Brand Elements

Overview

The concrete building blocks of a visual identity: the name, the brandmark (logo), the tagline, and — for some brands — a character. Each has its own taxonomy and selection criteria. There are no hard-and-fast rules that dictate the best mark for a given company; the designer examines a range of solutions against aspirational and functional criteria and writes a rationale for the chosen approach.

When to use

• Choosing which category of mark fits a brand, or classifying an existing one.
• Naming a company/product, or judging whether a candidate name is strong.
• Writing or evaluating a tagline; deciding whether a brand needs a character.
• Not for the end-to-end identity process or standards/guidelines — hand off to the process/methodology sibling skill.

Names

Most good names are memorable, meaningful, and easy to say and spell; they look good in a logo and in text, and sound good spoken. A name is the first chance to harness the power of language, and it works 24/7. The hard part is finding one that is legally available AND linguistically viable.

Qualities of an effective name: Meaningful · Memorable · Distinctive · Adaptable (a springboard for a brand language) · Legally available · Linguistically viable · Visual (works graphically) · Sounds good · Easy to spell · Easy to pronounce.