What Are Brand Elements? Everything You Need To Know

Choosing the correct brand identity elements for a business can increase your chances of establishing a presence in the market and building a loyal customer following.

Brand elements play a vital role in shaping success, combining everything from the company’s values and personality to applying color theory and slogans.

This guide explains how to create visually striking brand elements for online promotion and marketing materials for all types of businesses.

The Importance Of Brand Elements For Your Business

Whether setting up a hotel website or launching an innovative tech startup, branding elements are essential for a business’s success.

While outstanding brand elements should reflect a company’s specific nature and target audience, the basic rules for creating them apply to all companies.

Here are some of the key reasons why focusing on developing impressive, eye-catching brand elements is necessary for all types of businesses.

Establish Brand Identity

Businesses operate in a highly competitive marketplace, and to stand out from the crowd, they must establish an instantly recognizable brand identity.

This is encapsulated in the color palette, fonts, and other design elements of a given brand and is used throughout its online presence.

It’s instantly evident on the best business websites, combining simplicity and style while retaining the spirit of the organization’s core mission.

Define The Brand’s Personality

Brand personality is closely associated with brand identity, reflecting the overall tone the company wants to present to the public.

Government institutions typically adopt a more serious tone, while a small toy manufacturer will emphasize fun and vibrant personality traits that reflect its target audience.

Brand elements such as logos and mascots are a great way to capture this sense of personality at a glance and become a part of the culture.

Encourage Brand Loyalty

Establishing brand elements and the associated personality traits ultimately increases customer brand loyalty and repeat business.

With an increasing number of people concerned with a company’s ethics, many choose to place their environmental and social obligations front and center.

Ultimately, brand loyalty comes when the brand voice comes across as sincere and authentic, and the customers feel the brand stands for their personal values.

What Are Brand Elements?

Various brand elements must be considered when building and positioning a business to stand out from competitors and achieve its goals.

These elements begin with brainstorming the core values and message the company wishes to portray and continue through brand logos, fonts, and other visual assets.

They can then be incorporated into other processes, such as developing a website design timeline and creating marketing materials.

Let’s look into the types of brand elements all companies require and the process of creating these to favorably improve brand recognition.

10 Types of Brand Elements

Ten core types of brand elements can be created when shaping brand perception and defining a visual representation that leaves a lasting impression on the audience.

We’ll explore each brand element and examine how these can foster an emotional connection in the consumer’s mind.

1. Brand Values

Before you can start working on the graphic design aspects of brand elements, you must fully understand the brand values that shape your company’s mission.

These values serve as guiding principles from which your unique brand has emerged and the tangible aspects that relate to a higher sense of purpose.

Determining brand values can be done by simply brainstorming and writing down what motivates the company’s performance and high-level goals.

It can also be achieved through the use of AI to build brand alignment and identify the unique aspects of a brand’s identity through technology.

This process will help you to determine the values that make your product or service appealing to the target market and create appropriate brand imagery that matches these values.

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2. Identity & Name

The next phase to consider when building brand elements for a company is choosing a brand name that should be instantly recognizable and memorable.

This is the first thing anyone will think of when referring your business to third parties, so it must be easy to spell and have a clear ring to it.

Your brand name will be used on all promotional materials, from your company website and business card to all social media pages.

Likewise, it should directly reflect the core brand promise and mission, resonating with the target audience through carefully considered word association.

Some of the most successful brands have chosen names that have entered the common vocabulary, with Band-Aid and Hoover as two examples of this phenomenon.

When choosing a brand name, verify its availability and avoid violating intellectual property laws when creating your brand assets.

3. Color Palette

Once you’ve determined a powerful brand name that reflects your core business goals, it’s time to consider the color palette you’ll use for your brand elements.

A great place to begin this process is to understand color theory and how complementary colors can be used to conjure different emotions.

This foundation will be vital to creating and incorporating a consistent color palette throughout your branding elements for a coherent, unified aesthetic.

Different colors can impact the viewer’s emotional connection, so they should be closely related to the previously established tone.

A branding color palette is often chosen with just three or four total colors, with a dominant color for the background and more sparing use of other colors in the design.

You can research the color schemes used by competitors in your industry to see how they apply them to the brand’s logo and other elements.

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4. Logos

A business’s logo plays a vital role in brand positioning and is the most recognizable aspect of any brand, from small local businesses to major corporations.

Some logos stick to a text-only approach for their designs, while other brands opt to incorporate characters and other graphic elements alongside their name.

If you lack the skills to design a logo yourself, there are many great online resources, such as Canva, that can help you achieve professional-looking results.

You can also consider hiring a freelance graphic designer to help you with the task and ensure the result adheres to design best practices.

