What is Visual Branding?

Visual Branding is about expressing the diversity and dynamics of a brand in a consistent manner, in every manifestation of the brand. Consistency is key in Visual Branding, but consistency is often confused with uniformity. Strict uniformity works for some brands, but mostly it is boring and dead. A brand needs to live and develop. A brand must perform in different kinds of situations. Like a real person. And you cannot easily facilitate this with strict rules and guidelines (that are always too specific) or with strategic keywords (that are always too abstract).

Visual Branding is based on the idea that a brand’s own individuality is defined as a real person. This Brand Personality is used to create a consistent visual performance of the brand to the outside world, everywhere, anytime, always; from retail to advertising to product design and much, much more. Most brands fail to deliver this and, as a consequence, communicate less effectively.

Visual Branding does not replace the use of analytical brand strategy models. On the contrary, their methodology and results remain as essential as always. Visual Branding just adds an extra step: defining a brand personality. To create the ideal preconditions for Visual Branding one must realise that building a brand is primarily a visual challenge, because that is the language of the world we live in. This viewpoint has to be agreed upon by all the professionals in the company, who can be held responsible for managing the brand or brand portfolio. Internal governance should be arranged accordingly.