What is branding and how it differs from a logo

Branding is the work of building what a brand means. The logo is merely its signature: important, but a small part.

What it actually includes

• Verbal identity. How the brand speaks: vocabulary, tone, which words it never uses.
• Visual identity. Logo, colours, typefaces, graphic system, photographic and audiovisual style.
• Positioning. The place it occupies in the customer’s mind against the alternatives.
• Experience. What it feels like to buy, complain or get support. That is branding too, even if no designer draws it.

Why a logo alone is not enough

A logo identifies; a brand means something. If you change the logo but keep communicating, serving and delivering the same way, you did not do branding: you did a redesign.

The test is covering the logo on your work. If nobody can tell the pieces are yours, you do not yet have a visual system, you have a symbol.

The mistake of starting with the pretty part

Many projects begin by choosing colours. The useful order is the opposite: first what you promise and to whom, then how it sounds, and finally how it looks. Visual decisions made without that foundation get debated forever, because there is no criterion to decide by, only personal taste.

Coherence across pieces

Coherence is worth more than the perfection of any single piece. A simple manual — three colours, two typefaces, clear rules for the logo and for photography — holds a brand together better than an eighty-page document nobody opens.

This includes video. If your audiovisual pieces use different colours, a different typeface and a different tone from your graphic material, the audience perceives two brands even when the logo is the same.

How to tell whether it works

Three questions: do people describe your brand with words close to the ones you chose? Do they recognise your work without seeing the logo? Can you charge a little more than an equivalent competitor? If the answer to all three is yes, branding is doing its job.