A good rule of thumb when designing logos is to keep them as bold and clear as possible, as they must be clearly displayed on various media.

Brand logos are used on everything from smartphone icon images to billboards, so avoiding overstuffing them with detail ensures they look great everywhere.

Tip: Find out how much it costs to build a website.

5. Typography & Fonts

Brand elements and typography are deeply intertwined and relate to the arrangement and use of font styles throughout the brand’s identity.

Different fonts can evoke different emotions and alter how the information is presented to the audience, so most brands use various fonts depending on the material.

A clear, bold font is often used for logos and the company name, while other standard fonts can be applied to paragraph text and other information-based text.

One way to approach this is to use a system of fonts depending on the intention, such as a particular font for social media marketing efforts and another for content marketing.

If you plan on creating extensive content marketing materials, you can experiment with different styles and incorporate these tests into your blog post checklist.

Plenty of free fonts are available, and paid font packages increase your options, or you can even hire a designer to create a unique brand font just for you.

6. Shapes

Like the color scheme, the shapes you use in branding elements can create an emotional connection with the audience on a subconscious level.

Shapes play a deep and integral role in the design of a logo, the arrangement of other brand identity elements, and your product’s packaging.

There are several excellent tools for freelancers that can be used to assist with the design of your branding shapes, such as GIMP and Miro.

The use of shapes should focus on creating a unifying balance of elements within each design, delivering a clear visual language and style.

Different shapes evoke specific feelings, with circles commonly associated with unity and community, while square shapes emphasize strength and professionalism.

As such, these brand elements should be considered in line with your brand’s personality and whether you want to be seen as serious or laid back.

If you want to explore examples of how shapes can be used to significant effect, research the best startup websites and see how shapes are effectively utilized.

7. Graphics & Photos

Many companies use fonts, logos, and color schemes for branding elements, but they also include graphics or photos to add additional visual representation to the design.

Graphics and photos are a great way to cement the brand’s personality and the products and services it offers its target audience.

If your budget permits, you can use stock images to achieve this or hire a designer or photographer to create these elements.

Alternatively, you can learn how to edit photos like a professional and save money on this task by accomplishing it yourself.

You can take photos or use illustrations of your products that showcase the packaging designs or hold photo shoots of customers enjoying your services.

By reflecting your brand personality with these images, your target audience is more likely to be able to identify your products or services easily in the future.

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8. Slogans & Catchphrases

There is no shortage of examples of major brands that have successfully created slogans or catchphrases that have become part of the lexicon.

Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan and Apple’s “Think Different” tagline helped each brand achieve near-total market domination.

When devising a slogan for your brand elements, it’s vital to conduct market research to determine what resonates with potential customers.

This also means understanding how customers may be deterred by annoying business jargon and what phrases and expressions you should avoid.

A slogan should be short and catchy, summarizing your business’s products and services in a way that connects emotionally rather than practically.

Start by brainstorming keywords associated with your company’s brand identity and create a shortlist of the most relevant ideas.

Once you’ve used these to draft a selection of potential slogans to try, share them with friends, family, and colleagues to gauge their reactions.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to change things up and try new slogans in your marketing materials. You can A/B test these in promotions to see which gets the best results.

Learn more: Find out how to monetize a blog.

9. Online Presence

Once your core brand elements have been created, they must be applied throughout your online presence to ensure your company reaches its target audience.

This begins with setting up a company website where you can showcase your products and services, applying brand elements throughout each page.

You should dominate the home page banner with your company’s logo and a catchy slogan, applying the aforementioned shape and color theory to the design.

This design approach should then be consistently applied throughout the rest of the site’s design, using the color scheme and chosen fonts on all elements.

Likewise, any social media pages your business is running should also include the brand elements from your website for a consistent online aesthetic that reinforces your brand voice.

10. Market Positioning

The last aspect of brand elements you must consider is your market and brand positioning and how each element plays into your promotional drives.

Whether setting up a side hustle to pay off debt or a larger corporation, marketing materials are vital for growing your business and finding new customers.

Marketing efforts include promoting links to your company website to share products and services or highlighting upcoming discounts for loyal customers.

Each initiative should emphasize your core brand elements to reinforce your position in the market and distinguish yourself from the competition.

Marketing campaigns are also great opportunities to test new brand elements, such as trying out new logo designs, font styles, and business slogans.

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Summary

Defining brand elements is an essential aspect of promotion for any business, impacting everything from business card design to marketing assets.

Following this article’s advice, you can start creating visually rich and relevant brand materials to promote your business online and offline.

As your company grows, you can consider refreshing your brand elements by hiring professional graphic designers to bring their expertise to the table.