When we speak of design and identity it means both an individual person such as the designer and a corporate identity. Normally, the term “identity design,” refers to the corporate identity, also known as brand. A mark or logo is branded onto products and is often commonly called “the brand.” The brand goes back to the provincial herdsman and his sheep and also the royal monogram. Branding officially originated as a business strategy in the 19thcentury as a means of marketing mass produced goods with packaging and presentation.
The above mark was used to brand cattle in Worchester, Massachusetts and is now used as the city's logo.
The brand identity is what makes a company unique and what is represented in the logo or mark. While there may be certain facts about a company’s founding and services, the identity may be part mythical. (i.e.: Coca-cola is a beverage but it’s identity includes other emotions and ideas.) As a designer you must understand the corporate identity before you create communication design. The corporate identity is also important to product and fashion design, which normally carry either the designer’s name or brand name.
Even if the logo is translated, the brand identity is communicated.
Brand equity is the value that clients perceive in a brand. A larger brand can extend brand equity through naming smaller aspects of a company in a similar fashion (i.e.: Apple’s i- naming system).
“Another important element is the ability to have symbolic presence, the ability to have not only power but also omnipresence…any simultaneous presence in many places, or even the possibility of such presence, is an essential attribute of a deity, perhaps even the most important attribute.”-Halbertal, Moshe and Avishai Margalit. Idolatry. Trans. NaomiGoldblum. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1992, p. 228. This quote from a text on religion represents the idea of expanding territory through a brand.
Branding requires consistency in order to be recognized. This chart advises businesses how to connect to the Swiss identity and create brand strength and national consistency.
For some designers, their entire work is about personal identity. Even if you attempt to remain neutral, your design is still informed by your personal history, education, beliefs, gender and race as daily lived experiences. For example, when we discussed values of design we described how values are a priori to your work and are invested and expressed by the design.
In The Brand Called You, Tom Peters suggests that understanding your specific identity will help all your work. There are things that make you different from everyone else and rather than emulate heroic designers, discover what you can do in a heroic way. This does not mean that you may not borrow some ideas or forms from history, this is postmodernism! It means that even when you borrow forms, you make them new through a personalized modification or re-design that expresses your vision. This is especially important for designers who must be their own brand managers. By creating a website and/or blog you further extend your brand. But owning your website or blog with a particular point of view or perspective that only you can have is how you define your brand.
Peters goes through the article with a set of questions to ask about your own brand. Think further about you…
Take the Tom Peter’s challenge and sum up your brand identity in 15 words or less:
Could it describe anyone else?
Building a clear identity is not only a way to help others understand you but it will make your work recognizable over time. When you create something yourself that is unique it is an original. When the original material is re-produced with a designer’s name, it also extends the name of a designer to the level of fame. And the product, which is a multiple, seems to carry an ounce of originality by the name.
In his essay called "Fame," Andy Warhol explains his own celebrity experience and describes the personalities of others. Andy Warhol was a pop artist who lived in New York city and painted many portraits of famous people as well as hosting them on several closed circuit television shows. Warhol also had a magazine called “Interview,” still running this day. He is well known for the 1965 comment, "in the future, everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes."
The film Fame, originally released in 1980
Designer’s with strong identities are embraced by media and considered a success. The eighties were a time when the celebrity designer was rising in importance for identities. One writer called the 80’s the “designer decade.” In 1999 New York Times Magazine created a special issue naming the “Me Millenium.”
Any fashion designer that is a household name is an example of strong identity design. Marc Jacobs, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel are instantly recognizable.
Chanel's logo has been consistent since Coco was still alive. Balenciaga's logo below, created by Fabien Baron uses interlocking B's that resemble Chanel.
In brand design, Fabien Baron is a famous art director who arrived in New York in the 1980’s and guided the identities of magazines including GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Italian Vogue and Interview, where he currently works. His company Baron & Baron has guided the identities of many fashion brand including Balenciaga, Burberry, Michael Kors, Viktor & Rolf and others.
In communication design, Wally Olins is often recognized as the world leader or corporate identity, especially in re-design which he led for Volkswagon, Renault and others. He founded the business Wolff Olins which was eventually bought but still operates on his principle of unifying a clear and simple corporate identity across the business.
One of the most famous environment designer is architect Rem Koolhass. Koolhaas established his own design firm in 1975, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which has since rose to prominence. He is responsible for many significant designs such as Parc de la Vilette in Paris and Prada flagship stores but is best known as a celebrity architectural persona.
In The Design and Architecture Issue of L'Uomo Vogue above, Rem Koolhass is featured on the cover and recognized in the titles is designer Philippe Starck, also below.
In product design, French man Philippe Starck rose to prominence in the eighties for interior decorating of the French president’s home, as well as many original objects. He has become something of an icon for product design along with Austrailian Marc Newson who rose to prominence in the 1990’s.
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