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Catalog
Branding & Visual Identity Design
Building an identity: marks and logotypes, colour and type systems, visual tone of voice, and the guidelines that keep it consistent.
Select Your Level
This level is for designers making their first marks and logotypes. A logo is unusual among design objects in that it must work at almost every size, in one colour, on any background, for many years. Most first attempts fail not because they are ugly but because they were designed at one size, in full colour, on white, and tested nowhere else.
By the end of this level you can design a simple mark that remains legible when reduced, reversed, or printed in a single colour. You can test a design under realistic conditions rather than presenting it only at its most flattering, and you can construct a basic lockup. You are designing for durability rather than for the initial presentation.
What You'll Learn
- You work through what a mark actually has to do and the conditions it must survive, along with simple and memorable form and why complexity is a liability rather than an asset
- The material covers working in black and white first so the idea is judged before the styling, testing a mark at the smallest size it will genuinely be used, and basic lockups and clear space rules
This level is about extending a mark into a complete visual language. A logo alone identifies almost nothing: recognition comes from the system around it, which is why a brand is often identifiable from a photograph with no logo visible at all. Building that system is a larger and less glamorous task than designing the mark, and it is where most identities succeed or fail.
By the end of this level you can take a single mark and build the surrounding system that makes it recognisable everywhere it appears, including in situations where the mark itself is absent. You can define colour and type roles precisely enough that others apply them correctly. You are designing a language rather than a logo.
What You'll Learn
- The material covers colour palettes with clearly defined roles so that colour is applied consistently rather than by preference, and type systems that cover every use the identity will encounter
- It works through photographic and illustrative direction that keeps imagery recognisable, layout templates that hold their character across different content, and applying an identity coherently across varied materials
This level covers documenting an identity so that other people can run it without you. An identity is only as good as its worst application, and most of those applications will be made by people who were not involved in designing it and have no particular interest in it. Guidelines are the mechanism that protects the work, and writing them well is a distinct skill.
By the end of this level you can produce a guidelines document thorough enough that the identity survives being applied by people you will never meet. You can anticipate the awkward situations that break an identity and answer them in advance, and you can hand over a complete, organised set of assets. The work continues to function once you have left it.
What You'll Learn
- You work through writing guidelines that are actually followed, which usually means shorter, clearer and more example-driven than instinct suggests, and the difference between rules that must be obeyed and principles that require judgement
- The material covers building asset libraries and preparing files for every likely use, designing for edge cases before they arise, and handing over cleanly
This level is for designers shaping what a brand means, not only what it looks like. At this stage the visual decisions are downstream of a positioning argument, and a beautifully executed identity built on a misunderstanding of the organisation is worse than a plain one built on a correct reading. The work requires connecting an abstract proposition to a concrete visual choice, and explaining that connection persuasively.
By the end of this level you can connect a business proposition to a visual decision and explain that link clearly enough that the reasoning survives a room full of people with different priorities. You can evolve an identity rather than replace it, and you can argue for the work on grounds that matter to the people deciding. Design becomes a strategic contribution.
What You'll Learn
- The material examines translating positioning into visual decisions so that each choice has a reason beyond preference, and expressing tone of voice visually
- It covers evolving an existing identity without discarding accumulated recognition, developing naming and verbal identity alongside the visual, and presenting strategy persuasively to people who will judge it on grounds other than aesthetics