It is important for a business to have a strong visual brand identity. Having a strong brand identity helps you build your reputation, helps to set you apart from other businesses, and helps potential and current clients understand who you are and what your business has to offer them. The right brand identity can be used across multiple platforms to effectively market to your customers. A brand can be used on mailers, in television ads, on your website, and in email campaigns. If you do not know what a visual brand identity is or are unsure if your brand’s identity is strong, here is some information you will want to know, especially when it comes to using images to help build it.
What is a Visual Brand Identity?
By definition, a visual brand identity is the “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” But what does this mean in layman’s terms or for you as a business owner? Take a second to think about some of your favorite brands. Is there one image that comes to mind when you think of this product? For example, when you think of Apple, you likely think of the iconic Apple image, when you think of Android, you think of the Android Bot, as you think of Disney, you think of Mickey Mouse or the Castle, and when you think of McDonald’s, you think of the Golden Arches. All of these images that you envision and associate with these companies are their own visual brand identities.
As a business, visual brand identity is important. You want to be recognizable and distinguishable to your customers. You want them to take one look at your product, advertisements or stores and know that that is indeed your business thanks to the recognizable visual indicators that they can see.
How Imagery Plays a Key Role in Your Visual Brand Identity
In order to create a visual brand identity, you need to define your audience, select a logo, and select colors that align with your company’s vision. While these are important steps to creating a visual brand identity, they are not the only steps to creating it. Creating and selecting beautiful imagery is needed as well. Beautiful imagery helps to build brand identity with your audience. Here are a few of the ways this happens:
Imagery Captivates Your Audience
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. This means that when a customer or client sees your visual, they are immediately drawn to it and can tell more from it faster than any piece of text you can put together. This goes along with the old adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Beautiful images can captivate attention easier than text, and they make it easier for your audience to understand & connect with your brand from a single glance.
Imagery Conveys Your Brand Message
Another reason why imagery helps to build brand identity is because imagery helps to tell your brand story and your key message. Think about when you visit a website to find out more about a specific company. You can often look at a banner or picture on the website and immediately tell a lot about the company, including their vision, their mission, and what types of products they sell or services they can provide you with. This makes imagery easier for your customers to digest than words content alone.
Imagery Creates a Consistent, Recognizable Appearance
With the right images, you can begin building brand recognition with the colors & imagery you’re sharing. This helps you to create brand awareness across a wide array of platforms. These days, it is important to advertise your business in a variety of ways. But the downside to doing this is that customers may not always associate your business as being your business if you put out too many different advertisements with various graphics, fonts, and images. With the right imagery, customers can automatically pick out an advertisement as being yours in a split second with a consistent and recognizable image.
Imagery Establishes an Emotional Connection With the Viewer
The last way imagery plays a key role in your visual brand identity is by establishing an emotional connection with the viewer. The right imagery can illustrate the emotions you want your audience to associate with your brand with the right brand storytelling images. This is something that is much harder to do with words. One picture can tell a story and evoke emotions. It would take many words and a captive audience who wants to read that far to convey the same emotion. And many people make purchases based on emotions and feelings, so this is key to growing and expanding your business.
How to Get the Right Images For Your Brand
Getting the right images for your brand is key. There are many images out there that are available to a business, including stock photography and custom images. When you need the images in order to help your brand stand out, custom images are vital.
When you have custom images made for your business, you are able to better convey your unique brand message and communicate with those who view the photos. It is much harder to convey a specific message and feeling when you use stock photography.
In addition to being in control of the message you send to consumers, you are able to achieve uniqueness by using custom images. Anyone can use stock images, and there is a possibility other brands, companies, and products are using or have used the same or similar stock images. If a customer sees a generic image that has been used before, they may think of the other company who used the image or have a hard time placing the image. This is the exact opposite of what you want to achieve when creating a visual brand identity.
Selecting the right images for your brand is a huge factor in how effective your campaigns are. If you still have questions about visual brand identity, or you are ready to create the perfect one of your business, be sure to download our infographic, “The Who, What and How of Creating a Visual Brand Identity.“
