In my opinion, it’s easy to picture Brand Identity as the big brother of Logo Design. Even better, imagine Brand Identity as the big family supporting Logo Design – while he’s the dashing go-ahead youngster that gets the family noticed!
Logo Design
Logo Design is the eye-catching image, icon or symbol that your business is recognised by. It’s the NUMBER ONE recognition factor for your business. And it’s the KEY to increasing mental recall of your business (that’s recall in the brain’s memory, not a Schwarznegger action movie).
Brand Identity
This is the bigger picture supporting and enlarging on your Logo Design. A brand identity manual used to be seen as the way to tie together your brand and how to apply it properly in full-colour, how it should appear on stationery, brochures, banners, building signage, even on the company Gulfstream jet. This is because it was, and still is, vital that you control the use of your logo – so top-class artwork must be available or your logo will inevitably become ‘watered-down’ by inaccurate and unauthorised redraws.
But Brand Identity/Branding has become an ever bigger picture than those brand identity manuals foresaw: nowadays, Brand Identity includes your video ident before TV shows, your radio tagline and the actor who voices it, and your advertising character (think Meerkats). Also the ‘tone of voice’ used in your company email and blogs, and the power-suits worn by your top executives – everything that speaks of your company can be seen as part of your Brand Identity.
(NB: I wrote this before Arnold Schwarznegger ever appeared in the TV ads with the Meerkats – so either I’m telepathic or it’s just a lucky coincidence!)