Visual identity invests the brand with character and personality in consonance with the positioning and brand name. It becomes easier to recognise the brand, and recall it. It distinguishes it from the competitive brands. It is a unifying force that ties up the loose elements of the brand.

Visual identity is a comprehensive term and represents much more than a logo. It is a system that incorporates various cues such as typography, colours and shapes. The various components are so uniquely combined that together they represent brand signature. Other visual identities are the retail ambience, transport fleet, promotional material, signage, staff uniforms etc.

Visual Basics

The basic components are the signature, the logotype, the logomark, the wordmark, descriptive and tag lines.

Signature

The signature comprises the logomark, the logotype and the tagline though all these may not be present in all signatures. There may be just distinctive typography, e.g. Coca Cola or Bata to represent signature. It is called wordmark. Sometimes there is a combination of typography ( logo type ) and logomark.

The whole area of visual identity acquired importance with mass marketing, mass communication and mass production. The word graphic design became a mechanism to make ideas visible, and came to be used first in 1922. Logos became the graphic ambassadors of a brand’s personality.