How to develop a consistent brand and corporate identity for your business.
Table of Contents
Why is branding important?
Branding makes all your output instantly recognisable as belonging to your project. Your brand should reflect the overall objectives and values of your research.
The first use of a brand was just that – a mark of ownership on cattle. Later, trademarks were used to define individual products.
The red triangle of BASS, the first trademark registered in England, was designed to help the illiterate drinker recognise Mr William Bass’s Fine India Pale Ale from other inferior products available at the time.
An article in the Financial Times described a brand as something that ‘exists in the collective mind of the consumer’.
Wally Olins, a leading authority on branding, defines it as an organisation’s ‘personality‘. Others have said that: ‘The brand is the promise that you make to your customer‘.
Develop a consistent brand
Creating a unique brand for your project is a valuable opportunity to establish a distinct identity for your work.
It is worth spending some time thinking about it well before you have to produce the initial materials.
Your brand will usually be conveyed by one or more of:
- your project name
- a ‘strapline’ or one-line description of the project
- a logo or visual mark
- the application of your brand across a range of materials.
Names and straplines
Names
The first step in branding your project is to give it a name that is both memorable and encapsulates what you do.
Try to keep it as short as possible: journalists often find the names of businesses can be too long and difficult to remember.
If you have to use an acronym, think of one that forms a memorable word, for example:
CARR – Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation
COMPAS – Centre on Migration, Policy and Society
LLAKES – Learning and Life Chance in Knowledge Economies and Societies.
Straplines
A strapline tells people who you are and what you do in a single succinct phrase. It is similar to an advertising slogan, but is used to promote a whole organisation or project rather than a single product.
Straplines are often used by organisations to describe their aims and values; for example the strapline for the schools inspectorate Ofsted is ‘Raising standards and improving lives‘.
Once you have a name for your project, think about adding a simple description, such as: ‘The happiest place on Earth.‘ – Disney’s strapline.
Using names and straplines
Your name and strapline should be included in every piece of communication material, including press releases, presentations, publications and your website.
You should also consider how you can use them in basic areas of communication such as answering the telephone.
Logo
A good logo is essential to creating a strong visual identity for your published material. It ensures that everything you produce is instantly recognisable as belonging to your project.
It is a good idea to commission a professional designer to create your logo. Avoid the temptation to ‘knock something up on the computer’ yourself.
Good design need not cost a fortune, and bad design will have a huge impact on how your project will be perceived.
Key points to bear in mind:
- Include as many team members as possible in the initial discussions and encourage them to give their views on a shortlist of options.
- Administrative and IT staff are often major users of the logo and associated templates – it is important to get their views and practical suggestions early.
- Be clear at all stages about who will make the final decision – it helps to keep this to a small group or one person.
- Think about what your target audiences might respond to rather than just what you like.
- Allow enough time for testing and development – you don’t want to launch your new logo in a complex PowerPoint presentation at a major conference before you’ve had a chance to try it.
- Back up the new logo with guidelines on implementing it, including a simple manual on the correct use of the new identity, and training for key staff.
Design
Commissioning design
When commissioning a logo, or any other design work, it pays to have a simple brief. When you are choosing a designer to work on your new brand identity consider the following:
Look for a track record of design effectiveness as well as attractiveness. Was the design ‘fit for purpose’ rather than just looking good? Is there any evidence that it achieved the client’s objectives? Ask for references from current clients.
Check for strong evidence of creativity. Are there fresh ideas coming through for each new project or is the same basic approach repeated for different clients?
Check that the designer has the ability to work well with clients, understand their values and priorities, and deliver to budget and deadline.
Ask for names and details of any sub-contractors or freelancers being used and require the main contractor to retain quality control and project management.
Ask for confirmation in writing of all financial issues including day rates, what’s included in estimates or fixed price quotes, any mark-ups or other associated costs.
Don’t underestimate costs beyond the initial creative stage. You will need a budget for implementing the brand across the whole range of applications and for things like training costs and licences for fonts and software.
Remember that you can use one designer or agency to develop the original idea and then use a range of cheaper designers or agencies to apply it to specific projects like producing publications.
This can help to make sure you get high quality creative input at the start, and keep costs down.
Choosing a final design
When considering draft designs, think about the following:
- How will your proposed logo sit against those of funders, partners and competitors?
- Does it look distinctive?
- Does it look too much like the logo of other, well known organisations?
- Does it work well with the logo of a major partner or funder?
Think about how the logo will look across a range of applications. It may look great on a conference banner but what happens when you put it on a business card? What will it look like reproduced on a basic photocopier? Complex logos with complex acronyms will cause particular problems.
Think about colour. On the whole it is better to avoid particular tones of colour associated with political parties.
Limiting the range of colours will help to keep costs of reproduction down.
Think about typeface as well as logo. Limit the number of typefaces for headlines and body text and choose modern, clean typefaces.
Think about overall cost and environmental sustainability.
Make sure that you can generate good quality material electronically and think about reducing costs of paper and expensive inks for printing. But don’t compromise on quality.
Ask to see the logo, colour palette and suggested typefaces modelled on a small number of key applications such as stationery, business cards, publications and a web page.
Remember that you can always phase implementation if cost is an issue. Focus on the most important applications first, but ensure that people don’t use this as an excuse to avoid using the new corporate identity.
Some examples of brands we’ve created for clients;
Images
Good quality visual images are not optional extras. Without them, your communications make less of an impact.
Good visual imagery cannot compensate for poor written content, but good content can be devalued by low grade images.
Commissioning photography
If your impact plan includes a high volume of published material it may be worth subscribing to a photo library or commissioning photographers or illustrators to supply you with an image bank of material.
Some great places to find photographers include;
- Social media: Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn
- Local search using Google Maps which includes customer reviews
- Your local Chamber of Commerce member directory
- Portfolio websites such as Behance.net or Dribbble.com
- Flickr
- Stock photography websites such as iStockPhoto, Getty and Shutterstock
Selecting images
Key points to bear in mind:
Avoid boring images such as photographs of buildings and pictures of people sitting in meetings, shaking hands at events or delivering lectures. This is particularly important in annual reports.
Think about imagery that can show your business in action – the kind of active, engaging images you might expect to find in a national newspaper or magazine.
If you are likely to need photographs of key members of the team, commission a photographer to come in for a morning and take a complete set, rather than relying on poor quality ‘mugshots’ which may be out of date and will reproduce badly.
Avoid use of poor quality (low resolution) digital images and use of free clipart.
Make sure imagery is appropriate to the purpose of the communication. Use cartoons and ‘humorous’ images with care.
Aim to reflect the diversity of society in your imagery, but avoid being tokenistic.
Take care when using photographs of people to illustrate sensitive subjects unrelated to the original use of the photograph.
For example, in 2001, a disabled child was awarded £55,000 against a local authority when her photo, originally taken in a nursery school, was used without her permission to illustrate an AIDS awareness campaign.
Developing brand guidelines
You should ensure that everyone working on your project uses your brand consistently in all published material and communications.
It is helpful to develop a set of simple brand guidelines. You can include this requirement in the brief for your designers.
They will typically include instructions on applying the logo and wider corporate identity.
An example is Meta Facebook who have an entire section of their website dedicated to their Brand Guidelines.
You may also want to designate someone, either an administrator or a communications manager, to oversee the use of the new identity to ensure consistency and arrange training if needed.
Any new staff should be offered a short induction session on correct use. Where possible you should make the guidelines available electronically.
