What came first branding or visual identity?

This topic is very close to the one about the chicken and the egg, don’t you think so? Remember, how many times you have been confused about these two definitions, no matter if you are a customer, a student on graphic design as another choice marketing, or a professional in these spheres. Let’s try to figure out this question together.

What is branding?

There are so many explanations of a brand and branding that sometimes it confuses even more than clarifies. That is why I love this quote:

“You too are a brand. Whether you know it or not. Whether you like it or not.” (Marc Ecko) 

So, you are a person with appearance, emotions, character, plans for life, lifestyle, hobbies, actions, friends, family and so on. When somebody talks about you, he cannot describe you as a person only by your appearance, right? He also uses his own feelings.

Let’s apply this thought to a brand:

“Brand: Is not a logo, not what it looks like when I look at your product. A Brand is a shortcut, it’s a shortcut for all the expectations I have for what you’re about to do for me. It’s a shortcut for trust, for promises, for conversations…” (Seth Godin)

Branding is a process of building the right feelings and perceptions of the customers for your product with help of logo, fonts, colors, words, images, characters, stories, slogans, psychological methods, sounds, etc.

For example, when the tune ‘Connecting people…’ plays, the associative array immediately appears in people’s minds: mobile device, high quality, a trend design, and reliable company. Or, the tune of McDonald’s stirs up a hunger, right? And it is not necessary to see the logo for it.

Getting to a visual identity

You can ask, what can be discussed here if we have already mentioned all the elements above? Indeed, so while understanding what the branding means, we have also realized what visual identity is, unintentionally.

Visual identity is a visual aspect of branding. It is how a person sees your brand. According to the business dictionary: “It is visible elements of a brand, such as color, form, and shape, which encapsulate and convey the symbolic meanings that cannot be imparted through words alone. In a broader (corporate) sense, it may include elements such as building architecture, color schemes, and dress code.”

For example, what associations do you have with red color for German reliable electronics that is ‘invented for life’ – Bosch. It easily appears in your head, right? Or, yellow and red circles connected together by a name – ‘There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there is MasterCard’. I could even not finish the phrase as you’ve remembered it earlier than finished reading the previous sentence. That is how great visual identity works.

Let’s summarize, neither branding nor visual identity cannot be narrowed to simple logo design. It is something more than just a nice trend picture that is put everywhere on behalf of your company. Visual identity is a wide definition and branding is wider. 

– If you want to have just a logo, probably you will have it just for yourself to enjoy the picture. 

– If you want people to notice your brand, you have to design a visual identity for it.

– If you want people to feel something from your product for many years, definitely, branding is needed.