A visual identity is much more than a bunch of colors and shapes. It’s the emotional setup for your brand’s life in the world.

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This is the fifth article in a series describing Sublimio’s approach to branding projects. In case you haven’t read the previous one about the logo design phase, you can find it here.
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The visual identity of a brand is as crucial to its perception as it is impalpable – or at least that’s how we see it. We tend to steer clear of flashy, self-important visual identities, but rather prefer them to look natural and well-integrated with the world around them.

While naming and logo are heated moments that define the brand’s core, designing a visual identity is a somewhat quieter moment in the process. But it goes deep.

From strategy to identity: finding a visual voice

If you have read our previous articles from the series, you will know by now that we believe in eliciting a visceral reaction. Less of the head, more of the heart (or guts, if you prefer).

This also applies – especially applies – to visual identity. It’s hard to pin down visual identity to a few elements: sure, palette and typography, but we are dealing with a more pervasive concept. The objective of a visual identity is to both make the brand recognizable (which is quite straightforward) and to set the right tone for its interaction with the customer.

And this brings us back to our brand strategy. That’s where we define how we want our audience to see us and what we want them to feel when they see or buy the brand. Those pillars have to be very clear when we are designing the visual identity of a brand. 

Fixating too much on pure formal consistency will make a visual identity look stiff and miss a focal point: a visual identity is a living thing.

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The fundamentals: colors and typography

While a visual identity is made of many things, two of its components are usually top priorities, both because they are so pervasive in brand communication and because they provoke such genuine emotional responses: color and typography.

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Color
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You could write a book about color in visual identity – and we might just write a whole post about it – but this is really a key topic.

The first might be an art director’s obsession, but trust us on this. Nuances matter. Some people are more capable of perceiving them than others, but most people will instantly recognize a Ferrari red and see its difference from a Netflix red.

The point is, that it’s quite hard to appreciate such nuances in a visual identity presentation. There are many possible complications: media limitations (eg. printing quality or screen color space) but also contextual ones (how does that hue compare to similar but different ones? How does it behave in the open?). Make sure you take time to review the palette and understand it.

‎The other thing is weight. A palette is not just a series of colors: how the colors are used matters, too. If your brand is always anthracite on the outside and bright orange on the inside (imagine a shopping bag) it’s quite different than if it was the opposite.

Or if your brand is mostly green with small yellow accents, it’s not the same as having both colors equally important. We always define relative weights and provide some real-world examples. Make sure you take that into account.

We won’t state the obvious by saying that colors are culturally connotated, but don’t stop at macro global differences (eg white being a mourning color in some parts of the world). Think more anthropologically, even at a local level. White might mean different things to a young trap–lover, a construction worker, or a foodie.

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Typography
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Typography is another wide world (and it deserves its own post).

Typefaces have a strong impact on how we perceive a brand, they are its visual tone of voice, so to speak.

Picking fonts is a big responsibility: you want to make sure they both have the right mood and meaning and they work well in real-world applications. Being expressive without being fancy or superficial is the real challenge here. We usually provide our clients with a small family of typefaces, meant for long-term performance.

What we read in fonts is also deeply culture-coded, so the same letters might mean different things to a 65-year-old man and a festival-loving kid.

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Brand devices beyond the logo

The logo we have designed carries many cues to the visual identity. And of course, the visual identity should feel coherent with the logo.

But the logo shouldn’t feel like a cage. After all, a logo can only do and express so much. It sets the general tone of the brand, but many of the interactions with our audience might happen without it.

When designing a visual identity, we give ourselves the freedom to explore adjacent territories to that of the logo, incorporate new elements and ultimately give the brand a broader language. 

You can probably think of a few brands that are recognized for something that is not their logo. A brand device, in other words. It could be anything: a shape, a character, a pattern, a monogram. 

Brand devices, with their subtlety, are sometimes even more important than the logo in establishing a relationship with the customer, because they create a shared language and because they can be used more widely without making you look like an F1 car with all its sponsors.

Brand devices are entirely new creative objects, they are not just spin-offs. They require careful consideration: why are we creating them? Where will they live? The great thing about brand devices is that if they ever tire out, it’s easier to phase them out than a logo.

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Caring about tiny things

Most importantly, for us at Sublimio visual identity is about reality. All the visual devices we set up need to get to work, and we make sure our clients can see that.

Most patterns will look good on a screen, but – just like we wrote about the logo – they need to perform in the real world.

Can you spot that pattern inside a shopping bag? Does that color stand out on a rainy day? Will that character bring joy or scare kids?

Visual identity is what gives the brand a body to exist out there. Better make it right.