The Importance of a Strong Corporate Identity

What is a corporate identity?

A corporate identity is the image your business presents to the world. It expresses your brand’s personality and sets you apart from the competition.

Whether you know it or not, you already have a corporate identity. This is the way your business is currently seen by your customers and potential clients.

The question is whether you want to leave it to chance or if you want to shape it to support your business objectives and present yourself in a professional manner.

Proactively building a corporate identity of visual and design elements, including your logo, colours, typography and tone will help to shape your brand and the impression you create with clients, employees and investors.

Build a corporate persona

To stand out from competitors, every company needs to have a good brand image. Your corporate identity needs to leave an impression of your brand in the client’s mind with a unique and pleasing appearance. You also want your brand to be instantly recognisable and remembered.

The aspects covered by your corporate identity include stationery, social media assets, advertising, staff uniforms, signage, product packaging and more. Basically everything that pertains to your image and the impression you make.

Elements that make up a corporate identity

Logo

A logo is arguably the most important part of you corporate identity as it is your company’s emblem and image. It should be clear and simple enough to identify at lower resolutions or smaller sizes such as favicons or a profile image on social media.

Typography

Typography is more than just choosing a font that looks nice. Your type needs to communicate your persona as well as work with your logo. Limit the number of font families to 2 – 3.

Colour palette

A good colour palette is clean and flexible, allowing designers with enough choices to be creative, but not too many to overwhelm.

Icons

An icon is a graphic representation of something bigger and more complex. It should summarise a topic or an idea into a simple recognisable graphic.

Icons are an important part of your CI as they are the first visual element after the logo that convey the tone of your business. The icons used should therefore compliment your brand’s identity.

Images

Images can be in the form of photography, illustrations or video. The images need to portray your brand and attract your target market. The style of illustrations also needs to be consistent so that your brand remains recognisable.

Advantages of a strong corporate identity

• Show that you are an established company
• Attract new clients
• Stand out in your industry
• Describe your company and what you do or what you are about
• Helps you gain trust
• Can help with lead generation

Your CI is the look and feel of your brand. In order to address all potential impressions, a style and usage guide can be implemented to ensure a consistent look and feel so that you positively portray your company’s personality and values.

Your corporate identity should help increase the level of control you have over your brand and image.

Need help with your corporate identity?

We’ve prepared corporate identity manuals for many of our clients and will be happy to assist you. Please feel free to contact us or visit our home and services pages for more information about us and what we do.

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