest ideas to the smallest details.

Despite everything that’s been written about brands, many are forgettable. In this second edition of Brand
Identity Essentials, we present even more ideas for building strong brands. You may know a great brand
when you see it, but brand builders often lack the vocabulary and tools to improve. Making a brand great
is easier said than done.

This book is a guide for people who build brands: leaders, managers, and makers. The pages that follow
explore the elements of brand identity, a much-referenced but often elusive topic for people who make
day-to-day decisions about tactics, tools, and teams. This book addresses what can seem like fuzzy and
subjective topics, connecting business to creativity and strategy to execution. It is also for learners and
educators, serving as a course curriculum to teach and learn about brand building. Educators and course
designers may find this book helpful in developing assignments for the classroom. Students may find the
content helpful in making connections and filling gaps.

We hope that all manner of learners and professionals find this book helpful as their work adds to the
cultural narrative of brand building.

Brands and Beliefs

It seems like everyone has an opinion about brands. We all believe we know what branding is, yet there
are many different definitions and interpretations. Businesses consider brand development as part of a
marketing plan, a way to package products and services. The news media understands branding as

a tool of persuasion, public relations, or a way to reframe an argument. Is it an estate tax or death tax?
And yet no one wants to be “branded.” After all, the word originated with ranchers forcibly tattooing
livestock to keep track of them. We don’t want to see ourselves as part of the herd; we like to see
ourselves making individual choices.

People love brands—and love to hate brands. That can be okay; brands are like magnets. The strength of
a brand can be measured by its magnetic attraction to the people it serves. So, it’s better for a brand to be
hated than forgotten. In fact, given all of the decisions that go into building a strong brand, it’s nearly
impossible to generate brand love without also generating some hate. Savvy brand builders know what
makes people feel passionate and why brands attract some people and push others away.

Brands are about choices and the people who make them. Brands are like tribes or clubs, a way of
defining and demonstrating our values and beliefs. We align ourselves with brands that express our point
of view. In doing so, we align ourselves with others who feel the same way. We’re social animals and long
to be part of a group. As a default, historical groups like religious affiliations mean less to people, and
many seek to build new tribes that reflect their aspirations and beliefs. People opt in—sometimes, all in—
with stickers on their laptops or cars, logos on their clothing, and tattoos on their bodies. A logo can be a
cultural symbol. The identity of a brand reflects the personal identity of its participants.

Brands are about gaining trust through experience. Earning trust is a long, slow process. Trust is easy to
lose and hard to gain back. Do we trust our politicians? Big business? Social media platforms? How did
we lose trust? What would have to happen for us to trust again? The identity of a brand, as with a person,
begins and ends with experience. Keeping our promises creates a positive perception.

Building Brands

When building a brand, think of an iceberg in which only the tip is visible. Most of what makes up a
complete iceberg exists below the waterline. The same is true for brands. The parts we see are the most
celebrated and understood—and if you don’t watch where you’re going, the most dangerous. That’s why
so often brands are equated with logos. Even though it’s the most identifiable expression of the brand, a
logo is not a brand. A logo is a symbol of a brand.

Brand building can be broken into two primary endeavors: brand meaning and brand experience. Brand
meaning is a key question involving positioning—making strategic choices about audiences and
promises. Brand identity is about perception, what people think, and what you might want them to think.
Brand perception is the net result of customer experiences. The difficult truth is that your brand perception
can be defined by your weakest link. Branding means being intentional and making choices that build
your desired identity.

People make decisions every day on behalf of the organizations they represent. These seemingly small
decisions result in ways customers interact and think about a brand. Too often, these decisions don’t add
up to a cohesive whole. Moreover, the mosaic of customer interactions can result in a brand experience
that does not reflect your intended brand meaning. We don’t always do what we say.

The work of brand building involves making strategic and tactical choices that affect customer perception
and experience. Some decisions are easy to see, like the tip of an iceberg, but many are hiding and can
have an even greater impact. The aim is to think about the problem of brand building holistically, noting
how all the parts and pieces work together to achieve a cumulative effect.

Brand building is a journey, not a one-time event. It takes patience and practice. It requires decision
making, discipline, trial and error, measuring, learning, and course correction. Working systemically
doesn’t guarantee success, but it can increase your odds of building a strong brand.

Brand Identity Framework

Real life is messy. It can be hard to know where to begin to address the complexity of a customer
experience, but a recipe can help. We’ve built a model for thinking about brand building that can help you
make decisions and create systems. The Brand Identity Framework is a reference to help guide the
everyday decisions brand builders make on their journey.

The Brand Identity Framework features two dimensions of brand building and management: brand levers
and brand actions. Brand levers are themes that can be a reference point for brand builders and project
teams. They offer a vocabulary and dials that can be tuned to create the desired effect. Brand actions
represent how much and what kind of pressure you mean to apply to each lever. Together, they provide a
way to think about
and collaborate on brand decision making. The majority of this book is dedicated to exploring each brand
lever by each level of brand action, breaking the problem into 100 digestible parts, with examples of work
to illustrate the point and inspire brand teams.

We hope the frameworks and examples in Brand Identity Essentials help make brand-building feel less
mysterious, less esoteric, and more actionable. We aim to increase understanding of brand concepts and
help brand builders succeed in the messy, powerful, important work of brand building.