What are the latest trends and best practices in brand identity design? (2024)

Brands are increasingly embracing minimalistic and streamlined design elements to create a memorable and impactful brand identity eg,Mastercard's simplified interlocking circles logo, which represents connectivity and partnership. Visual storytelling is becoming a prominent aspect of brand identity design eg, Coca-Cola's "Share a co*ke" campaign with personalized labels.With the increasing digital landscape, brands are focusing on adaptive branding that can seamlessly transition across different digital platforms eg, Airbnb's logo that changes color based on placement. Brands are prioritizing authenticity and transparency in their identity design eg, Patagonia's commitment to environmental sustainability reflected in its branding.

In my experience, the logos that people remember instantly, are the simplest. A wonderful example of this is McDonalds. They are easy to find on any high street, glance up and the logo is spotted instantly out of all the other signage. The brand identity can be tweaked and adapted for local audiences with little effort making it relevant all the time. The colour palette is very simple and few fonts are used. Something more brands can learn from.

Over the years I have worked with businesses that want to depict everything they do in their logos. This is never a good idea. By being too literal, you can limit the business to grow at pace, and feel compelled to redesign everything whenever there is a change in the business. This is potentially great for designers, but not for the businesses they serve. A brand identity that is constantly being overhauled will lose its messaging and their audience will be confused and look elsewhere.

In brand identity simplicity and consistency are key.The brand identity will have to be used by many people inside and outside an organisation, and if everyone did their own thing, then no one would know what you did, and be confused, and this will lead to reduced sales. Which is why we do this in the first place!I know of brands who have used large agencies to create a brand identity that was unusable by the people in the organisation, and meant that the whole thing had to be redesigned, it was embarrassing for the brand leaders, and frustrating for the staff.

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If you are looking to make your brand more ethical and eco-friendly, then research is your friend. It can be tempting for some brands to tack on social ideals, but this is really obvious to the audience who care about the issues, all you will do is alienate them.

When designing a brand identity, always keep an eye on the market you are in, and see where it can be pushed visually. Be surprising, clever, use humour, keep it simple, and it will be memorable which is ultimately what we are looking for here. I once designed for a brand where we pushed what was comfortable for the industry at an event, the result was everyone was surprised and delighted and they queued to get on the stand to find out more. It was simple and fun, and the impact was huge.

A brand identity done well is simple to use, simple to understand, and supports a brand as it moves forward and grows.Many of the brand identities I have designed have supported the brands to go forward and sell with ease, they were easy to spot and gave out the right messages when company acquisition was on the cards. They were aligned and didn't send out a confused message.

Having done what I have done for 20+ years, I can tell that you that one of the most overlooked opportunities out there is the use of music in driving brand identity. We live in a multimedia society and yet most marketers still just think about the static logo, which makes no sense, when music can reach and engage in ways that a static logo cannot.The creation and use of a sonic logo delivers higher ROI and recall. Worth considering...