What Is Brand Identity? The Difference Between a Logo and a Brand

Many businesses say “we have a brand” and mean their logo. Yet customers remember a brand through experience far more than through a logo: how you speak, how you look, how you behave.

Components of brand identity

• Positioning: for whom, with what promise, how different from competitors?
• Tone of voice: warm, expert or witty?
• Visual system: logo, palette, typography, icons and photography.
• Application rules: social templates, decks, stationery, web.

Why a system?

Consistency builds trust. If the brand looks different on every channel, it leaves no trace in the customer’s mind. A brand book preserves that consistency even as teams and agencies change.

Settle positioning and tone before commissioning a new logo; the logo is the visual result of those decisions.