The following is a list of questions to help you determine the elements of your brand identity. What is a brand identity anyway? Its the key differentiators of your brand image. Some of these differentiators are the name, the logo, the design, tone, tagline, or typeface. Its how our brains recognize brands. So whether you’re designing the brand identity yourself or you’re hiring someone to do it. You need to have a plan, and that’s why I created this questionnaire. This is a playful guide to help you get things started.
What colors represent your brand?
Color conveys feelings and a whole lot of emotions. Red is the color of passion. Yellow is the color of optimism. Blue is trust. Green is growth and health. Some are youthful and some are mature. Some might look loud, and some might look subdued. You can do deep dive online to research the psychology of color or you can just close your eyes and determine which colors you see when you think of your brand. Either way, you need to determine what arrangement of colors will differentiate your brand and solidify your brand identity.
Image Credit: Huffington Post
Since its hard to simply close our eyes and wait for a divine manifestation of colors, I’m dropping a link here if want to read more on how to choose your brand colors.
What shape encompasses your brand?
Similar to the psychology of color, there is also the psychology of shape. This will help immensely with the logo development process.
I’m not a mathematician but each shape can be represented with a mathematical equation. That’s geometry. So think of it this way, if you can write your brand mission as an equation, what would be your shape? Is it a square or a circle? A pyramid or a sphere? Sacred geometry is all around us. Wanna give your brand meaning? Get it in shape.
What adjectives describe your brand the most?
This question reminds me of Jeff Bezos. Apparently, he almost named Amazon Relentless. He even purchased the domain. In fact, if you type Relentless.com you will be redirected to Amazon.com. What three words or adjectives describe YOUR brand the most?
What is your mantra?
This is the short version of your mission statement. This could also be your slogan or tagline. It’s something the more you repeat it, the more impact it has. The gift that keeps on giving. My branding mantra at brandnewdreams.com is helping people create their dream brands. What is yours?
What is the right font for your brand?
font
fänt
noun
a set of type of one particular face and size.
Face as in typeface. Face to me sounds more like personality. As in each font design has its own personality. Typically this is easy for people to choose since everyone dabbled with fonts writing emails or designing invitations, etc. Most people know what fonts resonate the most with them. So which font you think will resonate with people when they’re thinking of your brand?
Image Credit: crazyegg.com
What’s the spirit animal of your brand?
Ferrari has a black horse. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has the roaring lion. Geico has the Gecko, and Jaguar has a jaguar. What’s the spirit animal of your brand? Even if you don’t need to use it in any of your marketing.
Who’s your dream brand ambassador?
If you had the marketing budget to hire any celebrity as a brand ambassador who would you collaborate with? This question helps to identify what kind of following you’re looking to attract. You can always choose to be your own self-ambassador.
Who’s your community?
Who do you envision buying your products/services? Who do you envision working with/for you? This is essentially your tribe. Your demographic and target market should be something you already identified in your business plan.
Which top 5 brands inspire you the most?
Here is the list of the world’s most valuable brands of 2018. What’s your top 5? This list will help you determine which brands you want to learn from the most. It’ll also help you understand what kind of relationship you want to establish with your employees and customers.
Final Thoughts
Again this is a playful guide to help get things started. Although sometimes you’ll be surprised at how hard these questions are to answer. That’s because of the commitment. Your brand is your baby. However, with your brand, it’s appropriate to alter its genetic makeup. I hope I’m getting my point across. So if you wanna play download the questionnaire and let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
