What visual assets do I need for brand identity?

AllGravy

New Member
I'm the a small business owner of a consumer brand.

I've appointed myself as the creative director of a rebrand and reposition project we're working on. I want to do it myself mostly due to cost restraints, but also because I feel like no-one else will ever share my passion for this brand, along with having a great understanding of our customers needs, and a clear vision of what we want to look, sound and feel like.

The visual assets will be used on our website, product packaging and marketing collateral. I've got a clear vision and insights into our audience, our offering, brand values and attributes. I have a general idea how we can translate through our imagery.

But what exact assets do I need? How can I thoroughly determine which assets are needed, and have an artist produce them?
 
I've appointed myself as the creative director of a rebrand and reposition project we're working on. I want to do it myself mostly due to cost restraints
To clarify, are you planning on doing the design and rebranding yourself, or hiring a designer and overseeing the creative direction? If it's the former, I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have brand design experience. Your time is much better spent focussed on the business and you should let a designer do what they do. If there's no budget for a rebrand, it begs the question, why bother to rebrand? Do you even need to, or does the business need to grow more first?

I feel like no-one else will ever share my passion for this brand, along with having a great understanding of our customers needs, and a clear vision of what we want to look, sound and feel like
Whilst the first half of this statement is probably true, an experienced professional brand designer will work with you to understand your business and customers in order to develop the right identity. You can't effectively brand a business if you don't understand them.

If you're set on doing it yourself, what you need is a brand identity and logo that can be applied in multiple situations and contexts. The key is keeping it simple and not backing yourself into a corner with hard and fast rules.

As for actual assets, start with the basics and build up as you need them. To start you'll want multiple versions of your logo. I tend to do all white, all black (or primary brand colour) and full colour (i.e. all the colours used) as transparent PNGs. This is more than enough for most contexts, with vector versions available for print. From there I can create pretty much anything else a client needs and build up over time. Think about when you use your branding on a day to day basis and write a list of possible situations you'll need to use it.

I can send you a link to some brand guidelines I've produced that gives the client a good idea of how and when to use certain aspects of their branding, such as logos, colour and typography.
 
I feel like no-one else will ever share my passion for this brand, along with having a great understanding of our customers needs, and a clear vision of what we want to look, sound and feel like.
That's correct, nobody will ever feel the same as you. And very few people will care either.

Your branding vision may be at odds with what potential customers want so there is a good chance your ideas will fail. Unless you do as Paul suggests and employ someone to help you with this.
 
Once you've sourced and hired your designer, he will be able to advise you on what you need. Just start with a simple logo (and I mean simple), and go from there.
 
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