What does a brand identity include?

Most people asking this question are really asking two things: what am I paying for, and how do I know it is finished? The answer is a system with three layers, and a handover you can check.

The strategy underneath

Before anything is drawn, the identity has to know what it is for. That layer is short, written down, and it is what stops the visual work becoming a matter of taste.

• Who the business serves, and what it does better than the local alternatives.
• A positioning statement and the key messages that support it.
• Tone of voice: how the brand writes and speaks, with examples of both.
• Naming or naming rules, if the brand has several products or sub-brands.

The visual system

This is the part people picture when they hear the phrase, but it is a family of elements rather than one file. It has to work on a twelve-metre banner and a sixteen-pixel favicon, in full colour and in one colour, on paper and on screen.

• A logo suite: primary mark, horizontal and stacked lockups, and a single-letter version.
• Colour, specified twice — once for print and once for screens, because they are not the same.
• Typography: which typefaces, at which sizes, and what to use when a licensed font is unavailable.
• Layout rules: spacing, alignment and the structure that makes two different documents look related.

Templates and files

An identity that only exists as a set of guidelines gets ignored within a month. What keeps it alive is finished, editable templates for the things the business produces every week.

• Document templates: letterhead, quotation, invoice, proposal.
• Digital: social profile images and post layouts, plus email signatures.
• Print specifications in the language printers and signwriters use.
• Vector files for reproduction at any size, and screen-ready exports for everyday use.

What often gets left out

Incomplete handovers cause most of the frustration associated with branding. The two things most commonly missing are a reversed logo version for dark backgrounds and merchandise, and instructions for whoever produces the next piece. Both are cheap to include at the start and awkward to add later, once the original files have been misplaced.

A useful test: hand the guidelines to somebody who has never worked on the brand and ask them to produce one correct page. If they can, the identity is finished. If they cannot, it is a set of pictures.