Branding
Brand Identity Design
Brand identity design is your logo plus the colors, fonts, layouts and templates around it, written down so your staff, printer and freelancers all produce material that looks like one company.
Aa
What an identity system usually covers
- Logo suite
- Primary, stacked, icon
- Color palette
- HEX, RGB, CMYK
- Typography
- Headings, body, fallback
- Layout rules
- Grid, spacing, imagery
- Templates
- Social, letter, slides
- Guidelines file
General scope of an identity system. Your quote lists exactly what's included.
What brand identity is
Brand identity design: the system around your logo
Brand identity design is the visual system around your logo: colors, typefaces, layout rules, image style and templates. It is what makes a flyer, a social post, an invoice and a slide look like they came from the same business. The rules are written into a short brand guidelines file, so anyone making material for you can follow them without guessing.
It sits in the middle of our branding services. It builds on a logo and feeds everything after it, from stationery to video.
- Logo suite
- Color palette
- Typography
- Layout and imagery
- Templates
Signs you need one
What an identity system fixes
If two of these sound familiar, a new logo will not help. The problem is missing rules.
One blue, not five
Your Instagram posts, shop banner and company profile all use slightly different colors. A palette with exact values ends that.
Freelancers start from rules
Each new designer picks new fonts, so nothing matches last year's material. Written type and layout rules give them a starting point instead of a blank page.
Staff stop improvising
Flyers made in whatever app is at hand, then shared on WhatsApp, drift furthest. Ready templates let staff make a post or a letter without breaking the look.
The parts
What brand identity design defines
Six parts, each with a clear job. If your positioning is still unsettled, start with brand development instead.
Logo suite
Primary logo, horizontal and stacked versions, an icon, and the clear space around each. Used everywhere.
Color palette
Main and support colors with HEX, RGB and CMYK values, plus how much of each to use. Print, web, signs and uniforms.
Typography
Heading and body typefaces, a size scale, and a free fallback font for everyday documents. If you sell in two languages, the typefaces need a matching Urdu or Arabic partner.
Layout
Grid, margins and how the logo and text sit together on brochures, slides and ads.
Imagery
Photo style, crop rules and icon style for social posts, the website and the company profile.
Templates
Ready files for the items your team makes most often, set up so they can be edited without breaking the look.
Inside a guidelines file
One page of a brand guidelines file, taken apart
A guidelines file is what you keep after the project ends. This example page shows the five things most people open it for. Our guide to logo vs brand identity covers where a logo stops and the system starts, and the branding pricing page shows how identity work is scoped.
- A
Logo lockups
Which version goes where: horizontal for headers and signs, stacked for square spaces, the icon for profile pictures.
- B
Clear space and minimum size
How much empty space the logo needs and how small it can go before it stops reading.
- C
Color values
One set of numbers for screens and one for print, so the printer never has to ask which blue.
- D
Type scale
Which typeface is for headings and which is for body text, with sizes people can copy.
- E
What not to do
The common mistakes, shown, so nobody stretches, recolors or buries the logo.
A · Logo lockups
Horizontal
Stacked
Icon, reversed
B · Clear space and size
Minimum width: 24 mm print · 120 px screen
D · Typography
Heading typeface
Body typeface for letters, posts and slides
- Heading
- 32 / 40
- Subhead
- 20 / 28
- Body
- 11 / 16 pt
C · Color palette
- Deep teal
- HEX
- #0F4C5C
- RGB
- 15 76 92
- CMYK
- 84 17 0 64
- Coral
- HEX
- #E07A5F
- RGB
- 224 122 95
- CMYK
- 0 46 58 12
- Sand
- HEX
- #E3D5B8
- RGB
- 227 213 184
- CMYK
- 0 6 19 11
- Charcoal
- HEX
- #2B2D2F
- RGB
- 43 45 47
- CMYK
- 8 4 0 82
- Off-white
- HEX
- #F7F5F0
- RGB
- 247 245 240
- CMYK
- 0 1 3 3
E · Do not
Stretch it
Recolor it
Put it on a busy photo
Make every piece look like one company
Send your current logo and a few examples of material you produce today. We reply with a quote for that scope.
Get a quote
Request a brand identity quote
Send your current logo and three or four recent pieces: a post, a flyer, a letter, a sign. They show what to keep and what is causing the mismatch.
- Your current logo files
- A few pieces of material you made recently
- The items your team produces most often
Brand Identity: common questions
What is included in brand identity design?
The logo and its variations, a color palette with screen and print values, chosen typefaces and how to use them, layout and spacing rules, an image and icon style, ready-to-use templates, and a brand guidelines file that explains all of it. Your quote lists exactly which items are included.
What is the difference between brand identity and brand development?
Brand development decides what the brand says: positioning, audience and messages. Brand identity decides how it looks: the visual system. Development comes first when those answers are unclear. If they are already settled, you can go straight to identity.
What goes into a brand guidelines document?
Logo usage and misuse, clear space and minimum sizes, the color palette, type rules, layout examples, photo and icon style, and samples of real items such as a post, a letter and a card. Good guidelines are short enough that people actually read them.
Can an identity be built around my existing logo?
Usually, if the logo is sound: it has vector files, reads at small sizes and prints in the right color. If it fails those checks, a light redraw comes first and the system is built around the result.
How long does a brand identity project take?
Longer than a logo, because there are more decisions and more items to design. Timing depends on how many templates you need and how fast feedback comes back. We confirm the timeline when we scope your project.
Do I get editable templates?
Templates are part of the point: your team should be able to make a new post or letter without calling a designer. We agree the template formats before work starts, based on the tools your team already uses.