Week 3 EOC - Chapter 4 - Building Your Online Brand

"Customer loyalty is really built on branding and on building relationship, and those two go together.

You have to build this bond with your customers and prospects. You have to build a relationship with them, but at the same time, part of building that relationship is maintaining a consistent them, identity, and message. That's really what branding is about.

Branding is about communicating a message." (Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, Mitch Meyerson, pg32)

Many people believe a brand only consists of a few elements – some colors, some fonts, a logo, a slogan and maybe some music added in too all wrapped up in a Logo. In reality, it is much more complicated than that. You might say that a brand is a "corporate" that is shaped by the perceptions of the audience. On that note, it should also be stated that a designer cannot “make” a brand – only the audience can do this. A designer only forms the foundation of the brand.

The fundamental idea and core concept behind having a ‘corporate image’ is that everything a company does, everything it owns and everything it produces should reflect the values and aims of the business as a whole. It is the consistency of this core idea that makes up the company, driving it, showing what it stands for, what it believes in and why they exist. It is not purely some colors, some typefaces, a logo and a slogan.

These other elements only identify a "brand" or "corporate image. Identity design is based around the visual devices used within a company, usually assembled within a set of guidelines. These guidelines that make up an identity usually administer how the identity is applied throughout a variety of mediums, using approved color palettes, fonts, layouts, measurements and so forth. These guidelines ensure that the identity of the company is kept coherent, which in turn, allows the brand as a whole, to be recognizable.

The logo is the corporate identity and brand all wrapped up into one identifiable mark. This mark is the avatar and symbol of the business as a whole. A logo is for identification.

A logo identifies a company or product via the use of a mark, flag, symbol or signature. A logo does not sell the company directly nor rarely does it describe a business. Logos derive their meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around – logos are there to identity, not to explain. What a logo means is more important than what it looks like. It is also important to note that only after a logo becomes familiar, does it function the way it is intended to do. (Branding, Identity & Logo Design Explained , Just Creative Design Blog)