Corporate Identity

Corporate Visual Identity plays a significant role in the way an organization presents itself to both internal and external stakeholders. In general terms, a corporate visual identity expresses the values and ambitions of an organisation, its business, and its characteristics. Four functions of corporate visual identity can be distinguished. Three of these are aimed at external stakeholders.

1. First, a corporate visual identity provides an organisation with visibility and ‘recognisability’ (Balmer and Gray, 2000; Dowling, 1993; Du Gay, 2000). For virtually all profit and non-profit organisations it is of vital importance that people know that the organisation exists and remember its name and core business at the right time.

2. Second, a corporate visual identity symbolises an organisation for external stakeholders, and, hence, contributes to its image and reputation (Schultz, Hatch and Larsen, 2000). Van den Bosch, De Jong and Elving (2005) explored possible relationships between corporate visual identity and reputation, and concluded that corporate visual identity plays a supportive role in corporate reputations.

3. Third, a corporate visual identity expresses the structure of an organisation to its external stakeholders, visualising its coherence as well as the relationships between divisions or units. Olins (1989) is well-known for his ‘corporate identity structure’, which consists of three concepts: monolithic brands for companies which have a single brand, a branded identity in which different brands are developed for parts of the organization or for different product lines, and an endorsed identity with different brands which are (visually) connected to each other. Although these concepts introduced by Olins are often presented as the corporate identity structure, they merely provide an indication of the visual presentation of (parts of) the organization. It is therefore better to describe it as a ‘corporate visual identity structure’.

4. A fourth, internal function of corporate visual identity relates to employees’ identification with the organisation as a whole and/or the specific departments they work for (depending on the corporate visual strategy in this respect). Identification appears to be crucial for employees (Bromley, 2001; Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail, 1994; Kiriakidou and Millward, 2000), and corporate visual identity probably plays a symbolic role in creating such identification.

The definition of the corporate visual identity management (Van den Bosch, 2005) is:

Corporate visual identity management involves the planned maintenance, assessment and development of a corporate visual identity as well as associated tools and support, anticipating developments both inside and outside the organization, and engaging employees in applying it, with the objective of contributing to employees’ identification with and appreciation of the organization as well as recognition and appreciation among external stakeholders.

The design process begins with the design of a series of mood boards, these are collections of imagery intended to capture the essence of the brand that is shown to the client to determine an accurate starting point. These will be consolidated into a final mood board encapsulating all the valu

What develops from this point is a tone-of-voice that is on brand. By this we mean a consistency between visual language and the spoken word, typography and corporate colour palette.

Brand Naming

A brand name can do more than describe the business you are in and what you do. The right brand name will confer competitive advantage by giving you a clear and powerful voice in the market. Effective brand names are relevant to the brand essence, support business objectives and evoke the brand promise and personality.

At sr DESIGNs our team of experts build naming solutions based firmly on establishing the brand positioning and marketing strategy as a starting point involving our client, to access as much knowledge and personality about the brand before starting the journey of developing a marketplace name. We oversee the total process of legal, registration and linguistic checking to advise on what should be done in all the relevant marketplaces.

Our combination of creative skills and experienced brand strategists deliver powerful corporate brand names regardless of industry and sector.